Starcraft 2 pricing announced. P.S.: We're screwed.

The physical manifestation of Starcraft 2 was revealed today. You can get the standard edition for $60, or the collector's edition for $100. A bit on the pricey side, but not unexpected.

What is unexpected:

"Digital copies of the game will be available to download through Battle.net "shortly after release" of the retail Sku."

Join the 21st century, Blizzard. Let us download the game on Day 1.

Wait, I shouldn't be complaining to Blizz. I should be complaining to Activision, since they are clearly in full control now. I'm assuming this decision was made by the marketing and sales departments because there is some advantage to forcing Day 1 buyers into the stores (whether a deal with Gamestop or unwillingness to pay for the bandwidth necessary to handle the demand).

What makes me absolutely sure that Bobby Kotick is at the helm are a few other little surprises in the collector's edition:

1) A WoW pet. Seriously? It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but damn it's exploitative.

2) "Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a..."

I cut that statement off because the last part deserves it's own number. Decals to customize units in-game? That just screams value-added content to me. Pay $100 for the base game, then get on the Microtransaction Express and keep shipping your money directly to Blizzard so they can use it on an Orc statue and paying Bobby Kotick and shareholders rather than using it on development! But that pales in comparison to:

3) "...and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit"

...

WHAT?!?!?!

Are you kidding me?!? You're going to be able to pay to make your individual units look different?

Blizzard's motto is very quickly shifting from "when it's ready" to "anything for a buck".

Customer . . . loyalty . . . failing . . .

Everyone who believed the PR saying the Activision merger wouldn't change Blizzard: please accept this bottle of ketchup, which should make it less unpleasant for you to eat your words.

Mass Effect 2 Thoughts

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age.

I'm finally done with Mass Effect 2.

I'm not talking about "finishing the game". I've done that 3 times already. I mean that I'm finally done with the game and can move on to other things. Its stranglehold on my brain has slackened. I was unable to achieve escape velocity until I'd explored every nook and cranny, completed every quest, and gotten my fill of shooting at giant robots.

Mass Effect 2, like Bioware's other recent RPG release Dragon Age, is a game about choices, but unlike DA, it's also about consequences. That's partly because DA is the first in a series and ME2 is the "Empire Strikes Back" of a trilogy, so you see the consequences of your choices from the first game and always hold the possible consequences for ME3 in your mind (does anyone doubt that ME3 will be about uniting the galaxy against the incoming Reaper fleet?). But it also has to do with the impact of your choices in ME2.

In DA, you can't get to the end without recruiting the four main armies, and the differences your choices make in the ending sequence are largely cosmetic. Sure, your actions lead to each faction having a different leader, and maybe you have stone golems or werewolves on your side, but in the end that doesn't amount to much in the climax.


In ME2, you simply need to complete a certain number of missions to progress to the end, so if you do some sidequests you don't need to recruit every crew member, and you certainly don't need to make any or all of them loyal. Even if you do a loyalty quest, the way you choose to complete it can actually prevent that squad member from becoming loyal. You also don't need to get every upgrade to progress. This matters because all of these choices have consequences. Neglecting to upgrade your ship can actually kill your crew members in the final assault, and loyalty, along with your choices, determines who in your crew survives as the end sequence progresses. Even the choice to do sidequests before heading off for the final battle can lead to dire consequences that impact both the talking and combat aspects of the game.

I think by integrating these consequences and making your choices more impactful, Mass Effect 2 is a leap ahead of Dragon Age. Add in the fact that the combat gameplay is just so much better in ME2, and I don't see much reason to go back and replay DA even though I've chain-replayed ME2.

Much ado has been made on the internetz about how streamlined ME2 is, and how it barely qualifies as an RPG instead of a shooter because the itemization and character development have been simplified.

Having played ME1, I can say unequivocally that this streamlining is an exceedingly good thing. ME1's items and levelling could fairly be described as a "clusterbumblefuck." The reason ME2's is so good is because it almost eliminates item management and scales back on talent points without losing depth. This is a very important lesson for game developers to learn, because otherwise you end up with disasters like Final Fantasy 12 where I gave up 2/3 of the way through the game because I was tired of grinding mobs so I could vendor wolf pelts.

The beauty of these streamlined systems in ME2 is in their immediacy. There is no more fumbling with a menu after every mission, or even checking every time you pick up a new item to see if it's an upgrade. You can get to the actual play. At the same time, if you decide you want to change your weapon loadout or focus on certain skills, you can. It's just that those parts don't weigh so heavily on the game anymore. It makes the game feel more like an action game while still giving RPG depth and meaningful choices.

