Five Steps to a Better Game

While it is generally considered that games made back in the 80's are on average harder than those made today, there are still plenty of crazy hard games being produced. While some of these, such as Metal Slug 7 and Contra 4, are continuations of earlier series new IP's such as Super Meat Boy, Battle Kid, and Legend of Grimrock all provide new settings in which to put your gaming skills to the test. What follows are five simple steps to get better at these difficult games, with techniques that can also be applied to most games.

Step one: No Cheating
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. One of the best known cheats of all time and unfortunately a very easy way to prevent yourself from getting better at the game. Having 30 lives per continue means that you can progress through the game by attrition only. When playing Contra 4 I don't even let myself use a continue, while this is more extreme than the no cheating rule needs to be, the point is that my progress in the game is due purely to getting better with the controls.

Step Two: Use Training/Challenge Stages
Quite often these extra challenges and levels ask you to do something much harder than what is required in the main game. The advanced skills you develop will not only help you excel in the sections of the game you are already familiar with, but also mean that you will be better prepared for new more difficult levels later on.

Step Three: Demand Perfection
This is something I learnt from my sister. Her and I played Rainbow Islands a lot as children and if she lost a single life before reaching world three she would slam on the reset button and start again. I also adopted this system, later changing it to not losing a life before world four, and both of us eventually managed to finish the game.

Step Four: Learn From Others
Guides, tips, tricks and advice in general can greatly help improve your game. I mentioned above that both my sister and I finished Rainbow Islands, but what I didn't mention is that while she merely finished it, I got the harder to achieve good ending. I was only able to do this because of one key game mechanic that I read about in a gaming magazine.

Step Five: Find a Rival
As a child my rival was my sister, as an adult my girlfriend. By pushing each other and throwing down the gauntlet to say try and beat that score both people become much better at the games involved. I was once shaken awake at 3am to be informed that my high score in Sin and Punishment: Star Successor had been beaten, naturally I dragged myself out of bed and played until I was once again number one (this score also put me in the number three spot for the regional online leader board).

So there you have it, five simple steps to playing a better game. Now what are you waiting for? Go win some games!

Sometimes You Don't Want to be First

It's no surprise that I'm looking forward to the Wii U launch. I bought a Wii at launch and enjoyed playing Wii Sport and Twilight Princess. However, once I finished Zelda I was left thinking okay now what. While I ended up getting Monkey Ball and WarioWare one game that I intentionally avoided was Red Steel.

I had read the reviews for Red Steel and they were not flattering. However, earlier this year I finally picked up a copy for £1 and this month finally got around to playing it. All I can say is that the reviews were right, this game is severely flawed. It just shows so many signs of being rushed for launch, cut scenes are sometimes still frames, some times animated and sometimes the voice acting just stops half-way through them.

You can see what the developers were trying to do but the game just never lives up to it's promise. The controls are the opposite of the successful shooters that followed later on the Wii, the button which I expect to jump snaps to sights, the expected snap to sights button is crouch and what I expect to crouch jumps. At one point in the second mission I tried to duck and ended up inside a piece of furniture and had to reset the game to continue.

Perhaps these control issues could be forgiven if the sword fighting worked. Unfortunately these controls are even worse. There is significant lag between inputting a swing and the character performing it, also on default sensitivity the swings only register half the time.

But why bring this up now? The reason is that Red Steel is made by Ubisoft, the same company that is producing the Wii U launch title Zombi U. When I was young I played the original Zombi on my Amiga and I would very much like for this reboot to provide me with as many hours of fun as the original. I just hope that Ubisoft have learnt from their experience with Red Steel. After all the fantastic Red Steel 2 proved that given enough time they can indeed fulfil their promises and deliver a great experience.

Keeping it on the Level

First let me apologise for not having updated in quite some time, it turns out that moving to a new country takes up a lot of your time and resources. That being said, I will probably be cutting back to only one update a week for the next wee while.


I quite often talk about how to maximise your chances of winning a game through various strategies. Another way is to minimise thoughts and actions that can cause you to lose. More specifically, DON'T GO ON TILT! Having been watching peoples recordings of themselves playing Magic Online I'm amazed at how easily some players will fly into either a rage-filled mindset, or else just become totally nihilistic. What also surprises me is how petty some of these things are. For example, your opponent taking an excessive amount of time to pass priority. Yes it's annoying but in online magic it just runs down their clock giving you another win condition, and maybe before you start raging you could politely mention that you would appreciate them playing faster.It is quite possible that they are new to the game and aren't aware of the keyboard short-cuts that they can use to help speed up the game.

What I find most concerning is that if someone were to behave like this in a game of paper magic the judge wouldn't even bother to penalise the player playing slowly because they would be too busy removing the other player from the tournament.

Losing is a skill, if you know that you're not good at it then please try and improve. Play some casual games with friends with silly prizes, like jelly-beans or a lucky dip for the winner. Personally if I lose to someone then I like to get in behind them and support them for the rest of the tournament, this is partially so I can claim that I only lost to the best but also because it means that I'm going to be able to remain calm and happy during the rest of my games.

So please don't go on tilt, it just makes you more likely to lose and also makes it less fun for those around you.

Barrier to Entry

After my earlier failed video attempt I got into a discussion about how much it costs to play Magic Online. To create an account you need to part with US$9.99, which gets you an account, one M12 booster, 2 Magic Online tickets, 5 Avatars, 1 Planeswalker 2012 Deck Pack (cards that can only be used in the Planeswalker format), and 300 additional cards, after this it is up to you how much you want to spend buying new cards and playing in tournaments. However, it is worth noting that is cost nothing to play casual games.

With this in mind I have put together two casual decks that each cost less than two tickets. The first is an aggressive tribal deck featuring allies, and the second is a combo deck with creatures that have the unearth ability. Once again I had some trouble making the videos, of the seven games I attempted to record with the Allies deck (all of which I won) only one of them actually worked. The Unearth deck actually recorded but in all three games I had to revert to plan B of actually playing creatures, rather than being able to combo off. However, I did manage a turn four win in a test game I played when I was first putting the deck together.

I'm still not 100% happy with the videos, I become far to quite when thinking so have resorted to using some of kurtjmac's patented snarky yellow text to try and stop things getting too boring, but this provides a starting point for future videos to improve on. If you are having trouble reading the cards then you need to increase the video resolution.

I've Gone Mad

The free to play model for games has really taken off lately. Everquest II, DC Universe Online, Team Fortress 2, and Star Trek Online all changed to free to play and from what I understand have higher profits because of it. There are also games which have just released as free to play such as Realm of the Mad God and Tribes Ascend, both of which I started playing recently.

The strange thing about these games is that they have almost all of the content available to free users. The only items a non-free user can't obtain in Tribes is bonus xp and possibly some cosmetic upgrades, while in Realm real currency is used to buy extra character slots, guilds, additional vault space, and cosmetic changes. Personally I don't understand why someone would part with real money just to change the colour of their character's costume, but plenty of people seem to be quite happy handing over £1 just to have a polka-dot shirt. In truth, had they just asked me for a few quid to buy the game and have all the features then I probably would have, but I'm not willing to pay for cosmetic changes or just for the additional convenience of extra space in the item vault.

