Thoughts on E3 2011

For me, often times the thrill of the chase is more exciting and interesting than the end result when it comes to gaming. Don't get me wrong. I love the experience of playing a good game, but there's also a lot to be said for the process of finding and acquiring said game. 

As a result, each year the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) serves as a concentrated catalyst that gets the wheels in my brain turning over all sorts of upcoming toys; be it a new console, controller, service or game, there's always something to get excited about and that's part of what makes this an interesting hobby for me.

One of the really nice things about the nature of this blog as opposed to the sort of writing and podcasting I felt obligated to do for Gaming's Edge is that I don't have to be objective or all-encompassing in my assessment of an event like E3. I can simply gush about the handful of things that peaked my interest and ignore everything else. :)

So, on with it then...

Regarding games, I found myself equally enthusiastic about some new Intellectual Properties being shown as I was about several sequels to games that have become near and dear to me over the years.

Two big standouts for me were "Overstrike," the new four-player  co-op project from Insomniac and "Brothers in Arms: Furious 4," the new four-player co-op project from Gearbox. Noticing a trend? Both these games are very early in their respective development processes based on what was shown at E3, but they both come across as projects designed to provide fun and clever experiences to share with friends, which is a lot of what I look for from games these days.

Another new IP I've been increasingly interested in is "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning," the first game from Curt Schilling's 38 Studios, which looks to be a compelling mesh of the third-person action and RPG genres.

In terms of sequels, the new "Battlefield," "Assassin's Creed," "SSX," "Need for Speed," "Far Cry" and "Elder Scrolls" games are looking anywhere between good and truly stunning.

Hardware wise, I remain impressed with Sony's upcoming handheld; especially at the $250 and $300 price points they announced for the Wi-FI and 3G+Wi-Fi versions. As a very happy iPad owner, I don't know that a dedicated portable gaming system would ever be something that I'd want, but if I ever found myself leading a more travel-heavy lifestyle, the PS Vita would definitely be the handheld I'd choose for serious gaming.

I was also pleasantly surprised by Sony's 3D Display announcement. The idea of a high-quality 24", 3D or shared screen capable display bundled with glasses, an HDMI cable and a generally-anticipated game (Resistance 3) for $500 seems like the sort of thing that will be filling up dorm rooms and bedrooms all over the world. :) Much like the Vita, I see this as a product that should be very successful despite not really appealing to me personally.

There were other interesting bits to E3 this year to be sure, but these were the ones that really stuck in my mind and either excited or impressed me.

PS3 Reborn

It's been a tough five weeks for PS3 owners waiting for the Playstation Network to fully recover from the hacking incident(s) that prompted Sony to shut it down near the end of April. While we've been able to play online for the past few weeks, the Playstation Store, which many would argue is the centerpiece of the PSN, remained conspicuously absent until today.

The lack of Store functionality was particularly painful for me because my launch-era, fat PS3 decided it would be a good time to stop working a few weeks ago, which prompted me to go out and pick up a new, slim PS3 to replace it. I'm still considering having the old one repaired, but that's another story.

Point is that I had a bit of an issue with the new PS3 as the backup from my old system only brought over most of my save files and music, so with the Store down, I wasn't able to get any of my downloadable games up and running on the new system. I realize this is a pretty specific issue because my PS3 happened to die at a time when the store wasn't available, but I have to admit I've been rather annoyed having to wait several weeks to fully restore everything to the new console.

Thankfully, aside from a few minor hiccups, I've already managed to re-download the games I was really itching to play and queue up the rest so that they download while the system is idle.

For those who are wondering, it doesn't appear that the SSD hard drive replacement I did on the old PS3 had anything to do with it croaking. In fact, I've been using that same SSD on the new slim PS3 for several weeks now without any problems. It seems that my launch PS3 was simply one of many that have given in to the Yellow Light of Death for a variety of reasons. I would have liked to have seen it last a bit longer than three and a half years, but it did outlast my XBOX 360 by quite a bit despite being used considerably more frequently.

All things considered, I'm pretty happy to have the PSN back up and running and am really looking forward to taking advantage of the Welcome Back program and seeing what Sony has up their sleeve for E3 next week.

It may take a while for Sony to fully re-earn my trust regarding the security, stability and availability of their online services, but I feel like they're on the right track and I'm certainly happy to have my PS3 back up and running as intended.

Thoughts on Portal 2

At this point, everyone who plays games knows that Portal 2 is one of the best games of the year and most people who are interested in it have already played it, but I do feel it's worthwhile to say a few non-spoiler things about it.