This idea that depth and choice without unnecessary complexity will lead to good gameplay (a tenet the WoW devs have recently embraced more fully) is evident throughout the entire design of ME2. Most noticeable is in the new combat system, where 3 different types of possible armoring on enemies leads to more interesting gameplay scenarios, and gives you a legitimate reason to switch guns or modify your strategy without being gimmicky or annoying. It makes the fights more interesting by constantly making you feel like you are making impactful strategic choices and demonstrating mastery.

The class design reinforces this. One of the greatest masterstrokes of ME2 was giving each character class a different special power that only that class has access to. For instance, my Vanguard had a unique "biotic charge" ability that would instantly teleport me into an enemy across the room, knocking them back, shielding me, and slowing down time so I could land a perfectly-aimed shotgun blast into their internal organs. My Sentinel had a "tech shield" that afforded an extra layer of tanky protection and knocked back enemies when it was destroyed. Infiltrators were the only ones with access to cloaking. I think the only place Bioware failed with this system was in making the special ability for the Engineer be attack drones, because there are a few squad members who also have that ability. The other unique class abilities are not shared by any non-player characters or even enemies. These abilities gave each class a clear identity and a totally different playstyle, a massive improvement over ME1's muddled classes.

Despite these victories, the game is far from perfect. Sure, exploring planets for resources and anomolies is streamlined into a mini-game, but the mini-game is mind-numbingly boring and tedious. If there is one thing that needs to be removed, it's that. One reviewer even demanded that Bioware issue a public apology. It's that bad.

The Security Bypass and Hacking mini-games are also tedious interruptions that could stand to be sheared off, though they are better than the "circular frogger" Bypass from ME1. I do like the idea of having some active player involvement in hacking, so perhaps instead of scrubbing the games, they should just be replaced with something better. For instance, the word games from Fallout 3's hacking system were infinitely better than the lame match games ME2 requires you to play. At the same time, F3's slower pace might have just been a better fit for that type of game.

The morality system is also limited, though it works well in its own way. Most interactions give you three choices of response: Paragon (generally "nice"), neutral, and Renegade (generally "not so nice", but not to be confused with "evil"). You cannot play a Shepard who is not trying to save the world, so either you do it by helping people out or you do it by blunt-forcing your way through situations.

The morality system suffers from being yoked to the "negotation" system. What this means is that certain Paragon or Renegade dialogue options only open up if you've already built up points by acting like a P or an R. This wouldn't be so bad, except these special options tend to be much better than the default options, and often have a major impact on your gameplay. For instance, you can get discounts at stores if one of your scores is high enough, and you can - without warning - even lose the loyalty of a crew member if you haven't built your score up in one of the two directions by a certain point in the game. I think the game suffers for this, because I tended to feel like my choice was taken away most of the time because I had to take the Paragon options just to build my Paragon score, even though I didn't think that option was the one my mostly-Paragon Shepard would really choose. The system basically punishes you for making choices in shades of grey, and that's a major failing they should fix in the third installment.


Those are my "deep thoughts" on the game, having completed it once neutrally, once as a Renegade, and once as a Paragon. On my first "blind" playthrough, I managed to keep everyone alive except for poor Yoeman Chambers. On the second, my goal was to kill Shepard, but I failed. In order to die, you need to kill off every single member of your squad, and due to some missteps on my part both Zaeed and Miranda were alive at the end to save me. My final runthrough was meant to max out my Paragon points and get a "perfect" playthrough where everyone lived, I explored every planet, got every upgrade, did every sidequest, and maxed everything out in preparation for ME3.

Now that I'm done with all that, I feel like I've finally truly "finished" the game and I'm ready to move on. Next up: Final Fantasy 13 (and hopefully Starcraft 2 beta)!

Mass Effect 2

Please see above title for explanation about why I haven't posted in a while.

Dear god, this game is good. I won't blink if it's still on "top 5 games of the year" lists even in a 2010 that promises Starcraft 2, Heavy Rain, Final Fantasy 13, Bioshock 2 and a new Fallout.

I skipped the original Mass Effect because usually that type of spacefaring Sci-Fi doesn't interest me. But so many people I respect were saying so many good things about ME2 that I had to see what all the fuss was about this time around. Not wanting to sink the money until I was sure, I bought the original ME1 from Steam first for about $25.

