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| "One Badass Mouse!" Photo by Erik Charlton |
I have been inspired lately by a few posts regarding to what really matters in a game. Instead of giving out game reviews I'd like to talk about something rather important to myself as a gamer. I have read a few articles about it and I high recommend you do so as well!
Why music matters, originally written by Stephen Totilo of Kotaku, and has been reinforced by Kevin VanOrd of Gamespot. In addition there is a link about story telling in a game. I do believe though, developers should focus on getting the fundamentals well constructed before worrying about anything else, and here are my opinions.
I will start by telling you my experiences and how I came to this matter. Most of you should be very familiar with the good ol' Quake 3 back in the days, though haven't played competitively, I gave attention to the response and controls. Especially to what I believe is a fast paced game, every second and reaction from the player has to be directly transferred to the game play immediately and I feel some FPS games are missing that right now - and hail to the Quake 3 engine. Although it doesn't offer sublime graphics like the Crytek engine, the maneuverability is absolute, because in a nutshell the controls are simply an extension of your arms - so the response is important. Though I must admit Crytek engine is doing a great job hence it's dynamic environments and graphics, and for it to suppress most of the mouse lag is incredible - of course, assuming the frame rate you have is above 100.
The multiplayer system is next. Though it is a good place for people to interact and play with friends, there are a few functions which I believe is a must-include within the developers heart. Another story, I started playing COD: MW2 with friends and that was the first COD we decided to go ahead and shoot with, and it was always frustrating looking for games although they implemented the party systems. The hosts of the games weren't dedicated servers, but rather having another online COD player host the game - the lobby will automatically search until there are player matches. You can probably guess what the trouble is here. I'll list a few.
- Some players have low bandwidth with results in lagging the entire game.
- Players can also customize server options, leaving inconsistent game play.
- When the host leaves in the middle of a game, it will track its way for the most suitable player, often interrupting precious moments for some people.
- Sometimes being located in hacked servers - where some players have experienced loss of ranks, prestiges, and you name it.
The list will probably go on if you experienced the game yourself on PC. It doesn't stop here, even when we moved on to COD: BO. It was great, been waiting this game to come out and finally in possession of it. Onto the multiplayer - dedicated servers? Awesome! Wait... how do you join with friends? Oh well, I guess we will just change teams in game. Now sit tight because it gets even better, the game did not have the function to change oppositions for awhile until numerous patches came out, so we hardly were able to play together as a team. So the patch was released and now team changing is applicable, so what we had to do was click the score sheet button to check who had to change teams - luckily we had faster computers so we were able to do so usually. Only flaws?
- Can not play with friends sometimes, and it all depends on the randomized teams.
Immediate we can identify two basic problems in both these games with their multiplayer systems (the game play itself it absolutely incredible don't get me wrong) - but occasionally it got frustrating because finding a game or playing with friends seemed so hard. There is a game I'm playing now though which fixes both these problems.
Crysis 2, which i'm playing and one of my focus points at the moment, provides both implementations of fixes and that partly attracts a lot of players who play with friends regularly WITH dedicated servers, how awesome is that? I will not get into detail about this game - you can check back later because I will write about it asap. This game can ensure you to play with friends on all occasions except if you join games mid-way, that sometimes put your players in different teams. In my opinion when it comes to these multiplayer games, game play itself is not one entire factor anymore, it is these basic fundamentals that make the game play even more enjoyable. Seriously though, when you think about it... multiplayer... teams... don't developers think of "playing with friends"? COD developers said how both systems can not compliment each other but here we have it, Crysis 2 managed to pull it off and at least it is keeping me in the game because I don't get frustrated with problems that isn't the game play ITSELF! So check back later I will post some videos of Crysis 2 and will do another review over it!
Those are some of my opinions regarding the fundamentals in a game, let me know what you think.
hope you enjoyed this post! leave comments if you have any.
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| "Standard Hotel Lobby" Photo by Lauren Manning |
The multiplayer system is next. Though it is a good place for people to interact and play with friends, there are a few functions which I believe is a must-include within the developers heart. Another story, I started playing COD: MW2 with friends and that was the first COD we decided to go ahead and shoot with, and it was always frustrating looking for games although they implemented the party systems. The hosts of the games weren't dedicated servers, but rather having another online COD player host the game - the lobby will automatically search until there are player matches. You can probably guess what the trouble is here. I'll list a few.
- Some players have low bandwidth with results in lagging the entire game.
- Players can also customize server options, leaving inconsistent game play.
- When the host leaves in the middle of a game, it will track its way for the most suitable player, often interrupting precious moments for some people.
- Sometimes being located in hacked servers - where some players have experienced loss of ranks, prestiges, and you name it.
The list will probably go on if you experienced the game yourself on PC. It doesn't stop here, even when we moved on to COD: BO. It was great, been waiting this game to come out and finally in possession of it. Onto the multiplayer - dedicated servers? Awesome! Wait... how do you join with friends? Oh well, I guess we will just change teams in game. Now sit tight because it gets even better, the game did not have the function to change oppositions for awhile until numerous patches came out, so we hardly were able to play together as a team. So the patch was released and now team changing is applicable, so what we had to do was click the score sheet button to check who had to change teams - luckily we had faster computers so we were able to do so usually. Only flaws?
- Can not play with friends sometimes, and it all depends on the randomized teams.
Immediate we can identify two basic problems in both these games with their multiplayer systems (the game play itself it absolutely incredible don't get me wrong) - but occasionally it got frustrating because finding a game or playing with friends seemed so hard. There is a game I'm playing now though which fixes both these problems.
Those are some of my opinions regarding the fundamentals in a game, let me know what you think.
hope you enjoyed this post! leave comments if you have any.
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