Wednesday, July 21, 2010

EVE Online (PC)

EVE Online is a MMO spaceship game.

I'm going to admit up front that EVE and I are undergoing a trial separation at this time. We used to be pretty close, but over time she's gotten kind of ugly and ill-mannered and I think it would be better if I spent my time seeing other games.

EVE is definitely not new player friendly. In fact, if you don't know people who already play this game, I can't imagine anyone ever starting it and not utterly hating it. The interface is clunky and more importantly, the introductory mission path leads you through what ends up being the absolute worst parts of the game - which is everything except shooting other players.

So before I get too bogged down on that, let me talk about some of the good stuff. EVE's ship system is nifty. There's a nice variety of ship classes, each with configurable modules to specialize the performance of any given ship. Something they did really well is that ships of every size are actually useful throughout the life of the game. A veteran of many years can still get great utility out of a tiny frigate, and perhaps more importantly, a new player in that tiny frigate has usefulness as well. That's a goodness that few games accomplish, largely based on tradeoffs between size / firepower / agility, and providing roles that are filled by smaller ships as well as those filled by larger ones. Your tiny interceptor can be key in holding an enemy in place so your battleships can get close and slug it out, or a covert ops can be providing warp-to locations for the fleet, or deploying bombs in space. This wide range of useful actions for ships of all sizes is where EVE truly shines and you can spend quite a bit of time exploring and mastering the variations.

Player vs player combat is very well done, and both small and medium sized fleet battles are adrenaline-pounding intense. There's an outstanding cat and mouse component, strategic decision making, coordination, timing, and just a wealth of ways to make a difference that create some absolutely outstanding battle dynamics. Coupled with the fact that everything you own in the game is destructible and can be at risk in these situations, EVE combat with moderately well balanced forces can be a serious rush.

Unfortunately, absolutely everything else in the game is just blisteringly dull. I'm not even talking a little dull, I mean like really really excrutiatingly dull. All forms of in-game money generation are painfully boring. The mission paths, fighting NPCs are horribly repetitive and quickly mastered in a trivially repeatable fashion with zero risk. The more money an activity is worth, the more sacrifices you have to make (of your own time and sanity) to do it. And sadly, although relatively evenly matched combat is just a total blast, its hard to generate. You see, there's absolutely nothing in the game that encourages players to be in a situation where there's two relatively even sides fighting, and just tons of ways that discourage it. Combat is hard to find, and pretty easy to avoid. Generally the only good battles come from where both sides mistakenly think they have the advantage and thus choose to engage when they shouldn't have.

Now I spent a long time playing EVE with the acceptance that the 90% painfully dull gameplay was the price I paid for the 10% of really good combat. EVE was (and is) a serious waiting game. The kind of game you play in the background while you have a life and occasionally check in to see if its time to have some fun. That being said though... it got worse.

Basically CCP (the company that makes EVE) has gradually modified the reward structure and ship capabilities to encourage larger and larger groups, with no penalties for group size. They've removed area-effect weapons that punished large sloppy group use, and pushed the high end money-making activities to being focused on (wait, you know what's coming...) large groups.

Large group play takes all the good parts of EVE and just squashes it. Instead of interesting tactical decisions, you end up with a tactical decision of "can I get more guys?". Forget tailoring your ship for special roles, just have everyone equip long range lower powered weaponry. That way it doesn't matter where you are positioned, you'll still be able to shoot something. Since there's no longer any meaningful area-effect attacks, there's no penalty for just adding additional garbage ships. They take almost as long to kill as useful ones.

Worse yet, the larger the group is that you operate with by default, the longer it takes to get a battle set up. Whereas you might have had to get 10 guys on in one place for a good fight before, that quickly climbed and climbed and climbed. Whereas it was hard to find an interesting engagement with a smaller numbers of people, swell that to several hundred and add the increased visibility that comes with it, and your ability to generate a good battle becomes dismal.

This is the model CCP pushes towards though. Epic space battle, thousands of people shooting at each other in one place! Of course, once you hit about 100 people in one place on the server, server performance becomes completely sporadic. So now you're no longer going to get a battle based on the quality of your decisions, but instead based on whether or not you got the random blessing of the server. It is entirely possible for one side to simply freeze in space while the other side shoots them freely, or have their weapons lock up, get broken up, or even just sit there and watch while the other team gets to act and they don't. Yay, thanks CCP, you really took a good game and crapped all over it!

For me that's really EVE's kiss of death. It has been dumbed down to an unforgivable level, rewarding nothing but the addition of more bodies, and then causing larger battles to be completely random. If you were a low skill and uncreative player before, then this is great for you. After all, now you've moved up to a 50-50 chance of winning, and all you have to do is find the largest group around to tag along with. But if you were looking for the mental challenge of outwitting and outplaying a skilled foe, then EVE's days of glory are dead and buried.

If you haven't played it yet, give it a pass. EVE is no longer worth your time. If you still play it and haven't escaped, well there's still some fun to be had, but at the same time CCP is going to rub your face in all their screw-ups over and over and over while you play.