It was a blast. The gameplay was basically a stripped-down Dragon Age (made by same company, actually) with more action-oriented combat. Sure, I was annoyed by the same things everyone else had been - elevator rides, the inventory mess, and the fucking Mako - but I loved the game all the same. My expectations were shattered as I discovered an intriguing and mature galaxy full of interesting stories and alien races to meet and mate with. I plowed through it in a few days, and had purchased the sequel off Steam before the credits were even done rolling.

Mass Effect 2 blew me away. It simplified the game in the most pleasant ways, all while somehow keeping it from getting simplistic. There was no more moon rover, no more long elevator waits, and the inventory was replaced by an elegant but fun upgrade system. And it continued the original's process of getting me attached to the characters and to my Shepard, which is no mean feat.

But the real superstar is the combat system. It's a cover-based third-person shooter in the vein of Gears of War (which I've never played) that adds in RPG elements like castable abilities and leveling. The gameplay is addictive, and I've found myself playing side missions just to get more time with the combat. That has never happened in an RPG before in the history of ever. It's just . . . it's just a joy to play.


I think one of the keys is that Mass Effect 2 never gets boring. There are only three things ever happening: either you are engrossed in the shooter gameplay, riveted by an incredibly epic cutscene, or involved in a satisfying or thought-provoking interactive conversation, all while surrounded by very pretty graphics, shockingly good voice acting, and excellent music. You are never sitting around bored. Gush, gush, gush!

[update] OK, it does get boring at one point: gathering resources from planets. You explore galaxies and scan planets for resources, but the scanning is super-slow and you have to do a ton of it for each upgrade, all while constantly replenishing your probe supply. And this is not optional because you need the minerals to buy upgrades. The hacking and bypassing minigames are also kind of tedious, though not as bad as the "frogger in a circle" known as ME1's manual bypass. [end update]


From someone who was raised on Final Fantasy instead of the PC RPGs like King's Quest or whatever, Mass Effect feels to me like the heir to the FF throne. While FF stays too traditional - sitting in the same rut and never seeming to evolve - the Mass Effect series is just chock full of new ideas and improvements while laying claim to the FF tradition of cinematic awesomeness.


Bioware are masters, and in my opinion, Mass Effect 2 is their masterpiece. I will certainly be writing much more about this game . . . after I finish my third playthrough. I can't seem to tear myself away.

"Strike Teams" - A Substitute for Raids

So I was thinking about SWtoR, and realizing that even if I played it, I probably wouldn't be in for the long-term because of the potential endgame. When it comes to raiding, I'd play WoW. That's Blizzard's wheelhouse, and you should do something different if you want to compete. Plus, a dozen smugglers and a dozen jedi all facing a single sith lord with 1 trillion hp or whatever just wouldn't fit with that world. Han Solo wouldn't be part of an MMO raid.

But if the endgame was just more 5-man stuff, it wouldn't seem like a "serious" game to me. There needs to be some way to step it up at max level, and the option to play with more than a single group should be there. However, building an endgame around 10- or 25-man groups is, frankly, not a good idea, especially considering how scheduled and job-like raiding becomes.

Then I had an idea that would fit perfectly in the Star Wars universe, and could be used in other games as well:

Strike Teams.

Instead of a 10-man raid on a dungeon, you have a pair of 5-man teams that are linked into a Strike Force, with a shared chat channel and some other ui components (scale it up for larger groups). Then, each Strike Team of 5 goes into the dungeon from two different entrances or angles, with two different goals that link together. You are still playing in 5-man groups, but you're also getting a more shared and epic experience akin to raiding.

Let me walk you through an example. I know some of the elements I'm about to describe aren't part of the ToR world, but let's pretend for this example that we are in the time period of the original Star Wars films:

You form a Strike Force out of two Strike Teams: Red and Blue (oh, oh, let us name them in-game!). Blue Team approaches an Imperial Battleship in a millenium-falcon type vehicle pretending to be a cargo delivery. Once in the hangar bay, they begin to take out stormtroopers on their way to disable some of the security measures of the ship. Meanwhile, Red Team sneaks up on the Battleship by hiding behind asteroids, and launches an attack in a set of x-wings just as Blue Team opens fire inside the ship, creating a mutual distraction for each other. Once Blue Team takes out some of the defenses, Red Team boards in a different section of the Battleship and progresses towards the brig to rescue a captured rebel leader. Meanwhile, Blue Team takes out security and creates distractions that help the enemy from noticing Red Team, utilizing constant communication between the teams. As the mission reaches its climax, Blue Team unexpectedly faces down a Sith officer who has appeared to put a stop to their sabotage, while Red Team is pinned against the locked door to a cargo chute that leads down to the hangar bay, fending off wave after wave of security bots while protecting the rebel leader. Once the Sith officer goes down, Blue Team can activate the hatch allowing Red Team to reach them, and both teams escape together on the Millenium Falcon. Perhaps they lay explosives before they leave, leading to a dramatic ending as the teams fly away from the exploding imperial ship.


