Poor Dead Island

So Dead Island is a great game.  I love it, and if you head to any forum for the game to talk about it, you'll find that most people there also enjoy the game immensely.  So why does it seem to do so poorly?  Why do so many people dismiss it so easily, despite many not even having played it?  Well, I'll try and explain what I feel are some of the bigger problems that acted as a barrier between gamers who might have enjoyed the game, and the game.

Dead Island could be best described with the title of a 2004 Jim Carrey movie.  It was basically doomed to failure for a few main reasons.  The first issue was the trailer.  While very well made, and wonderfully dramatic, it didn't show any gameplay during a time when gamers were starting to revolt against trailers that used heavy cinematic footage with little to no gameplay; a common tactic with a lot of games that are trying to hide that the game itself isn't much to look at.  So after finally hearing about a trailer from this hyped "melee-focused" zombie game, a lot of people weren't okay with a trailer that didn't focus any of the melee-focused gameplay.  Later trailers did include gameplay, but by then a lot of people had lost their interest.

The second issue is simply deciding to release a zombie title during a glut of zombie games.  With the popularity of games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Resident Evil 5, nearly every developer decided to jump on the zombie bandwagon; be it through full-on zombie games, or several games that included the apparently-obligatory zombie-focused DLC; so gamers were starting to feel stuffed and bloated on their feast of zombie-killing madness.  Doesn't matter if the trailers looked good or not.  Doesn't matter that this game was trying something different (EVERY game "tries something different").  Just... enough zombies.  Plenty of people just didn't wanna care anymore.

The third big issue, and this at least can be blamed more directly on the developers of the game, was when they accidentally released the developer's build instead of the final build when the game came out.  For those who don't know, the quick explanation is that the developer's build of a game still has all the bugs and glitches that get ironed-out during the beta phase of the game.  They were quick to fix the issue, but the damage had already been done.  Once word got out that the wrong build of the game was released, a lot of people decided they didn't want to risk their money on the game.  In fact, many people specifically wait until after a game is released to see if the game has any major issues, a buying strategy that is often justified.

And granted, even with the final build of the game, it was still fairly glitchy.  It suffered from what can only be described as PC Illness.  With so many possible ways for a PC to be put together, not to mention different drivers and other non-related programs on the PC that can cause issues, it can be tricky to create a game for the PC without SOMEONE having some issue or another despite both his PC being just fine, and your game being just fine; something just won't get along between them.  Unfortunately, Dead Island was worse than most games with this problem.  When the game ran fine, it was great, but if you were one of the many unfortunate people who's PC just didn't agree with the game you just fed it, it could be a nightmare.  Game freezes, random quests not completing properly, items disappearing from your inventory, and many other possible glitches that could be tricky to figure out how to fix.

In the end, Dead Island became a game that you had to WANT to enjoy.  You had to be patient enough to be willing to deal with any glitches that might come your way; you had to enjoy zombie games enough that, even in the middle of a flood of zombie titles, you still wanted more; and you had to be tolerant of a trailer that doesn't show-off much gameplay.  With those three factors all added together, it's easy to see how Dead Island, despite being a great game, had a fairly narrow target demographic with which to work.

And After Nearly 4 Years, I Exist Again.

I guess writing a blog is one of those things that once you fall out of the habit, it's hard to get back into it.  Lately though, the urge the start writing has been itching at me again, so here we are, and here I am.  I want to get back into updating this blog fairly regularly; I doubt I'll get to it on a daily basis, but a few times a week would be optimal.  As for my mission goal, it'll be more-or-less the same as before.  I wanna post about what I'm up to; including gaming, movie watching, and otherwise; post reviews of the games I play, and make blogs talking about my thoughts on game design theory.

Looking at my older posts, I noticed I got started on some rules for good game design, and I'd like to keep on that list; expanding it with more habits to be avoided to engaged; things I notice that tend to consistently make a game better or worse; as well as maybe clarifying on any rules that I find people consistently misunderstand.  Heck, maybe I'll even find, with feedback, that a rule or two should be scratched.