In Tribes the use of real money is purely so that you don't have to spend excessive amounts of time playing just to unlock everything. For example to unlock a new class you can either play for several hours, or simply hand over a couple of dollars. For $50 you can unlock and buy practically everything in the game, which is the equivalent of having just bought a new game. However, for me at least, part of the fun associated with the game is the levelling up process. As my experience and skill with a character increases so too will the equipment and items that character has, this could just be because I enjoy RPG's and other people who play more FPS style games would be more frustrated and bothered by not having access to all the equipment, then again CoD also uses a level system.

I suspect that the market for free to play is getting over saturated. The business model of get people into the game, take a few dollars off them as they try it out and then not care if they leave only works when people have enough time to try out all the different games. I think of this as similar to Facebook games where there are now so many of them that I just can not be bothered trying to work out which are worth while any more and have stopped even trying new ones.

The Failings of Technology

I'm currently trying to learn French. To facilitate this I started by going to the Apple App store and downloaded about half a dozen different trial versions of the various learn French apps. Unfortunately, none of them really stood out as being anything special, that's not to say they were all the same, just that none of them made me want to part with any real money.

Next I downloaded a couple of audio guides, but I found it was far to easy to zone off while listening, and also it was very hard to hear the correct pronunciation while travelling on the underground. So in desperation I decided to do things 'old school' and went to my local library.

Now, while travelling I read through Living French, an old text book from the 50's, and read about the adventures of the Dubois family. A couple of days ago I noticed that most people who were reading around me were doing so with a Kindle and it dawned on me that a Kindle would be terrible for reading this book. The reason being that I am constantly flicking back and forth looking up words and declensions, something the Kindle isn't suited for.

I find it slightly ironic that with all my love of technology and gadgets, the best way I've found to learn French on my own is an old, yellowed book from 1957.

How I Made Skyrim Fun!

Over the years I've played a lot of RPG's. I've player every numbered game in the Elder Scrolls series, except for Arena, but strangely when I first started to play Skyrim I found that I wasn't enjoying it.

The first game in the series I played was Morrowind. I decided that I wanted to play a character that was a master of various combat styles and so picked a Redguard and chose various weapons and heavy armour as my key attributes. After playing for a while I found that having a high level in multiple weapons wasn't worthwhile and was also constantly frustrated by my inability to open locks, cast spells, or sneak. So I rerolled, still using a Redguard as a base, but this time I spread my skills around. I was still primarily a fighter but had lockpick and destruction as key skills to give me some diversity.

I next played Daggerfall. Daggerfall has a very detailed character creation system, letting you choose advantages and disadvantages, so I min-maxed like crazy. My character couldn't use any weapons less than steel in quality but had much higher stats as a result. This made the first few hours quite difficult but in the long run made the game much easier.

In Oblivion I wanted to try out some of the less usual star signs and my first character was a high-elf mage, who regained MP by absorbing the spells cast at them. Unfortunately I kept having to fight people armed with swords and arrows, so my magic meter was never full. Feeling dissatisfied I rerolled as an Argonian who was good at everything. I had a high skill in sneak, lockpick, archer, swords, alchemy and speech. I was also reasonable with some of the magic schools. This made the game easy enough to play through, but the character felt like a generic Jack of all trades.

When I came to Skyrim I started with a Khajiit, and began leveing up the same skills I had used in Oblivion. Once again they prooved useful and I was making good progress, but I found myself getting bored. The character just seemed so generic and lacked flavour and depth. I then found that I just stopped playing the game altogether. This was a strange situation, I had a game from a series I enjoy and in a genre I enjoy, but I wasn't enjoying it. I decided to try the game again, but this time I was going to be a character, not just someone moving through the plot while being good at everything. So I made a Dunmer mage, I realise that in Skyrim you don't actually pick a class but rather equip class stones as you move through the game, but I resolved to only use magic in combat, unless I ran out of MP at which point I could draw a weapon. I also only equipped mage robes on my torso and light armour elsewhere.

I now have 21 hours play time clocked in and am greatly enjoying myself. Because I want to be this character, rather than just do everything in the game, I have refused to progress the Brave Companion's quest line as I don't want to become a werewolf. In some ways I think it is a shame that Skyrim took such a relaxed approach to character creation, although it's better than letting players 'cheat the rules' as they could in Daggerfall.

The Scary Door

Back during GAME's firesale I picked up a copy of Cursed Mountain for £1.98 and about a week ago I finally got around to putting it into my Wii. I went in with very low expectations as the game had received 'mixed or average reviews', with most positive comments relating to the game's setting and intent, with heavy criticism of the controls.

I must say that the game starts very strongly, your character's brother went missing on Chomolonzo (the titular mountain) and you're looking for him. You arrive at the village of Lhando to find that it is deserted, all the food spoiled, and there is a briefly glimpsed strange ghostly entity running about. As you move through the city you collect notes and diary entries which give you hints about what may have happened, but nothing definitive.

It is during this early exploration of the city that you discover the first 'problem' with the controls, you can move at two speeds, slow walk or slow jog which just feels wrong when most other games give you the ability to quickly dash about. However, I like the forced slower pace because it means you can't just run past any game areas that are potentially dangerous (as you walk through the city the camera will often shift to an oblique angle and the colour drain from the screen making you convinced that something bad is about to happen) and secondly it seems more realistic, you are after all high in the Himalayas so the air is quite thin.

Eventually you meet a strange monk who teaches you to open the third eye, which enables you to see runes throughout the city and interact with them using a magic ice axe (it's wrapped in various holy ribbons). Next you finally get to come face to face with one of the ghosts, the first time you simply flail to fight them off, the second time you hack at them with the axe. Then your axe gains the ability to fire energy bursts and the game stops being scary.

The ability to pew pew laser the ghosts, and also get a free heal in the process, hurts the atmosphere of the game. What makes it worse is that it instructs you how to do this in an on screen tutorial after which there is a cut scene that tries to retroactively say that it was a strange and daunting experience. Up until now your character's various outbursts of "what's going on?" have matched your own confusion, but this time I knew exactly what I was doing, I was using this axe shaped gun to defeat a baddie.

This highlighted for me that what makes horror game scary is the unknown and feeling of potential risk. Giving me an energy blaster so early on ruined this. Making me flail at the first ghost before getting up the courage to actually take a swing at the second was the correct way to do things. The game had previously stated that the way to regain health was to burn an incense stick at a shrine, so the idea getting in close to battle a ghost felt risky. Letting me fight from a distance removed this feeling of risk, making matters even worse was that when using this distance fighting method you can perform a finishing seal which will restore part of your health.

It is a shame because if they had made trying to run from the ghosts a legitimate strategy, at least at the start, then it would have created an interesting dynamic, especially considering how slowly you jog.

