Starcraft 2 is in beta testing.  This means that Starcraft 2 will probably be coming out soon.  I estimate that Starcraft 2 will come out some time this year.  Officially, Blizzard is saying, “At this point, it’s too early to provide an estimate of the release date. As with all Blizzard games, we will take as much time as needed to ensure the game is as fun, balanced, and polished as possible.”  Of course, with an official statement like that there is no telling when Starcraft 2 will actually come out, but until it does come out you can feast your eyes on some actual Starcraft 2 beta game play on Youtube.

Starcraft 2 Beta Gameplay

If that one video was not enough for you then check out more at that guy’s Youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/HDstarcraft#g/u

I understand people like video games.  I really do.  I enjoy playing them.  According to my wife, I play them a lot.  Apparently, video game developers have caught on to the fact that people like to play these games.  Well, more specifically, they’ve caught on that some people will play them for hours at a time.  Some bright genius thought it would be a good idea then to design a game or part of a game that requires you to play in a long marathon gaming session.  The first one that comes to mind is the Horde mode in Gears of War 2.  After that, Bungie Studios put in Firefight mode in Halo 3: ODST.  Now, I’ve played both of those games.  I know how long they take.  My question is now….why put them in?

How I felt after a Gears 2 Horde Run or ODST Firefight game

I enjoyed playing Gears of War 2.  I really did.  Right up until the point that I completed a full Horde run.  A few friends and I got together one Saturday afternoon and went through the full Horde run.  It took us about eight hours to complete.  After that, I don’t think many of us have even loaded the game up again.  It seriously ruined the fun factor of the game.  Every time I think of playing Gears of War 2 now I think of that one single marathon gaming session and how I felt afterward.

Last fall Bungie Studios released Halo 3: ODST.  The game was thrown together fairly quickly by a small development team.  As such, they decided not to implement a full multiplayer matchmaking system like they did with predecessor games Halo 2 and Halo 3.  They did, however, include a new multiplayer mode called Firefight.  Essentially, it was a copy of Gears of War 2’s Horde, in that a team of gamers faced off against wave after wave of increasingly stronger enemies in an attempt to gain a higher score.  Once again, I got together with some friends one day and we played through the Firefight mode.  Although not quite the marathon length of Horde mode, it still took us over two hours to get through.  Just as with Gears of War 2, I never really have enjoyed ODST the same since.

What is it about these marathon endurance modes that ruins the gaming experience for me and probably many others?  I think it has to do with the challenge difficulty.  The whole point of these modes is to see how far you can go, how far you can push yourself.  In order to do that though, you have to set aside the fun part of the gaming experience and turn it into something most of us are trying to avoid by playing video games – work.  In order to succeed you really do need to view it as work.  It takes planning, leadership, and a team effort to succeed.  You can’t screw around and just goof off.  You have to take it seriously, otherwise what’s the point of even doing it?

Just today I sat down and played the latest DLC content from Gear Box Software for Borderlands.  Some friends and I managed to get through the first three arena challenges.  These are five rounds of five waves each, facing stronger and stronger enemies each wave.  It took us probably five hours to complete those three challenges.  After beating those three, we find out there are three additional larger challenges.  We went into the first of those challenges just to see what ‘larger‘ meant.  They are twenty rounds of five waves each.   Twenty!

I’m not sure how long before I attempt those later challenges in Borderlands.  Right now I really enjoy playing the game.  I guess I should learn from past experience and just know that once I sit down and force myself to play through them (which I know the perfectionist inside me will eventually make me do) that I will probably not feel like playing the game anymore after that.  Then again, maybe if I actually do it before Gearbox Software releases their next DLC, maybe that DLC content will make the game fun again.  Either way, I still wish developers would move away from these marathon gaming modes and find newer, better ways to make gamers want to play their games for hours on end.  One that doesn’t require gamers to play it hours on end just to actually play it.

An open letter to Infinity Ward, the game development studio behind Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2.