First and foremost, if you are at all interested in the game, go and play it right now. Don't put it off any longer. As with the original, the surprises are some of the best parts of Portal 2 and the longer you go without playing it, the greater the chance that you'll have them ruined for you accidentally or intentionally.

While the potential for replay is about the same as it was in the first game, you'll definitely want to play Portal 2 on your system of choice as you only get to experience it for the first time once. For me, that was the Windows version, which looks downright awesome with all the video settings maxed.

Play through the single player experience before playing the co-op. The reasons for this will become obvious once you do.

When a bit more time has passed, I plan to write a more detailed piece on this game, but it's impossible to do that without spoiling at least some aspects of the experience. Bottom line: If you think you might want to play this game, go play it. It's great. If you haven't played the original Portal yet, it's not required to appreciate and enjoy Portal 2, but you should play it as well given the opportunity. It's also great. :)

Brink Patched

Just a quick note. Splash Damage has released a patch for Brink via Steam that addresses a lot of the issues people have been having with the Windows version of the game. I gave it a try last night and it has indeed made substantial improvements. There still seem to be a few little quirks and bugs for them to iron out; especially with regard to sound, but there's now no doubt that they're taking customer feedback about the game into consideration and acting on it in a timely manner. I'm now even more confident endorsing this game and encourage anyone who's interested in it to give it a try.

I should also mention that Splash Damage has announced that the first DLC for Brink, which is scheduled to be released in June, will be free as a "thank you" to everyone for buying the game and putting up with the initial technical problems. Perhaps that's just PR spin on their part, but free "maps and additional content" sounds good to me in any case. :)

A Little Love for Brink

Note: For some unexplained reason, my original version of this post disappeared. I'm going to re-post it with a few updates based on new information that's been made available since yesterday and some additional experiences I've had with the game since then, but if problems persist, I may need to look into moving this blog and its content elsewhere.

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I'm often dismayed when I read game reviews these days. More and more, I feel like I just can't relate to the mindset of the average game reviewer. It probably has a lot to do with the shift away from objective analysis of a game's technical execution and toward more subjective areas. As someone who's made a decent living over the years as a programmer, I still tend to look at games as technical achievements, and while I certainly have likes and dislikes when it comes to narrative themes, settings, artistic styles and all manner of subjective qualities that comprise the total package of a game, I'm always extremely hesitant to shit all over something that people have clearly spent a lot of time and effort crafting. A game has to be genuinely horrible in some measurable way for me to hate on it and despite what a lot of people on the internet seem to think, Brink is nowhere near a bad game.

Does it have issues? Absolutely it does, and I'll touch on those a bit later, but I think this game is getting a very unfair treatment from many in the critical community and I'd like to do my part to help offset that a bit. As I write this, there are over 15 thousand people playing it on Steam who certainly wouldn't be if it were half as bad as some folks are making it out to be. I've personally logged about 20 hours with the game and have completed all the campaign and "What if..." missions both from the perspective of the Security Forces and the Guests, which has left me with a level 18 (Rank 4) character and a level 4 (Rank 1) alt that I've been experimenting with.

So, for those unaware, Brink is a Team/Objective-Centric First-Person Shooter from the developer Splash Damage, which started out as a modding group that created the famous Enemy Territory mod for the classic FPS Return to Castle Wolfenstein back in the day. They've since applied the Enemy Territory style of gameplay to the Quake IP with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, but Brink is the first game they've built from the ground up (IP and all).

In a lot of ways, Brink is a very ambitious game. It combines elements seen in other popular FPSes from recent years in a way that is kinda mind-boggling when you stop and think about it.

Character movement through the environments feels like a streamlined version of the traversal mechanics from Mirror's Edge, with the additional wrinkle of three potential body types that effect how nimble or durable your character is.

Weapons feel a lot like Borderlands, but instead of picking up a new one every five minutes, you'll be unlocking augmentations like scopes, red dots, extended magazines and stabilizers that can be added to a selection of primary and secondary weapons that broadens as you move toward the heavy body type, which is required to wield the more hefty armaments. Some folks have been complaining about the sound of the weapons. I say, get better speakers. There's a ton of dynamic range and subtlety in how each gun sounds but you're not going to notice it on $30 speakers or a $10 pair of headphones. So many shooters have ear-crushingly, overblown sound that lacks any sort of finesse or basis in reality that I actually find the sound design of the weapons in Brink quite refreshing. In all seriousness, if you think all the guns in Brink sound the same, you may want to have your ears checked because you've probably lost or are in the process of losing some of your hearing.