Thanks for Letting Me Win

A while ago I wrote about needing to have a plan for victory. How, by identifying a way to salvage a bad situation you can win against the odds. Quite often these plan involve having your opponent make a wrong choice.

When presented with a decision, your opponent will always try and take the route that should be best for them. However, people make mistakes and quite often they don't have all the information needed to make the correct decision. Last week I was playing Magic Online and was up against a much better deck. I knew how I could still win but first I needed to draw the correct card and then I needed my opponent to block in a specific way. There was a video but the quality got severely reduced when I uploaded it so I'll have to redo it. But trust me it illustrates how by giving your opponent the opportunity to make a wrong decision you can come out on top.

Going for Speed

Yesterday a new world record for speedrunning The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was set at 22 minutes 43 seconds. This involves using a glitch in the game and a video of the play through can be seen here.

This got me thinking about speed running, playing a game with the intention of reaching the end a quickly as possible. Speedrunning is generally considered to have been popularised by Metroid as this game had five different endings which were determined by the length of time it took to defeat Mother Brain. The 'best' ending is achieved by completing the game in less than an hour and not only reveals that Samus is a woman but you get to see her in a purple bikini.

There are different types of speedruns with the easiest to conduct being the tool assisted speedrun. These use emulators in ease some of the challenges associated with a legitimate play through of the game by enabling the use of save states and also the option of slowing down or speeding up the game's frame rate. Twin Galaxies keep a record of what they consider to be the legitimate records for games on their website and looking there we can see that the record for Super Mario Bros. is 5 minutes 8 seconds and for Metroid is 17 minutes 22 seconds. Generally the rules associated with these records do not permit the player to exploit glitches or use cheats and as such the fastest listed Ocarina of Time completion time is just over 5 hours.

I find it interesting to note that after helping to create the sport of speedrunning the Metroid series revised their ending system to instead rely on what percentage of items were collected during the game.

Power Creep?

It is currently the first week of spoilers for the new Magic: the Gathering expansion, Avacyn Restored. Most of the cards spoiled so far are big flashy rares and mythic rares. And like always seems to happen when a new set is being revealed many players start to accuse the new set of being broken, over-powered and going to ruin the game. The truth is Wizards have been making this game since 1993, and while they do make the occasional mistake, they're not about to suddenly go crazy and destroy the game. The reason so many people then proceed to call foul is because they are not properly evaluating the cards. Take for example this fine gentleman, who has inspired some players to threaten to 'quit the game'.

At first glance a 4/3 for only one red mana seems insane, until you read the text box which says that your opponent can simply take four damage and your monster goes bye-bye. But wait isn't four damage to target player for only one red mana also an amazing deal? Well yes, before this the best you could get for one red was three damage. So if it's power and toughness are under costed, and it's direct damage alternative is also under costed doesn't that make this card broken? The answer is no, for one very simple reason, choice. By giving your opponent the choice of which happens the result will always be the worst one for you. For example if played early in the game when your opponent still has 20 life they can easily afford to take four, latter in the game the other creatures are going to be just a big if not bigger than this guy and as such your opponent will quite happily let him hang around, also because he doesn't have haste your opponent has an entire turn to find a way to remove him from the game.

The next car I want to discuss was revealed today.

Lots of people have looked at this card and proceeded to give a list of all the really good enchantments that could be used to win a game with her. In reality I don't think she's going to see much if any competitive play for two reasons. Firstly her mana cost is too high (I don't mean that a 5/5 flying vigilance for only six mana is over costed, just that there are better things to spend six mana on) and secondly you need to have the aura cards already in you hand or graveyard to get the extra value from her. The aura based decks that have done well in the past have either involved large amounts of card draw, or had a way to search up the desired card.

I remember Wizards R&D were once asked what the converted mana cost of a card which simply read "you win the game" would be. The answer they gave was about nine and it would be a blue card, although it would never be printed because it's not fun. The card would have been balanced because so many competitive decks win before ever reaching nine mana and if your concern is that players might create a combo deck to win quickly, that style of deck already exists with Dragon Storm, which by the way costs nine mana.

The Trouble With Friends

In a competitive two player game your objective is simple, win! As such, quite often your choices are easy to make, you simply pursue the path that should give the best return. However, as soon as the number of players increases your choices can become less clear. Casual alliances and the potential for treason can encourage you to make 'sub-optimal' plays in order to avoid attracting too much attention.

In the game Junta each player is given a role in the corrupt administration. Each position has different abilities and command of certain military units. At the start of each turn the President will distribute the budget as face down bank notes (face down so as to hide the denomination), each player then gets to vote to pass or reject the budget. While there are ways to put a budget through at gunpoint most presidents decide to be as fair as possible in order to try and stave off a coup d'etat.

Junta is designed around social interactions and as such the need to compromise is obvious, but this same requirement will often show up in games where it was never intended. Playing multiplayer Magic: the Gathering is often an exercise in not looking too threatening for fear of having every other player try to eliminate you. It has gotten to the point where players have started to tap all their lands at the end of their turn to show that they have nothing else to do and don't represent a threat during an opponents turn. I find this to be irritating and refuse to do it, because it means that if I later don't tap out I'm advertising a card I want to play at instant speed. The annoying part is that often I get attacked early on simply because I have untapped lands.

Cooperative games, such as Arkham Horror or Pandemic, can suffer from a different problem. Since everyone is working together they will often discuss strategy and tactics, which is fine until a more experienced player starts effectively taking everyone else's moves for them. The thing to remember is that, generally speaking, multiplayer games are designed to be a social affair with everyone having fun, not an exercise in ruthlessly winning, and should be played in such a way so as to maximise enjoyment.

Going the Distance

Last week I finished Super Scribblenauts. Actually, I didn't just finish it I 100% finished it. So not only did I complete all the levels on both hard and difficult mode I also completed all 50 of the special achievements. This made me think about what it is that drives people to fully complete a game. As a general rule I don't 100% games, actually I have plenty of games (some of which I consider to be great) that I haven't even finished. I did however collect all 242 stars in Super Mario Galaxy, and fully complete New Super Mario Bros Wii.

I think that in order for a game to encourage me to keep playing after the end credits it needs to first be a good game and second have the challenges not too difficult to complete. For example I really enjoy and play a lot of RPG games, but I have never fully 100% finished one because the amount of additional effort and time required to find every last secret is just too great. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a brilliant game, but in order to unlock all of the features and the final ending you need to beat the game three times, with there being only a minimal change in each play through, which for me was just not worth it.

In Super Scribblenauts I enjoyed the game enough that I wanted to complete all the levels on both easy and hard mode. Doing this meant that I had already collected around 80% of the achievements anyway, which meant that it didn't seem too hard to collect the rest. In a similar way I was always intending to collect the first 120 stars in Super Mario Galaxy and after doing so I found that I wanted to keep playing, so I went on to collect the rest. Conversely, in Super Mario Sunshine I only collected the minimum number of stars required to complete the game.