We gamers would like to thank you for the great products you have produced over the years. As great as your games have been, we still feel the need to bring to your attention a few glaring defects in your games regarding the online multiplayer matchmaking and party system. The Modern Warfare 2 pre-game lobby is such a glaring eyesore on what otherwise is one of the best shooter games of all time.  What makes it so much worse is the fact that other shooter games have had the whole pre-game lobby and party system mechanics down for years.  When we first put the most anticipated game ever into our systems, we expected a perfected and well polished product.  Instead, we found a broken and inept matchmaking system that makes us feel as if we’re playing an online game from the late 1990’s.

First and foremost on the list of issues we would like to see corrected is the role of party leader.  In online matchmaking where gamers go in as a party, one person is designated the party leader.  This role should provide some level of power over how the party plays the game.  When in a pre-game lobby, sometimes gamers have reasons to back out of the matchmaking system.  The way your current system works is completely wrong.  The party leader has absolutely no control over pulling the party out of matchmaking.  Instead, the only way to keep the party together is to require the party leader to back out of the matchmaking system by themselves and then have the rest of the party notice that the party leader is gone and they then need to back themselves out.  This has caused many gamers grief with having half a party back out while the other half is still in the game,  completely oblivious to the fact that their party is gone.  The party leader should also have the ability to designate a new party leader.  This prevents the entire party from being broken up just because one person needs to leave.

Another issue is that of party stability.  When we enter matchmaking as a party, we generally want to play the game as a party.  This means we want to all be in the same game and on the same team.  The current system glitches often, which causes parties to get split up and thrown into completely separate game lobbies.  The way the gamers are listed in the pre-game lobby also makes it difficult to recognize if your entire party managed to make it into the same lobby.  We would like you to fix this so that parties are kept together, no matter what the connection quality is.  We would also like you to change it so that if we do somehow manage to get into the same pre-game lobby together, that we have our party listed always together and possibly have an on screen indicator of who is in our party.  You do this during the game (with the blue/green indicators) so why can’t you do this in the pre-game lobby?

One great feature of the Call of Duty franchise is the ability to join matchmaking games in progress.  Not many other game developers put this into their games.  While it is great to be able to get into games quicker, we have a few suggestions on how to refine this.  The first thing you need to add (this goes along with the party leader powers) is the ability for a party leader to set the party status as open or closed.  A closed party should not be available to be joined in progress.  Another feature we would like to see added is that join in progress be disabled near the end of an online match.  There’s nothing worse that joining a game in progress only to be placed on the losing team with just a few seconds left in a match.  There should be some qualification measure to determine whether or not join in progress is enabled or not, such as having a certain scoring margin within the last minute or two.  If it’s a close game, join in progress can be helpful, but no one wants to join a game that they have no chance of winning.

We hope you take this into consideration and we look forward to seeing many, if not all, of these suggestions implemented in a future title update.

To all you other gamers, if you agree with this, feel free to leave your gamertag in the comments below for Infinity Ward to see.

May 3, 2010

• First Impressions

Wow.

Yep, that’s my initial reaction to this game.  Wow.  Bioware really nailed it with this game.  The extra long opening sequence really set the tone for the whole game.  Seeing the Normandy get blown to bits and my Commander Shepard get hurled into space to die tells you right away that this game is serious.   The graphics in the game are amazing.  I actually had my wife come up to me and ask me to play the game some more so she could watch it  (that reminds me…I have a suggestion for Bioware, but I’ll leave that for the end).  The music though is what really sets the tone in this game.  The first game had decent music, but Bioware just raised the bar with this one.

Recently I just finished my second play through. Before the game came out, I had heard a lot about how this game was supposed to be so much longer than the first game.  There was so much more voice acting done for this sequel, so obviously the gameplay must be longer, right?  Well, Mass Effect 2 certainly is better, but just not sure it’s that much bigger. I managed to finish both play throughs in roughly thirty hours each, doing every single side quest I could find each time. The first game was comprised of four main quest areas to go through with a bazillion side quests that were as annoying to play as could be. Mass Effect 2 went the opposite direction and gives you almost two dozen main quests to do and just a few side quests. At least with Mass Effect 2 you don’t have every single area looking like just another cookie cutter cutout of the previous area. They really did improve in that area of the game.