What do you think?

WoW Radio Closing Its Doors . . . Sort Of.

My favorite podcast provider announced a few days ago that it will be closing down. WCRadio.com, affectionately known as WoW Radio, has been around for 6 years, providing a centralized, united source of WoW media, flagshipped by their fleet (wait, that metaphor made no sense...) of weekly WoW podcasts, and accentuated by events like their exhaustive Blizzcon coverage and WoW Idol, a showcase of WoW-themed music created by fans*

But thankfully, WoW Radio won't really be gone. Each of its nearly a dozen podcasts will be continuing on their own, and the wcradio.com site will become a hub to help us keep track of where they've gone. Though my favorite podcasts will continue, and perhaps even be improved now that the overhead of running the entire organization is gone, I can't help but feel, with a twinge of sadness, that this is the end of an era.

So long and thank you, WoW Radio.

If you, dear reader, are not listening to WoW Radio, here's what you should be downloading right now:


Blue Plz!

Winner of Larisa's "Best Podcast" award for 2009, and my favorite podcast ever, Blue Plz! is not to be missed. Snarky solo host Totalbiscuit brings his homebrewed combo of British wit and belligerence to bear on the most controversial WoW topics of the day . . . and if there isn't a topic of the day, he'll make up some controversy on the spot! He's intelligent, opinionated, and always entertaining, and he's not letting the over-entitled get away with anything.

Except . . . TB . . . please stop it with the "singing".


Casually Hardcore

Much more generally inviting, but only slightly less entertaining, is Casually Hardcore. It's hosted by a team of older gamers (in their 30s) who talk about trying to fit WoW gaming into their busy lives around their children ("Nemesis" can often be heard interrupting the show to ask his parents for a juice box), jobs, and other hobbies, but it's by no means dry. Hosts Gnomewise, Iolite, Gwenora, Daksa, and Grail (a nice mix of 3 men and 2 women) imbue the show with constant levity and humor, and most of the meat of the show is about relaying and digesting WoW news to help the casual player keep up with what is going on and actually make sense of it. They definitely showcase what it means to be "casual" without any of the negative connotations that word sometimes gets.


Octale & Hordak vs. The World

You are the world, and they are versus you! Often imitated, never duplicated, and sometimes eviscerated, hosts Octale and Hordak - along with their 3rd wheel Doc Dead - are smart guys with a great sense of humor. Though the show rarely discusses WoW anymore, instead focusing on other developments in the wider world of gaming, it's non-stop entertainment. Their use of "drop-ins" (a common radio trick of using audio clips they can play at the push of a button) is especially enjoyable.


the rest

The three I've already listed are at the top of my weekly podcast listening list, but that doesn't mean that the rest of WoW Radio's offerings are any worse. For more Totalbiscuit, listen to his general gaming show called "Gaming the System". Natural20 provides great guides to WoW class mechanics in "Just Plain Better", which I'd highly recommend to anyone who wants to better understand their class. General gaming show "Maxspeed" is also entertaining (if a little bit more on the juvenile side) and "But Wait, There's Lore" is great for people who care about - you guessed it - lore.


So if you are interested enough in WoW to be reading this blog, I highly recommend you check out the shows on WoW Radio, and follow them as they go their separate ways. It is a sad day to see an institution in the community go, but I can't be too sad when the podcasts are still going to be there.

And finally, I want to offer a heartfelt "thank you" to WoW Radio for all of the hours of entertainment you've provided for me. Keep it up.


*Check out Brewguy, especially "The Ganker", and Fatty, especially "Nerdcore".

Quick Notes on Dragon Age

I'm enjoying Dragon Age: Origins. I'm about 20 hours in, and it's felt like 5. I usually don't go in for the straight-up, Song of Ice and Fire hardcore fantasy stuff (except for Tolkien), but the setting has really hooked me, and the gameplay is the best PRG mix I've seen in a while. There is a TON of dialogue and text, which is usually pretty high quality. If I have one complaint, it's that sometimes I'm stuck in the 10th long dialogue tree in a row and I haven't fought anything for an hour, and my sword arm starts getting real itchy.