I think that having a large number of achievements that players realistically see a way to gaining is an easy way to give a game an addictive element. I've noticed that more and more casual games are using this type of model, although they will usually let you jump ahead by paying a small fee. I will finish of by mentioning that Battlefield 3, has also recently implemented a pay to unlock system, so for an extra $39.99 you can get every item in the game with no effort required.

Winning the Wrong Way

About a week ago a new deck called Monogreen Tron started making waves in the 'Modern' format of Magic: The Gathering. What is interesting about this deck is that at first glance it looks to be playing the wrong number of lands. Earlier decks based around the Tron strategy (playing the Urza's lands to generate large amounts of mana) had run around 25 lands, while this deck was only playing 18. The deck works because it has 12 cards that can find a land, 8 cards that can draw a new card for only one mana, and 4 cards that can generate mana. In reality it only has 10 cards with which it can actually win the game and the rest of the deck is devoted to getting the correct lands in play.

This made me thing back to when I first started playing. I had quite a bit of success early on playing 'Limited' format decks with the 'wrong number of lands'. I built my decks with 16 creatures, 16 lands, and 8 other spells. It wasn't until later that I learnt that 17-18 lands is considered the correct number because having the extra land or two helps to make the deck more consistent. By running fewer lands your deck is more likely to have mana problems, but in the event that it doesn't you have one more threat that your opponent so actually have a more powerful deck. Actually some players suggest that if you have an unfavourable match up (the concept of the metagame was described in an earlier post) then you should remove a land to increase the threat density of your deck, and vice versa.

Another misconception that some early players have is that it's okay to keep a hand with 6 or 7 lands in it. Their logic being that the chance of drawing another is low so they'll be fine. In reality you need to consider what actually happens if you do draw another land? The short of it is your opponent gets a free turn. Also you have no control over the order that your non-land cards arrive in, which can often mean that you do nothing besides play lands for the first four turns even though you are drawing non-land cards. This results in your opponent developing their board position and applying pressure while you do nothing.

In truth, the correct answer to how many lands you should play and what hands you should mulligan come down to what's in your deck. A deck that doesn't need large amounts of mana can easily cope with fewer lands. However, when building a deck there is no point in cutting a land to make room for a low impact card, every card you play needs to help you win in some way. Finally there is a deck called 38 Lands which will quite happily keep a six land hand, just as long as they are the right six lands.

The Science Says No

The most recent episode of the show Game Theory discussed the idea that Captain Shepard is a zombie in Mass Effect 2, because he died and was then brought back to life. However, the show then goes on to suggest that this wouldn't have been possible because exposure to the hard vacuum of space would have caused his brain to be destroyed by the eventual boiling of his internal bodily fluids. Normally I would just say it's just a game, it doesn't need to make scientific sense but the gauntlet has been thrown, so here is my rebuttal.

The first thing we need to consider is what happens when a person is exposed to a vacuum? Total Recall would have us believe that they will begin to swell and their eyes will pop out on stalks, but does Hollywood have it right? There are two commonly referenced examples of a human being exposed to extremely low pressures, the first is a NASA test pilot who was exposed to a vacuum of less than one psi (about 7% of normal atmospheric pressure), the test pilot lost conciousness after about 14 seconds. However, pressure was restored and the test pilot regained conciousness at around 50% normal atmospheric pressure and suffered no permanent injury, but did report feeling the saliva on their tongue boil.

The other well known example is Joseph Kittinger's high altitude jump from 31,300 meters. During his assent the pressurization around his right hand failed exposing it to a near vacuum of around 1% normal atmospheric pressure. His hand swelled up to about twice its normal size and became very painful. However, as he fell back towards Earth, his hand returned to its normal size and function. It is important to note that the blood inside his hand did not boil even through at 0.01 atm 37 C is above it's boiling point. The reason being that the skin helps to maintain our internal body pressure so the blood was never exposed to such a low pressure, undoubtedly any sweat on the surface of his hand would have quickly evaporated, much like the saliva on the test pilot's tongue.

So we see that exposure to a vacuum doesn't result in people exploding, or having their internal body fluids instantly start to boil. One possible cause of serious injury would be the lungs rupturing, but this would only occur if you tried to hold your breath. Another commonly held idea about being exposed to space is that is will instantly freeze you. Yes space is cold, but due to the vacuum the two main ways for you to lose body heat are through evaporative cooling, the sweat boiling off your skin will lower your temperature, and by radiation of heat energy, which is a slow process.

My final reason why the ideas expressed in the video are wrong is that if we are to apply hard science to the cut scene where Shepard dies then he is never exposed to a vacuum. How can we tell thing? Well firstly we can hear the sound of the Normandy exploding behind him and sound cannot travel in a vacuum, and secondly we can hear Shepard gasping for air, which is the sound made be air being desperately sucked into his lungs, it there is no air then there is nothing to inflate the lungs so the gasping sound can not be produced (also the whole sound doesn't travel in a vacuum thing again).

In general I don't think it's a good idea to apply science to video games, after all almost every space combat game has the ships handle as though they were fighter planes in an atmosphere (Wing Commander's afterburner system is a major example of this), and all you end up doing is potentially reducing your enjoyment of the game and getting drawn into pointless internet arguments.

Some Grand Lessons

The game map

Several years ago I helped to co-write a Grand Strategy game (imagine a 30-40 player game of Risk). We had written a couple of LARPs in the past and played in several Grand Strategies so we thought it would be quite easy to do this. How wrong we were.

Best Laid Plans
We decided to do a space exploration, combat, and mining game, and right from the start we had several ideas for how to fix problems we had seen in earlier games. The first was speeding up game play, it was not uncommon for some games to end with only three complete game turns being finished because combat and issuing orders took too long. To this end we computerised the combat and game map, which also meant that we could do more 'realistic' stats on the game units with descriptions rather than hard numbers, of course the computer software had numbers for the units but we didn't see why the players had to know these details.

Other features we included were zones, so a player could be on Earth with access to the stock exchange, markets, and government; in space, where they could see the game map, plan in private and issue orders to their fleet; or in transit between the two where they could interact with the somewhat corrupt government intelligence agents. So what went wrong?

Player Like Numbers
Because we had not given numerical stats and a detailed description of how the space combat was worked out*, players were unwilling to commit to a fight and as a result there were no battles the entire game. This was also due to a lack of incentives as players could only destroy other teams mining instillations and couldn't capture them, which made them think that they would be spending resources on damaging another players production capability which they could instead spend on improving their own resource production. The lack of information relating to combat only furthered this problem as players weren't sure what percentage of their fleet would survive the attack, the reality was that more often than not only a few ships on each side would be destroyed and the losing side would retreat before the casualties got too high.