As for what I've been up to lately, mostly Dead Island Riptide and Fire Emblem: Awakening.  In fact, with May being Zombie Awareness Month, I was thinking I'd probably start-out the reboot of Idle Thinking by talking about the under-appreciated gem that is the Dead Island series.  I wanna get a couple reviews up for each game, as well as a post or two talking about what I do and don't like about both games.  Maybe next month I'll talk a bit about Fire Emblem and my history with the Strategy/RPG genre.

As for what I've been up to the past 4 years, mostly just life.  Working, sleeping, gaming, forgetting that I had a blog on which I wanted to post, that kinda thing.  I've somehow shaken-off my addiction to World of Warcraft in that time.  Not to say that I was specifically trying to quit, just that it ran its course and now... I dunno, just not as much drive to play it anymore.  I guess that the guild stopped raiding would be part of the reason, and getting a new job that made it so I couldn't make the raid hours anyway is another factor.

So here goes, hopefully this time I actually keep-up with something of a schedule on here.  Until then, game happy.

If it isn't one thing...

Well, my computer is back up and running. I meant to log-on and talk about its hard drive breaking, but then I realized that wouldn't work too well. Between that and a few other things in the past couple months that I'm sure you'd be bored to hear about, I haven't really thought to get around to updating the blog, but I'm back.

Humm... so what's happened in the past couple months? Dragon Age came out, it's a really fun game, though I admittedly haven't vested much time into it. It's a weird scenario where I love the game, but I never want to actually play it. It's like... I'm glad its there, but I'd rather it not bother me. I dunno. I spent a lot of time playing Left 4 Dead 2 during the brief week before my Hard Drive failed me. I really looked forward to getting back into it once I got back up and running, but so far that's also a no go. I also got Borderlands when it came out and a little fun with it, but between losing my characters to the hard drive demons and all the bull that Gearbox/Take 2 have been giving the PC players, I'll likely never touch the game again. A shame because it really is a great game, but I'm sick of giving my money to a company that makes me feel like a second-rate citizen.

So what HAVE I been playing? Well, with the Team Fortress 2 War Update, I've been spending a lot of time in there. Being more of a Soldier player (compared to Demo) I was happy to hear that they won the war, but the prize is a little lackluster. Boots that reduce Rocket Jump damage are nice, but they aren't worth giving-up the Shotgun. At least the Banner gives you a buff to make-up for losing the Shotgun, and Rocket Jumping really doesn't do THAT much damage. So hooray, we won... whatever I guess.

I also recently purchased Torchlight since Steam was running a 50% sale on it this weekend. Think Diablo with more cartoony graphics and you're on the right course. Over-all it's a really fun and solid game for only $20 (or $10 if you got it on sale). Apparently it isn't really meant to be a full-on title so-much as a precursor to an MMO that the team is developing that's due in a couple years or so. Makes it sound like a demo that you have to pay for, but it's definitely a demo that's worth the money. I might look into that, if it's nearly as fun as the single-player game then it just might stand a chance to wrench me away from WoW.

Haven't seen Avatar just yet, I'll probably go and see that on the 23rd. So far I've heard nothing but good from people who have seen it. District 9 is coming out on DVD tomorrow, so I'll definitely be picking-up that one before work.

And with that I say Merry Christmas to all, and all... I'm off to play some TF2.

[Insert Title Here]

Bleh, so here I am saying that I'm going to start posting more often, and it's been two weeks since I've done anything on here. x_x

So I got the Tetris DS issue about half-resolved. I purchased a new copy and made sure it was real this time, though eBay seems to be slow in their "investigation" of my pirated copy, I'll have to shake them down to see if they'll refund my cash. If not, I guess $15 isn't the biggest loss I could take, but still. Cash is cash. That's about half a tank of gas right there.

My mood on Majesty 2 is slightly soured lately, mostly caused by the fact that the Rogues are sickeningly over-powered, and a couple of missions in the game are randomly impossible without an over-abundance of them. It goes back to my design philosophy posts (which I do hope to continue with). Rule 1 was broken by making one class noticeably more powerful than the other classes, and Rule 2 was broken by the game seemingly being balanced around this fact. It's an interesting synergy between the rules that I hadn't noticed until Majesty 2, in fact. By breaking the first rule, people who don't use the over-powered element find the game to also be breaking the second rule in that the game isn't the fun kind of hard.