General gameplay feels very Battlefield-esque. The team/class/objective-based nature of it can't help but evoke the feel of that series. There are a decent variety of objective types, but you'll definitely find yourself doing the same sorts of things pretty frequently if you stick to primary objectives. That's certainly a valid approach, but it should be said that there are a lot of great tactical opportunities and advantages provided by pursuing and completing many of the secondary objectives on a given map. Controling additional Command Posts or opening and closing additional routes through the level can be real difference makers, especially when the teams are evenly matched in terms of skill.

Speaking of skill, I've seen some reviewers complaining about bots in the game being ineffective. Granted, they aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, but I've seen way worse and they do scale pretty well at different difficulty levels and as missions progress and time starts to get short. Sure, the AI could use some tweaking and improvement, but with the greater-then average sophistication present in the game's mechanics and traversal system, I think people are being a bit harsh in their judgement of the bot AI.

I hate to keep making all these comparisons to other games but in a lot of ways Brink feels like a combination of a lot of the best elements from some of the best FPSes in recent memory, and for the most part, it does exactly what it set out to do; however, as I said before, there are some problems with it.

• Matchmaking could be better. It's a little old school, at least on the Windows version. There's some minimal support for Steam friends, but it takes a bit more effort to figure out how to get a game running with friends than I'd prefer and there are some oddities like the host having to be the highest ranked player if there's a discrepancy and the need to open TCP/UDP ports 27015 and 27016 if you are hosting a game. Nothing really new for most PC gamers, but I find myself wishing the whole thing was a bit more elegant and simplified.

• Multiplayer performance, at least on the PC, seems a bit sketchy when you get more than six or so people in the game. Playing with a couple friends consistently worked without a hitch, but results have been more mixed in games with more human players involved.

• There's a nasty rendering glitch, again on the PC, for many users of AMD Radeon GPUs wherein whitish grid lines appear over everything that's being rendered at times. Some folks have also reported drastic framerate drops at times on said GPUs but that seems to be a less common issue as I haven't experienced it since upgrading to the latest Catalyst hot fix (11.5a).

• The good news for console owners, is that these problems don't seem to exist there. Of course, with the PSN still down as of this writing, PS3 users won't be able to put that theory to the test, but 360 users seem to be fairing okay aside from some reports of multiplayer lag that have cropped up since the initial patch for that version of the game.

• The narrative elements of the game are a bit thin. They basically consist of a few cut scenes that bookend each of the eight campaign missions and some audio logs that get unlocked as you level up your character. I didn't buy this game on the promise of narrative or single-player set pieces, so this isn't a big letdown for me, but I do think it's fair to say that people looking for those things will be disappointed with what Brink has to offer in that regard. A contemporary in terms of narrative bulk and presentation would be Left 4 Dead, where the narrative elements and setting are more of an accent or an excuse for the carnage than a end unto themselves.

• There's already been a patch for the Windows version of the game to address a potential game save-killing bug, but Splash Damage still has some work to do to address the aforementioned technical problems and some others that I haven't personally been able to duplicate.

For me, the bottom line is that I really like this game. Despite its issues, which I have confidence will be resolved in time, I've been having an absolute blast playing it and it's been providing me with exactly what I wanted from it. Could it be better? Sure, but it could also be a LOT worse.

Staying Power

Games come and go. Each and every week there's something new and exciting to tempt the attention span of anyone who makes a habit of playing them, and more often than not, new games do just that. They pull us away from whatever we had been playing with the promise of shiny, new graphics, gameplay, or stories and characters.

Of course, there are the exceptions; games that are so good, so well crafted and so deep and re-playable that they pull us back despite such distractions.

Here are a few of my current favorites:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Windows/360/PS3)

As far as I'm concerned, this game is THE reason to own a hot gaming PC. Sure, you can play it on an XBOX 360 or PS3, but the look and feel of it on a nicely-equipped PC is a big part of what gaming is all about for me. Needless to say, I'm extremely excited for Battlefield 3 this fall.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Windows/360/PS3)

The best racing game since Burnout Paradise; unsurprisingly crafted by the same developer. The cat and mouse nature of the "Hot Pursuit" mode is a phenomenal gameplay experience that transcends the racing game genre; giving you more to do in the game than simply drive from point A to point B as fast as possible for those unsatisfied with simply racing. Again, play this on a hot gaming PC if you can.