Players Will Exploit Any Loop Hole
As I mentioned there was a stock exchange on earth. This stock exchange had a random element and a player driven element and was designed so that the random element should dominate. The problems started when one team decided to sink all their game cash into just one resource, and noticed that its price rose slightly, they then sold it back and noticed the price dipped slightly. So they went and found the team with the second largest amount of money and they both invested in the single resource, which caused its price to spike, they then sold and the price plummeted, so they then spent the rest of the game playing the stock market. It turns out that their was a level at which the player driven element would dominate, which hadn't shown up during play testing because no one had invested so heavily in just a single resource.

Friend Computer is not Your Friend
The first thing that happened on the night was the discovery that the wall separating the Earth zone and the Space zone was made of some magic material which resulted in the Wi-Fi not working so the head GM who was located on Earth couldn't update the map, which was located in Space. So some furniture was rearranged, ethernet cables were fetched, and the problem was resolved. The next problem came right at the very end, I previously said that there was no combat which isn't entirely true, on the very last turn the Earth fleet engaged a player fleet and as a result the software crashed. During play testing we had run numerous battle simulations, tweaked numbers so that the results agreed with what we expected and we had even run a small combat only version of the game, all without incident. But, on the night the one and only combat crashed, and crashed hard. The head GM (who also happened to have written the code) had to manually work out what orders had and had not been processed before being able to give the final end game positions, as the combat result wouldn't affect the final standing it was ignored.

Players Find a Way to Have Fun
You might think that with all these problems the players would be bored and disappointed, but they still told us that they had had a good time. One team had found fun in a bottle of Vodka (this tends to happen no matter how engaging and well written the game is, as it is run as a social event) while another team had fun by being as devious as possible. The corrupt intelligence agents would sell you information relating to what other teams were up to, show you their orders, or even sell you ships at sub-market prices. One team realised that if they bought information from the agents then there was nothing stopping them from selling this on, better yet why even bother actually buying the information in the first place, the great thing about secrets is that they are secret so no one knows if they are true or not. It was quite a shock when a player came up to me with an envelope of game currency and asked for a full report on Project Pegasus (no such project existed), still I took the cash and told them that I would go and prepare the report. After a quick GM meeting we gave them a report and suddenly a player invented rumour was official, much to the amusement of the team that had started it.

Conclusion
From being involved with this game I learnt a lot about how players think and what they want in a game, and despite the technology issues on the night I still like the idea of automating the game map, and have since done so for a LARP without incident. I just think that in future I will be sure to include numbers for unit stats and a description of how combat works, along with some incentives for fighting.

*Combat was worked worked out with the capital ships launching their fighter and bombers. The fighters would attack the bombers and enemy fighters, then any undamaged bombers would attack the capital ships. Finally the capital ships would fire on each other. Then a moral check was taken, if this was passed another round of combat occurred, otherwise one of the two sides would retreat.

Something Old, Nothing New?

New console, same plumber. 

I recently heard someone saying that their problem with the Wii is that with the exception of the Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Music, and Wii Fit series there hasn't been any new first party IP released. They pointed out that the Gamecube gave us Pikmin, Animal Crossing (although Japan had a N64 release), and Luigi's Mansion. I have three major problems with this objection.

The first is 'if it ain't broke don't fix it!' One of the main reason's people buy a Nintendo console is to play the latest Mario or Zelda game. More often than not third party companies are heard to complain about how hard it is to get their product noticed on a Nintendo system.

Secondly, the Wii implemented a new control scheme, so everything that was old was new again! They were even able to rerelease half a dozen Gamecube games under the New Play Control heading. Skyward Sword played like no other Zelda game before it, sure it used similar ideas and plot points but that's what you expect, after all I expect that the next Call of Duty game will have players shooting people.

My final point is that such a mentality is incredibly harsh and disrespectful to the many great second and third party new IP exclusives. For example Endless Ocean, Xenoblade Chronicles, Zack & Wiki, Little King's Story, Lost Winds, Boom Blox, Red Steel 2, No More Heroes (although this has now gone multi-platform), The Last Story, Mad World, and The Conduit.

So sure the Wii might not have given birth to the next great Nintendo gaming franchise but it has managed to inject a new spin on a lot of the classics, while also providing a platform for some fantastic new titles, many of which were criminally over looked (Zack and Wiki)!

Why make a fantastic new IP when people will just walk past it?

Don't Believe Everything You Read

WARNING: THIS POST HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GAMES!

During the last week I have had two friends share articles on Facebook because they thought they were so interesting that others needed to read them. The first related to a cardiac surgeon who was challenging the current explanation of heart disease, and the second was the 'Hand of Hope' picture complete with the original viral email text from around 1999.

In the first article a 'world renown heart surgeon' of 25 years experience was claiming that the current view that cholesterol causes heart disease is wrong, and actually it is inflammation. Further more, he claimed that the dietary advice to stop eating naturally fatty foods and start eating low-fat processed alternatives was causing the inflammation. What evidence did he give? Well he claimed that in every one of the 5000 people he has operated on over the last 25 years has had inflamed arteries. He also pointed out that more people in the US will die of heart disease this year than in any previous year. Finally it was stated that he was so passionate about replacing these misconceptions with fact that he 'recently left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease.'

I was immediately suspicious for three main reasons. The first was that he stated that his theory was 100% correct, it is medical fact! Scientist don't like to come out and make such bold statements, especially not when an idea is still new, consider the announcement from CERN that they have seen an intensity peak at about the correct mass for a Higgs boson, but will need to continue testing for at least a year to be able to make a definite claim that something is there. The second problem I had was that his evidence was anecdotal, based entirely off his own observations. Personal observations are fine for forming a hypothesis but they are not sufficient to make a conclusion from, for that he would need to do an epidemiological study and present it for peer review. The final problem is that the one non-anecdotal statistic (more heart disease in the US today) is meaningless because it doesn't take into account the increase in population size nor the increase in the obesity rate.

So having these concerns I decided to dig a little deeper, thanks Google! And it turns out that in 2008 this doctor had his medical license revoked following several years of reprimands, probationary periods, and cautions due to failure to maintain proper notes, surgical errors, and mismanagement of several patients; so the statement about him choosing to stop surgery was a lie. Also he has not published a peer reviewed article or made a presentation to the medical community since 2003, choosing instead to publish books designed for sale direct to the general public. This doesn't mean that he is wrong, but it does mean that he is not credible and I would strongly suggest against making life decisions based on his advice.

The second article was a picture of a foetus 'holding the finger' of a surgeon. The text claimed that the child 'thrust it's hand out of the uterus and squeezed the finger of the surgeon as if thanking him for the gift of life.' Unfortunately the doctor has officially stated that the child was anesthetized and couldn't move and that the picture is of 'me pulling his hand out of the uterus.' So while the picture is still very cool it is not the 'miracle' some claim it to be.

In both cases these articles gain popularity because they tell a certain group of people what they want to hear. The first article, amongst other things, says to eat natural unrefined foods (not actually a bad suggestion), and most of its supporters are people who oppose GM crops and were already adopting this style of diet. While the second article resonated with pro-life groups who took it to show that the child wanted to live. Personally I like the photo in second article because it shows how clever we are and what we are able to achieve with modern medicine.