It's a pseudo-difficulty caused by the player not being notified by the game that there's this one over-powered element that they could have access to, so the game feels harder than it really is. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a Strategy game, so you should know about the power of the different units you can command. The problem with this though is that the game tricks the player into thinking that the other 12 classes in the game are worthwhile, when really it's mostly about how many Rogues you use.

So I pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2. I got a 10% discount on the game, and if that wasn't enough I also get into the beta/demo so I can check the game out a little bit before its official release. Of course, this has me playing a lot of Left 4 Dead recently. I really want to finish-out as many achievements as I possibly can, because I honestly don't know if Left 4 Dead achievements will be unlocked through actions taken in Left 4 Dead 2. On the one hand, they're two different games, so why would they share achievements? But on the other hand, they're two different games that play in the exact same way, just that one game has a few other options thrown into the mix. It definitely won't be possible on the 360, but maybe on the PC Valve is going to have some way that L4D2 will unlock achievements from the first game. Doubtful though, so I wanna get all the achievements I can. If nothing else, I want to at least get Zombie Genocidest.

Other than that, not much to report. Mostly just playing L4D, Tetris, and of course WoW. Oh right, and Zombieland was awesome.

Review: Majesty 2

Nine years ago a lesser-known title was released called Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. It was a unique strategy title released amongst a sea of Star Craft clones. It was a different kind of game that was less about micro-managing a large army by directly telling them what to do, and more about building your city and making effective use of your gold to ensure that your heroes were as strong as possible. Motivating them was done via reward flags that gave them gold for completing certain tasks. You could build them a blacksmith to upgrade their gear, a market place so they could buy health potions, and there were even rival heroes of whom you had to pick. If you wanted Dwarves then you would have to give-up the ability to bring Elves or Gnomes into your city. There were also rival temples, allowing you to either recruit healing priests, or skeleton-summoning necromancers among other priest types. The game was a cult hit with it's uniqueness being one of the favored things by its fans, but it seems that Majesty did copy one aspect of Star Craft, and that's its sequel release. After nearly a decade's wait, we finally have Majesty 2.

Majesty 2 plays virtually identically to its predecessor, but with a few noticeable changes. Where in the first Majesty you could micro your tax collector's route by removing certain buildings from his collection path, in this game you can only modify how much gold is needed before your tax collector sets out. The game also removed your ability to manually destroy one of your own buildings, a move to counter players from making cheaper buildings at the edge of their exploration zone and destroying them to creep along the map as an exploration method. Also gone is the rival dynamic of the races and temples. You can bring both Elves and Dwarves into your kingdom (Gnomes are strangely missing), and you can build any combination of Temples you want. The game still makes it a point to tell you who doesn't like who, but there seems to be no penalty for ignoring those warnings.

There are certainly some refreshing changes though. For one, you can now assign a defense flag to a friendly hero or building. This counters having to put attack flags on multiple enemies who are all attacking a single target. Instead, you can assign that target to be defended and your heroes will react by attacking anything threatening the defend target. Another nice change is that Rogues are no longer a redundant third arrow-shooting class, instead being tooled as dagger-wielding melee combatants who can stun their opponent. Temple classes have had their power balanced a little by restricting where they can be build, now you need to track down some hallowed ground before you can recruit the powerful Paladins or vicious Blade Masters. Majesty 2 also seems to have brought its own quirky sense of humor, mostly delivered through your adviser who gives the mission briefings with an uncanny Sean Connery impersonation, but it isn't such an over-bearing humor that you feel forced to laugh at it if you'd rather ignore it.