Gran Turismo 5 (PS3)

I know. I know. Forza 3 for the XBOX 360 is a better game from a structural standpoint. But there is something about GT5. It may not have been the end all, be all racing game that everyone was expecting it to be, but it does have merits and the sheer level of car porn in it is unrivaled. The steady stream of patches since its release don't hurt and there's no denying the passion and sincerity of it. Call it a guilty pleasure if you want, but I like this game and often find myself returning to it above all others when I'm looking for a simulation racing fix.

Civilization V (Windows/Mac)

Even though the newness of it has worn off and a few design flaws have yet to be corrected in it, there's no doubt that Civ remains the king of the turn-based strategy genre. When I feel that particular itch, I need go no further for relief. Are there problems with it? Indeed there are, but the simple fact is it does more right than it does wrong and there are few if any games out there that can rival its ability to make doing the same thing over and over feel fresh and exciting with each new game.

World of Warcraft (Windows/Mac)

What list of addictive, recurring games would be complete without this one? I have no doubt sunk more time into this game than any other. Whether it's soloing an alt, or raiding with a guild or grouping with friends for a 5-man or some PvP, WoW still offers the best combination of the RPG and social gaming genres. If you're into swords and sorcery, and you want an RPG you can play alone or with friends, for better or worse, there's precious little out there that can hold a candle to it.

Modern Combat: Domination (PS3)

Go ahead and mock me all you want. This PS3 downloadable game is fun and easy to pick up, play, make some measurable progress, and put back down on a whim. It surely doesn't have all the bells and whistles of better shooters like Battlefield, but for a cheap and easy thrill, it's hard to beat.

Left 4 Dead 2 (Windows/Mac)

When you want to shoot things in the face and you don't want to have to worry about levels or kits or perks or any of that nonsense, Left 4 Dead 2 is your game. Sure, zombies are a little played out, but the zombie-apocalypse theme is almost inconsequential to the gameplay. The zombies might as well be Teletubbies. In fact, there's a mod for that. :)

Borderlands (Windows/Mac)

This game is on the list for one simple reason: Co-op. With support for up to four-player co-op throughout the entire single-player campaign plus extensive DLC packs and support for multiple playthroughs, there are literally hundreds of hours of satisfying FPS/RPG gameplay to be had here. True, there's room for improvement, but that's what sequels are for. Borderlands 2? Hell yes, please! :)

Worms (Windows/360/PS3/iOS)

Worms: Reloaded for Windows is the current incarnation I'm playing, but I've been playing and enjoying this delightfully-twisted take on the classic, turn-based "artillery" game genre for years on a variety of platforms. In fact, I probably own more versions of this game on more different systems than any other.

Are there other games I love as much or more than these? Sure there are. There are fantastic games that I spent five or 10 or 15 hours playing through and "finished," or that I enjoyed for a good, long while then got burnt out on and haven't returned to recently. This isn't meant to be a definitive list; just a few recommendations for games that I've personally spent a lot of time and had a lot of fun with and have periodically felt compelled to revisit over the past several months.

PS3 SSD

As someone who's built more than a few PCs from parts, I occasionally get the itch to tinker with things; sometimes even when they're not meant to be tinkered with, but that's another story.

This time, I decided to focus my attention on my PS3 and the often-painfully-slow 5400 RPM hard drive that the system ships with.

True, for the most part, the default PS3 hard drive gets the job done, but as someone who plays a lot of downloaded Playstation Network games and Blu-Ray-based games like "Gran Turismo 5" that require massive hard drive installs and usage, I felt like it was time to give the system a little more oomph.

In and of itself, replacing the hard drive in a PS3 is a pretty simple and well-documented process, involving just a few tools and a few hours of time (most of which is spent backing up and restoring data to and from USB storage). The interesting part for me was the question of what type of 2.5" SATA drive to use as a replacement. After careful consideration of several 7200 RPM, 10000 RPM and Solid State drives, I decided to go with a 90GB Corsair Force CSSD-F90GB2-BRKT that I snagged from newegg for $180. A little pricey I know, but I wanted to be as sure as possible that the drive would perform well in terms of speed and stability, and the Corsair had all the right features and reputation for quality.

Why SSD you might ask?

• SSDs use less power, which generates less heat inside the console.
• SSDs have no moving parts, so the console being moved or bumped can't affect the drive; though the Blu Ray drive is of course still susceptible to such movement or jarring.
• SSDs make no sound. Not that you'd hear it over the monster fans in the PS3 anyway. :)

Basically, with SSD, you get the performance of a 10,000+ RPM drive with far less heat and power consumption than even the stock 5400 RPM models.