The dark, gritty, realistic nature of the world is what really hooks me. I shy away from swords and sorcery in general because I expect it to be trite, stereotypical, and unoriginal Mary Sue fantasies for insecure boys (sorry, fantasy fans!). But the story, setting, and characters in Dragon Age are complex and live in shades of grey, rather than black and white (making the players title of "Grey Warden" especially fitting). Unlike, say AoC, where "mature" means "boobies and blood", Dragon Age is the most actually mature game I've ever played. You will make hard fucking choices in this game. Almost every quest leaves you to decide who lives or dies - with no obvious, easy answer. There are overarching villains and heroes, but you'll find that though the individual story areas almost always have apparent "good guys" and "bad guys", neither of them are quite what they seem. It will always turn out that the good guy did something horrible, and the bad guy is actually just misunderstood, or something like that. The game is all about choices, and almost none of those choices will be easy.

Not that there isn't plenty of blood. Comically so if you leave "persistent blood spatter" on in the options menu, which causes the blood shed during a battle to remain on character models during the following scene. It's hard not to laugh as the characters carry on a normal conversation, apparently unbothered by the spatters of blood ALL OVER THEM. I had to turn the option off to take the game seriously when, after the first battle in the game (which, in a nice piece of self-awareness, actually has you kill exactly ten rats) all of the characters were literally soaked from head to toe in rat blood and I couldn't suppress my giggles as they continued normally as though they, you know, weren't soaked in blood.

And the game is mature in so many ways, but it still just can't hide the fact that it was made by a bunch of young men for an intended audience of young men. It's just as obsessed with boobies as AoC. Demons are, of course, always depicted as naked women, and the worst of it is that one of the main storyline characters wears a "top" that's really just a loose scarf draped over her nipples. I have never seen so much side-boob in a game in my life. Don't get me wrong, I love to look at boobies. But it really takes me out of the setting when a guy runs into battle fully clothed alongside women with nothing but tassled pasties over their nipples and vajayjay. Boobies are the greatest destroyer of suspension of disbelief known to man, and in an immersive game like this, going so overboard with the adolescent, immature sexual imagery is a major misstep. Thanks, BioWare. Real "mature".


As an aside: I normally love Final Fantasy games, but I hated the most recent installment. The combat system and economy just felt so grindy and boring that I gave up halfway through. Though the tactics system in that game seemed like a great idea in a series where most fights consisted of you tapping through the "normal attack" option as quickly as you could. You set up a series of if>then statements for each party member that lets you automate them in combat.

Dragon Age copies that system almost wholesale, but for some reason I actually like it here. Maybe it's because I'm playing on a PC and I expect a deeper RPG experience here while I expect Final Fantasy to be a superficial game tacked on to an incredibly high-production-value story. Maybe it has something to do with being able to zoom out to tactical overhead view, or maybe it's because the abilities you character have are more interesting and varied. I really can't put my finger on it for sure yet.

The only other nitpick I have with the game is actually part of its greatest strength. The Dragon Age developers did an incredible job of creating the illusion, especially through dialogue, that every single response you make in a dialogue tree matters, and you actions can lead to different outcomes. And to a large extent, this was true. But there were a few fights where I died and had to reload, forcing me to rerun the same pre-fight dialogue tree again. And the illusion shattered as I tried different options and found that, though they slightly modified a line or two of the NPC's response dialogue, in the end I was being siphoned inexorably down one or two possible paths for the conversation. It shattered the illusion.

But that's like condemning the developers for not being able to perform a miracle. In the end, I'm loving the game, and expect that once my Human Noble Berserker runs through the game as a neutral pragmatist, I'm going to enjoy re-running the game as my Dwarven Peasant Rogue with a Heart of Gold and my Totally Cold-Hearted Bitch Elven Mage. Dragon Age is a triumph because choices matter enough that changing the way you act can breath new excitement into the game, and it's married to an RPG system interesting enough that I want to try all 3 classes.

Shorter Games Can Be Better

Here's an interesting piece at the Escapist about the plight of gamers who have grown up and found they just don't have time to indulge in a 30-hour game with work, kids, spouses, and everything else demanding more and more of their attention. The author actually seeks out games with story modes lasting 8-10 hours, and that represents a month's game investment to him.

I'd take this a step further and advocate that more games be made intentionally shorter, but also cost less. Then, if the game does well, sell DLC or sequels to it. That way, once the game is 30 hours long it cost $65, but if I just wanted an 8-hour diversion, I can spend $30 on the basic game.