The game isn't without it's flaws, however. The game's balance seems a little off, in that some missions will be a cake walk, and then the next one will be hair-pullingly frustrating. Part of this is a lack of balance in the heroes, in that using certain heroes will make the game a lot easier, meanwhile all the other heroes can be easily ignored. It's a unique synergy between my first two philosophies behind game design, the first faltered, and it snagged the other while it tumbled down. The lack of a freeplay option means your restricted to either the campaign missions or the few single maps available. Another lacking feature from the first game is the presence of borders when placing a new building to help you see where you can and cannot place your new building, instead you just have waver around the area you want to build and wait for the red highlight to go away as you seek the ideal spot.

Over-all though, Majesty 2 is an enjoyable game, especially for those RTS fans who are seeking something outside of the norm. This isn't just another Star Craft clone claiming to do something, this is a completely different kind of Strategy title that almost plays closer to Sim City than to most other common RTS titles.

Still Alive

After a brief hiatus, I think it's time I get back to posting on here. I'll probably be doing less of the themed posts, but I'll be trying to do more of the random little updates here and there; talking about games I've been playing lately or maybe a movie I caught and talk about what I think of them. You know, journal-type stuff.

So what's all happened in the past month... Well, I got Scribblenauts. It's an interesting enough game, though after a while the puzzle-solving aspect of the game runs a little thin when you learn that a lot of puzzles have the same basic themes and can be solved in mostly the same ways. The game starts out feeling very interesting and unique, but it quickly fades. The free-play mode still maintains a little entertainment value. It's actually kind of a good idea in that the title screen doubles as the free-play mode. You just start-up your DS, wait about 30 seconds, and there you go, create stuff and mess around, no menus to deal with unless you want to jump into the actual game. Over-all I'd say it's not a bad game, but it's definitely not something you'd play on any hardcore level. A fun little time waster on the side. Also, the game includes a lot of internet memes, so you gotta tip your hat at the developers' sense of humor. They weren't kidding when they said they wanted to include everything they could.

Majesty 2 was released this month as well, which came as a nice surprise to me because I didn't hear about them making a sequel to the game until it was put on Steam with a package that would give me Majesty and the Expansion for free if I pre-ordered the game. Sure I already have the first game, but it's a free package with a game I was already gonna get, and now I don't need to worry about losing track of the discs because I can just download it on Steam now. I'll probably do a review for Majesty 2 to a little more into depth, but as a quick preview: I'm happy with the purchase despite a few drawbacks.

I also finally got around to re-buying Tetris DS after losing my cart for it a few years back. Funny thing, turns out I got a bootleg copy. It's a good thing I still have a regular DS (Lite), because apparently the bootlegs don't run on the DSi. Still deciding on what I wanna do about the situation. On the one hand, I could easily get the seller in a lot of trouble since selling bootlegs over eBay is illegal, but on the other hand the game does work just fine for me, so it's not like I have an obligation to screw him over for giving me something faulty. I'm also not sure if I want to go through the effort of getting a legit cart... cause after all, if it works it works.

Still playing WoW a lot, lately the guild's been getting into ToC, but unfortuneately our current raid group isn't serious enough to do the harder content that's available to us. Creates a wierd situation where I want to cut-down on my WoW time, but I'm torn between the 10-man run with my friends and the 25-man group with the guild. The 10-man is more successful because it's made-up the more serious raiders from the other, but at the same time I feel obligated to stick with the 25-man since it's the guild raid. Regardless of which group I were to cut I'd be letting my friends down since they're in both runs, so it's kind of a matter of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I want to cut-down on the amount of time I'm playing WoW, but at the same time I don't fully want to step out of either raid group.

I went to see Pandorum the other day, it was pretty good. Not fantastic, but good. One of my friends warned me that the ending was terrible, and without giving anything away I'll say this: His argument is fair. He's right about his gripes with the ending to the movie, but his points are (for a lack of a better term) nerd gripes. They're the really technical kind of thing such that when he was telling me about them, I couldn't help but picture the stereotypical cartoon nerd ranting them off in my head. To each their own I suppose, he didn't care for the movie, I thought it was good. The plot was fully explained, and everything gets wrapped-up. Outside of those few technical things that don't really make sense, the story is actually a little bit better than I would have expected out of a horror film.

Whelp... I think that'll about do it for this post.