So Tasty

When you consider how many games use the same core mechanics and rules the importance of using flavour to differentiate them becomes apparent. Game flavour can also provide a justification for why things work the way they do. One of my favourite pieces of game flavour is the Orks in Warhammer 40,000.

The original Warhammer Orcs were a thick brutish race; so how do you justify them being in space, travelling between worlds, and being a serious threat to the highly advanced super human Space Marines? First their existence is explained by them having been genetically engineered by the Old Ones, a now extinct alien race, as guards. Secondly, the way that these brutes get by is justified by giving them a collective psychic field, which means that anything the Orks believe in will work as long as their are enough of them around. For example if an Ork paints his vehicle red is will go faster because that is what they believe, also yellow missiles make larger explosions for the same reason. However, if a human were to pick up an Ork shoota it wouldn't fire as it is actually just a piece of junk.

When playing the game Orks still follow the same rules as everyone else and it is possible to use them as an army without even knowing about their origins, beliefs, and diet (fungi). The background flavour just helps to flesh them out and answer any smart alec who wants to try and poke holes in the idea of Space Orks.

Sucks to be GAME

The UK retailer GAME and Gamestation continue to do poorly. First they didn't stock The Last Story, then they didn't stock any Ubisoft launch titles for the Vita, then came the announcement that they wouldn't be stocking Mario Party 9, and finally they announced that they were not going to stock Mass Effect 3. But that's all right because they still have their used game sales to keep them going...

Yesterday I got wind of a 'firesale', GAME and Gamestation have dropped the price on many of their pre-owned games in an effort to generate some cash. So this morning I went to my local GAME store and walked away with six pre-owned games for less than £20. The games and their prices are:
Super Scribblenauts £4.99
Tomb Raider Anniversary £4.98
Cursed Mountain £1.98
Conduit 2 £4.98
Red Steel £0.98
Trauma Center New Blood £1.98
Sure, I still overpaid for Red Steel and the same could probably be said for Tomb Raider Anniversary and Conduit 2 but at these prices I didn't really care. Cursed Mountain is supposed to be a good idea that was poorly executed, so for less than two pounds I thought it was worth checking out what redeeming qualities it might have.

The sad truth is that it looks as though GAME will soon go bust, as they aren't getting in new titles and they are clearing out the old titles I would guess that they are minimising the number of assets the receivers have to deal with. The question is why can they not stay in business? Video games are hugely popular and the industry continued to grow during the recession. I feel the problem is that the stores lack any sense of community, so people who read up on games online have no need to visit the physical store because they can also order the game online, often for less. The only reason to visit GAME is if you are buying for someone else and would like advice, or you are trading in your old games for new ones, something that online stores also now cater to.

While it will be sad to see these stores closed I just hope that either whoever buys them out accepts their gift cards or another retailer, such as HMV, makes a deal which enables them to still be redeemed.

Fighting in the Rain

Thanks to the efforts of Project Rainfall both Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story have been released in Europe and have USA release dates. As both of these titles are in the same genre it is interesting to compare them, especially as the JRPG is generally considered to be becoming something of a niche market.

Critical Response
Metacritic gives Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story meta scores of 92 and 82 respectively. So while it might appear that we can make this a very short article and crown Xenoblade Chronicles the winner, it needs to be considered that Metacritic only sources western reviews and Famitsu (the Japanese gaming bible) gave Xenoblade Chronicles a 36/40 and The Last Story a 38/40, also sales for these two games in Japan and during their first week in Europe have been very close with The Last Story selling slightly more. I believe that one of the reasons for this difference of opinion between the East and West is due to the way the story is structured, in Japan linear story book style games are much better received than in the West, for example 428: Fusa Sareta Shiibuya de an interactive novel involving scrolling text, visual stills, and short video sequences was given a perfect 40 by Famitsu.
Winner: Draw

Sound
For me this was the easiest category to decide. When I turned on The Last Story I literally just sat there looking at the main title and listening to the opening theme. When eventually I did get into the game I was rewarded by voice acting that didn't make me want to stab pencils into my ears. Xenoblade Chronicles also has good sound, it just didn't grab me in the same way. One thing it does have in it's favour is the option to turn on the original Japanese voice acting, which I did after only an hour of play as the English voice actors are a tad weak, and also they repeat the same catch phrases over and over in combat, which quickly started to grate.
Winner: The Last Story


Graphics
Both of these games look good and push the Wii to its limits. Xenoblade Chronicles uses low resolution textures to enable the game to have a massive draw distance and large area maps. As you make changes to your characters equipment these changes are reflected in game, this means that the cut scenes have to be rendered in-game and it is during these cut scenes that the low resolution textures are most obvious.
The Last Story on the other hand, looks best at a set distance from the camera, and the game knows it. In order to optimise it's performance and have good looking character models the game blurs out any object which is too close or too far from the camera. Other graphical 'cheats' include giving unimportant NPC's low resolution textures and only giving limited camera control, no zooming in or out. Once again changes made to character equipment are displayed in game and players are able to customise the colour and appearance of their gear. The game's cut scenes use a mixture of pre-rendered and in-game rendered graphics, however, the pre-rendered scenes are only slightly higher quality than the in-game graphics which prevents the transition between the two from being too jarring.
Winner: The Last Story, this was close and comes down to a personal preference between having certain game elements looking better than others or wanting an equitable distribution of graphical power.

Dagran (left) has a better quality character model than Dunban (right),
however you can see how the background is blurred in order to achieve this.

Story
So as to not spoil anything I will simply say that both games involve a young man gaining mystical powers and setting out to save the world. But while both games have a similar premise the way the story is presented is quite different. Xenoblade Chronicles gives you free reign to advance the plot at your own pace, with plenty of side missions to distract you along the way, while The Last Story is a much more linear, directed affair. I prefer the story in Xenoblade Chronicles because it feels more original. In The Last Story, when a red haired villain, claiming to have powers similar to yours, appears and tries to kidnap the female protagonist I couldn't help but be reminded of Zelda.
Winner: Xenoblade Chronicles

Gameplay
Both games use an auto attack feature with additional special attacks that can be activated. In Xenoblade Chronicles these special attacks are activated by selecting them from a gamebar, while in the The Last Story they involve context sensitive button presses. Unfortunately, using the same button for all the special moves can result in the wrong action being performed, in particular I found the wall running vertical slash to be particularly difficult to perform in a timely fashion. Both games let you charge a meter to perform combined party attacks, and I particularly enjoy the way that physical and magical attacks interact in The Last Story.
Winner: Xenoblade Chronicles

Overall
This is very close as both games are excellent, but in the end I would say that I prefer Xenoblade Chronicles as it does more to revitalise the JRPG genre. The open nature of the game world and the way that the fast travel system enables quick backtracking to complete additional side-quests provided a more detailed and engaging game world. In addition, the way that completing side quests can effect the way that NPC's interact with each other makes it feel like you are making a difference even when not actively following the main plot line.

Time for a Change?