Having said that, there are some potential pitfalls to be aware of:

SSD is still a relatively new technology when compared with traditional 2.5" internal hard drives and much like those drives were when they first came along, larger capacity SSDs can lack the level of performance and stability necessary to happily interact with a device like the PS3 whose operating system doesn't support advanced SSD control and maintenance functions like TRIM. In short, TRIM allows space on the drive to be reclaimed at the time of deletion as opposed to waiting until the deleted blocks are about to be written to again. Without TRIM, an SSD has to spend twice as much time writing to parts of the drive that had previously contained other data. This isn't a huge deal on the PS3 because much more reading than writing takes place on the PS3's hard drive, but it's something to keep in mind.

Some SSD drives (such as the Corsair I used) have built in controller firmware that help to keep the drive in an optimal state even without support from an operating system, but the performance and capability of such functions varies from drive to drive, so it pays to do your homework. Different SSDs from the same manufacturer that represent different iterations of the technology can perform very differently depending on where they're being used (i.e. a drive that works great in a PC might not work so well in the PS3 if the PS3s OS doesn't support all its capabilities and there are no built in drive functions to pick up the slack).

So far, I've been very happy with my decision to upgrade the hard drive in my PS3 to an SSD. Most hard drive-based games load about twice as fast, some games like GT5 that load large, contiguous blocks of data at a time are even faster, and the general performance of anything the PS3 does that involves the hard drive (including the Netflix app and the XMB) has increased noticeably.

 I'm a bit concerned about the long-term performance of the drive in terms of speed as the overwriting of existing data blocks becomes more common over time, but so far (having already patched a few games) I haven't seen anything to worry about.

I'll update this post as I use the new drive over time, but so far so good.

Free is Good: Need For Speed World (Windows)

There are a lot of free-to-play or "freemium" games these days. From MMOs like Dungeons & Dragons Online to FPSes like Quake Live to strategy games like Travian. In fact, with a little effort, it's possible to find enough quality, free gaming content to satisfy all but the most hardcore of gamers; especially if you have access to a computer that's less than five years old and a broadband internet connection.

One sub-genre of gaming that's typically not well represented in the free-to-play movement is racing games. That's something Electronic Arts has been attempting to change with its game Need for Speed World, which is a surprisingly deep and detailed racing game set in an open world populated by scores of players and comparable in terms of scope and design to those featured in mainline Need for Speed games like Carbon and Undercover.

Another area where World shines is in the initial experience, which is surprisingly polished; sporting a thorough and well-paced introduction that quickly gets players into the game and up to speed on the driving, upgrade, power-up and competitive aspects of the game. In just about an hour, I felt like I had a good idea of how the game worked, how to progress in it and how to leverage the social aspects of it, which is something that a lot of other games in the free-to-play space often struggle with.

In a similar fashion to other EA play4free products like Battlefield: Play4Free, NFS: World doesn't attempt to push any boundaries in terms of visual presentation, instead opting to provide a solid multiplayer experience based on tried and tested technology from previous games in the series. It's no surprise that World bears a striking similarity to the Carbon and Undercover NFS games as it was coded by the same development team (Black Box) that was responsible for those games and indeed uses a lot of audio and visual assets from them such as police radio chatter and the general layout and design of the open world city.

As a result, NFS: World isn't likely to win any beauty contests when compared to current AAA games, but it certainly doesn't look bad and can be configured to run on a wide variety of PCs, which allows it to potentially appeal to a much wider audience.

There's some weirdness in World, like having to set the in-game camera as a preference under "Options" rather than being able to switch it on the fly or the game's tendency to ignore the presence of a game controller and present tutorials based on default keyboard controls despite USB controllers like the XBOX 360 Controller for Windows (for example) working just fine without any configuration, but these are minor quibbles and certainly no reason not to give the game a try.

The driving and handling mechanics of the game seem a little dumbed down; perhaps to accommodate players who may be using keyboard controls for lack of a better option, but they aren't too far off what fans of the NFS series have come to expect and I found them quite easy to adapt to despite having spent time with more simulation style racers of late. The controls and car handling aren't as snappy as say NFS: Hot Pursuit, but they get the job done and don't really get in the way.

Bottom line: If you're looking for a good free-to-play/freemium racing game, you could do a lot worse than Need for Speed World.