EVE Online
Rating: 7.0 (down from maybe a 9.0 before bad evolution)

Monday, July 12, 2010

Elements (Flash)

I'll do some larger games soon, but am spending too much of my time coding right now to give them proper attention. Until then, I thought I'd touch upon this little hidden gem for those of you who enjoy a bit of turn based strategy gaming. This game is completely free to play with no hidden costs or add-ons, which makes me feel kinda bad for the selfless fellow who builds it since it is a high quality game with solid production values.

Elements is an online card game, in the same basic genre as Magic the Gathering, but without the bloodsucking over-the-top pricing. Now everyone deserves to make money off their work, but MtG is pretty evil about it. Fortunately my addiction is done now, with only occasional flashbacks and gibbering in the night.

You start by picking your element - one of twelve, each with a different style of play. There's no 'wrong' answer here, since you will get to change it freely later on. But it does commit you to playing a particular style of deck while you are first learning and getting new cards. To begin with, pick anything that looks fun and then start getting a feel for what your cards do. Generally each element's starting deck comes pre-splashed with a second element since there are a large number of crossover benefits.

From there you'll get to select your games to play. There are a range of levels to play at, with the higher levels providing harder opponents, higher risk (each match costs you gold to play), and higher rewards. The lowest level match has no cost, but very limited rewards, so you can't ever get stuck in case you do horribly. More importantly, after every win there's a random chance of getting free cards copied from your opponent's deck (they don't lose said cards, you just gain them).

Between matches you can adjust your deck and buy or sell cards. I suggest not selling much, since its generally harder to get cards that gold. More importantly, there are a variety of rare cards that won't ever be for sale in the store, so you really don't want to sell these and then find yourself wanting them later. Sure, you can eventually find another, but it is really annoying to be stuck waiting for a specific drop.

Once you finish all the quests (there aren't that many) you're also given the option of upgrading cards. This generally makes a slightly better version of the original (lower casting cost, stronger defense, etc...), though a few of the upgrades have new powers or utility.

From there you pretty much just play for fun. The quest path is really short, but there's a great deal of fun to be had in building new decks and making them work. If you find yourself just playing one deck over and over and over, kick yourself and try something different. I occasionally let my kids pick an element and then build a deck around that for a change. There's a lot of solid replayability buried in this game if you avoid getting stuck in a rut.

On the down sides, the most competitive decks tend to be fairly predictable rainbow decks, using the most efficient cards from every element and pushing for a late-game win. Also, the top two npc opponents are just stacked with advantages to give them a chance to compensate for their lackluster AI. Double hit points, draw two cards/turn, three free mana/turn, ignore card maximums in deckbuilding, etc... Sure, they remain beatable, but losing because the opponent is drawing two cards/turn and casting the same spell 8 times in the first 8 turns is pretty bleh.

Anyways, I don't want to leave on a bad note because overall Elements is a really well made game, just leaps and bounds above the quality generally seen in free titles. If you enjoy strategy / card type games, it is well worth a play. Have fun!

Elements
Rating: 8.0

Monday, July 5, 2010

Plants vs. Zombies (PC/Flash)

One advantage to having kids (and there are a bunch actually) is that they play a variety of games you wouldn't have found and you get to look over their shoulders and check them out. My spawn are both hardened gamers at this point, so the variety of games this exposes me to is quite high.

My son found this one and soon had us all addicted to it. More importantly perhaps, he went the extra step and bought the full version of it, so we got the chance to play it start to finish with all the bells and whistles.

Plants vs. Zombies is a functionally simple single player strategy game where you defend your yard from Zombie assault by use of a variety of combat-oriented plants. Shooting plants, biting plants, magnetic plants, snowball plants, exploding plants, you name it, plants and violence just go together! Which is good, since there sure do seem to be a lot of Zombies out there in need of some chlorophyll laden crushing.

In the 'campaign' mode you are gradually introduced to an ever increasing array of plant options, while new types of Zombies are unlocked to assault you. The whole thing is done with an outstanding sense of humor. The help screen for example reads "When the Zombies show up, just sit there and don't do anything... - this help section brought to you by the Zombies". Each level you choose which of your plants to bring (enough to give some variety, but not enough to have the perfect solution to every problem) to match against the Zombies lurking outside your yard. Later levels include water plants for your pool (and corresponding Zombies with scuba masks, flippers, ducky floaters, etc..), fog, roof levels, and even a Zombie Zamboni machine that lays down ice for ice-loving Zombies to follow.

In addition to the campaign mode there are a plethora of minigames, puzzles, and alternate game modes. There are quite a few easter eggs buried in, which are gradually shown to you with a purchasable Tree of Wisdom. And you absolutely want to reach the final level on campaign mode. The end credits are a blast!

Plants vs. Zombies is light gaming, relatively easy with cartoony graphics, but its well worth a full play through. It is definitely fun, and was worth the purchase for the full version. Give it a try!

Plants vs. Zombies
Rating: 9.0