Last night I watched Raymond Keene, the second British Chess player to be awarded the title of Grandmaster, play twenty games of chess at once. In each game he was the white player, which as I mentioned previously should give him a very slight advantage. Unfortunately I missed the start of his games so I don't know what his initial move was, but I do know what mine would have been. The King's pawn would have moved forward two squares to e4. I begin almost all my games of chess with this move, the reason for this is simple, when I was taught how to play I was told that this is a good strong starting move. From my personal experience this seems to be true, but I have never actually sat down and given it any due thought, rather I have just accepted the validity of this statement and gone from there.

This make me wonder what would I do if the layout of the board was different, say for example the knights and bishops were swapped over, moving the piece forward does nothing to the possible move set of the knight so would this still be the best move? Maybe it's time we played chess differently, how about instead of placing the pieces in the standard positions we randomise the placement of the non-pawn pieces? Not only would this force us to think about our pieces and what kind of game could develop but it would also remove the symmetry associated with the standard layout. It would now be possible for a player to have both bishops on the same coloured squares and if their opponent notices then they could exploit this.

Part of what appeals to me about trying this type of game is that it wouldn't be fair and even, players would be forced to make the best of a bad situation, and try their best to capitalise on any advantage they see. It would add the excitement of slowly clawing back a game that you looked destined to lose right from the start. I enjoy these kinds of challenges, which is part of the reason I don't just lose interest and give up when a game isn't going my way. I was playing a game of Carcassonne against opponents who have a poor track record against me, when they decided that they should all gang up against me. So every time the option to remove a meeple from the board arose mine was removed. Rather than get annoyed I found it hilarious good fun as I was made to work for every point and took a minor victory in still being able to get over 50 points, although this was still last place by a long way.

I guess my point is that the fun of a game comes not from the winning or losing but rather the path taken to get there. Which is why I have no problems playing unfair but intellectually stimulating games.

Fanboy Rant

I admit it, I'm a Nintendo fanboy. When I was young my gaming time was split between an Amiga 500 and a Famicom (Japanese NES), so Mario and friends have been part of my gaming experience right from the start. Still I would like to think that I can remain somewhat objective and criticise when appropriate. At E3 last year Nintendo unveiled the Wii U, which despite having a stupid name has me excited and looking forward to the final release later this year. However, this enthusiasm isn't shared by all, Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush securities who specialises in the video game industry, recently stated on NeoGAF that the potential market for the Wii U is going to be about half that of the Wii and that it should have been released back in 2009 as the Wii HD.

Pachter is not alone in his lack of excitement for the Wii U, many web analysts have come down against the console, seeing it as an HD remake of the Wii with a funny controller to try and trick you into thinking different. Personally I disagree, Nintendo has time and again released new systems with new controllers and control schemes that have resulted in new innovations of gameplay. The d-pad, now a gaming standard, was popularised by Nintendo, as was the analog stick, diamond button layout, touch screen gaming, and motion controls. Since the announcement of the Wii U rumours have surfaced that the next XBox is also going to feature a touch screen interface, which suggests that once again Nintendo is setting the new industry standard.

I think the problem people have is that they consider the Wii U to not be 'next generation', because the Wii didn't have the same graphical capabilities as the other consoles they just assume that this console will only be equal in power to the XBox 360 and PS3. Even if this were the case, which I doubt it will be, graphics are not what make a game good! For me what matters most is the gameplay. If a game controls well and you can tell what you are doing then that's 90% of the battle. And the Wii U's touch screen provides developers with another option when designing controls. I'm sure a large number of the early titles will feel like they have to use the touch screen and suffer because of it but as the platform matures we will be treated with real innovation. It's important to remember that in addition to the touch screen the console still supports the Wii remote so developers can still design motion games.

The one thing I am concerned about is the Nintendo Network. The Wii has poor online gaming support and the Nintendo Network is supposed to fix this. However, Nintendo often do things their own way which makes me nervous, ideally I would like something similar to the Steam community, with cross game chat, achievements, leaderboards, and if privacy is a concern let players set the level of their connection as either invisible, friends only, or public.

At E3 this year we will get to see the final build of the Wii U, which might make this discussion premature but still I am excited about the Wii U!

Rule the Waves

Last night I played The Kaiser's Pirates for the first time. The game is set in WWI and involves each player having control of three German 'pirate' vessels and three merchant vessels. Each turn players use can cards to active their pirate vessels, to try and sink merchant vessels, or play cards representing the British navy to try and sink opposing pirate vessels. After a few turn you get the hang of how things work and the game is relatively simple, except the way that the rules and card text are written is often counter-intuitive and confusing. Also the colour palette used is quite pale and as such, although you can tell that your cards have different coloured backgrounds, you're not sure which is which.

An example of a poorly worded card is QQQ the text on which reads 'Automatically recognizes a Raider after it intercepts a Merchantman.' This seems simple enough, however, when I tried to play it I was informed that I couldn't because it wasn't my Merchantman being attacked and a Reaction Card can only be played in response to your ships being attacked. To make matter worse if you look in the rule book it says:
REACTION AND ASSIST CARDS: Some cards are “Reaction” cards, which are played in response to another player’s Action card, or are “Assist” cards, which are only played in combination with an Intercept!, Raider Mine attack, or submarine torpedo or mine attack. See section 3.3 for a summary explanation of all Action cards.
And if you go to section 3.3 it makes no mention of the only when you are attacked rule, but rather just has the card text for every card printed out. The relevant rule is 3.2.2 which states 'Reaction cards are played directly from the defending player’s hand in response to an Action card.'

This issue could easy be avoided by better wording on the cards. Changing QQQ to read 'Automatically recognizes a Raider after it intercepts a Merchantman under your control', although rules wise redundant, prevents confusion. There were several other cards that had similar issues, often caused by the choice of language used, such as 'immediately' being used to mean 'immediately after what is happening has finished'. This experience just reminded me of how common it is for game developers to write the rules and then shortly after publication having to write an FAQ, because the instructions were not unambiguous.

The 3rd of December 2011 edition of New Scientist has an article entitled 'Time to think like a computer'. This article discusses the way that people think and communicate to each other and makes the observation that if you want to communicate with people in a clear and obvious way then you should talk like a computer, that is use conditional logic. For example rather than writing a rule which says "player's may not have more than seven cards in hand" you should write something like "if a player with seven cards in hand is instructed to draw more cards then that player draws no card". While this is more  long winded it does explain how to cope with conflicting game instructions.

I think that the reasons most developers write rules in the more trimmed down manner is because they know the rules perfectly and they think that the rule book should be engaging and fun to read. In reality the rule book is usually only read by one of the players, who then explains it to the rest and then, with the exception of checking the occasional thing, is never read again. Personally I believe that the answer is to write each rule in the short hand way but with the long winded 'logical conditional' form immediately below it.

Looks Good for a Wii Game

It's become quite common for reviewers, when discussing Wii games, to make the comment 'the graphics are good for a Wii game.' And to be perfectly honest this statement and the sentiment behind it really annoys me. In my opinion it puts an undue emphasis on graphics and also belittles the games artistic direction.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword using a large colourful cell shaded art style not because the Wii can't handle a more realistic tone, after all The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess used a more realistic style, but rather because the motion based gameplay requires the player to be clearly shown what they need to attack and the direction they need to do it from. This is similar to the way that cell shading in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker enabled the use of a much larger draw distance, so that players could spot distant islands while sailing.

The PlayStation 1 and 2 era Final Fantasys received critical acclaim for their jaw dropping cut scenes, but these were all pre-rendered, hence their ability to look substantially better than the in game graphics. Nintendo generally doesn't pre-render their cut scenes, Miyamoto has said a key reason for this is that if you change something late in development then pre-rendered cut scenes need to be remade. Another consideration is customisation. In the Gamecube version of Resident Evil 4 the cut scenes were rendered in-game and as such if you unlocked and equiped a new costume your characters would be rendered wearing that costume during cut scenes. However the PlayStation 2, having a weaker graphics chip, couldn't render the cut scenes and they had to be pre-recorded which meant that your character was always shown wearing the standard costume during cut scenes.

Xenoblade Chronicles deliberately uses low resolution textures to enable the use of a massive draw distance and playing area, generally if you can see it you can walk to it. It also renders the cut scenes in-game which means that changes to your characters equipment are always accurately represented. I have come across people asking why wasn't this game released on other platforms, with better graphical capabilities, the short answer to which is that it is a second party Nintendo game. I would also like to ask the question back of why should it matter? The graphics clearly represent and communicate what is going on, and the game runs smoothly.

Ultimately I think that people have become too obsessed with having realistic graphics and have forgotten how important graphical direction is. Given the choice of high resolution textures, 'pop-up', and slow down vs low resolution textures, large draw distances, and a smooth frame rate I'm going to side with the latter. Maybe it's because I started gaming in the 8-bit era that I don't mind unrealistic graphics, but I honestly don't think people should be making their purchasing decisions purely on what looks prettiest.

The Confines of Infinite Design Space

It has now become the norm for board and card games to have expansions. Now the question is how do you leave space for an expansion in the original game design, and can you run out of design space? Living and collectable card games are the easiest to see the expansion mindset in as they are designed from the beginning to have many expansions, and often it is quite easy to see the direction such expansions might take. Board games on the other hand are not always so obvious as the base set is confined and balanced and the additional sets need to fit in with this, which is why they often introduce extra board sections as these enable new rules to exist in a relative vacuum away from the original game. However, I believe that the biggest constraint on any expansion is not having to fit in with the rules of the original, but rather is maintaining the flavour of the game.

To illustrate this I'm going to use Magic the Gathering as even after almost twenty years new rules, expansions, and card are still being produced. Most Magic players have a rough idea of what mana cost a card should have and what standard abilities belong in each colour, meaning that they have a pretty good idea of the basic magic design space. This is useful because as long as the new expansion is based on these ideas, with a few new rules thrown in, it will feel familiar to most players. What makes design interesting is having to fit a story to each expansion. If I were to make a green common card that cost 2 mana for a 2/2 with a basic ability as far as power level goes there would be no problem. However, if I called that card Unstoppable Swamp Monster it wouldn't make sense, because something like that should be bigger.

The above two cards in my opinion are fine as far as mana cost to card power, but wrong in terms of card flavour. The Segovian Leviathan has been 'fixed' by making Segovia a very small plane, and explaining that those whales are actually the size of goldfish, as for the cat I guess that it is the green glowing eyes that make it tougher than a normal human.

Another consideration is that your new abilities mustn't end up being silly. If we consider First Strike (This creature deals combat damage before creatures without first strike) we can immediately see space for a new rule called Last Strike (This creature deals combat damage after creatures without last strike). It could even fit as far as game flavour goes, with last strike being on a wall or a slow moving creature like a golem or corpse.

Once this ability is introduced another one immediately becomes obvious, Triple Strike (This creature deals first strike, regular and last strike combat damage). The ability to deal regular and last strike damage can also be introduced as can the ability to deal first and last strike combat damage. From this we see that with very little effort we have created up to four new abilities and without much more we can create another, Super Strike (This creature deals combat damage before creatures with First Strike) but why stop there why not have Super Duper Strike or Uber Strike? The answer is that all of these abilities are very similar and while Last Strike could fit flavour wise all the extra first to deal combat damage abilities are much more difficult to justify. However, a similar effect can be achieved without the need to design new abilities.

The above cards provide mechanics which are close to First and Last Strike without the need to introduce new keywords or rules.

What I hope I have illustrated is that the challenge with making a good expansion is not finding new rules and ways for people to play but rather in keeping the themes and flavour of the game intact. Designers also need to be wary that the story and source material don't cause the rules to bloat and become over complicated. The first edition of the Star Trek CCG suffered from this problem and by the end it was so complicated that only people who had been playing since the start could have any hope of understanding it.

Rage Against the Machine Part 2: Son of Rage

I've recently started playing Star Trek Online (STO) which might sound a little odd as only three weeks ago I was saying how as a general rule I dislike online multiplayer and MMO style games. But this game has two things going for it, the first being I'm a huge Star Trek fan and the second is that this is a very non-multiplayer MMO.

The main quest line of STO seems tailored for a single player, at least as far as I've gotten (I'm only in season 2), and my attempt at playing with a second player complicated the session as we were different levels and the auto scaling can only do so much to fix this. Things got worse when they had to go and the game didn't immediately drop the enemy levels back down.

I have played in some PvE and PvP arenas with mixed results. The PvE arena I played today, just kept on going, and quite a few players dropped early. There is also a balance issue in that a single player, seperated from the group, can not stay alive for very long and the enemies respawn behind the party, so if you die and get sent back to the original respawn point then you can't just run to reach the main group as the way is now lined with enemies and you can't kill them on your own.

One thing that I really like about STO is the free-to-play model they have adopted. Unlike Everquest II, which I could only bring myself to play for a week, where the free-to-play model involved giving you a devalued game experience and then telling you how much you were missing out on through regular pop-up windows a player in STO can do everything and obtain every item without ever spending a dollar. This is achieved through the implementation of four currency systems: energy points, the most basic currency and used in the exchange (auction house); dilithium, currency used with special vendors which is gained by doing daily quests; gold pressed latinum, again used with special vendors and is obtained by spending energy credits to play dabo; and finally C-points, these are the premium currency and are used to unlock extra features. What makes things work is that dilithium can be exchanged for C-points in the dilithium exchange with players able to obtain about 40 C-points worth each day (equivalent to $0.40). This means that players who are willing to put in the time and effort can get access to the same game as players who are wiling to simply pay-to-play.

Would I recommend STO? Well the answer is yes, but only if you are a Star Trek fan, the game isn't good enough to provide a satisfying play experience to a non-fan. If you are a fan and do want to play I recommend checking out the player authored quests as some of them are better than the actual main plot line.