Bonus 30 Days of Gaming Challenge: Day 33 - Biggest Frustration as a Gamer

"I can't do that, Dave," said my laptop, for the hundredth time this week...

Well it has been quite a while since I did any of these, although now I do have a few more written down to do in the future, but it is time for a further continuation of the 30 Days of Gaming Challenge which got this blog started in the first place.  I was going to write on the Most Disappointing Game, but my answer for it started to fall into too large a category.  So, I decided to keep the answer but change the title.

By far the biggest frustration for me in my times of playing video games, specifically PC games, is the bane that is System Requirements.  I cannot count the number of times I have seen a game come and go which looks utterly amazing, picked it up in the shop, looked at the back of the box, and put it down again and walked away.  The requirements for games are increasing dramatically, and it is very difficult to keep up.  In university, I have had the same laptop for 4 years now, and it's great at many things.  Graphics is not one of them.  It has been having increasing difficulty even running the basic games of chess that came installed with Windows!  I have a CD with the Samsung New PC Studio on it so I can transfer music onto my phone.  Not even that will run, though to be fair they added an excessive amount of graphics to a simple piece of software.

To be fair, this has probably meant that I have gotten more work done.  If I had been able to play Starcraft 2 when it came out, who knows how I would have coped...  Nevertheless, it is a sad trend that there is very little new content out there for people with older systems.  I know PCs are getting cheaper and some of the prices seem very reasonable, but many people simply cannot afford several hundred pounds.  And those gamers get left behind.  Minecraft won't even run on this thing, which truly baffles me.  Minecraft...

How can THIS not work?

Ok, my laptop is exceptionally bad graphically, and I have updated the card as far as it will go.  It's an ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M Series if you're interested.  I also get that laptops aren't designed to be gaming consoles like the PC.  Perhaps there are not that many people out there who enjoy playing games but are stuck with a low-spec computer.  However, for me, it is an endless frustration when the simplest of games refuses to run.  On top of that, knowing that any game that comes out is going to be well out of my league (again, Minecraft.........) is a bit of an issue from someone trying to write about video games in a blog.  Still, one day it will change when a new computer is purchased.  Until then, Civilization 2 is the game for me.

Minecraft: Gameplay – 1 : Graphics - 0

Well, it has become a phenomenon, and at last I have properly encountered it.  I spent several hours exploring the world of Minecraft today, and I have to say that I am impressed.  Minecraft is an incredibly vast and varied game where you can build just about anything you can conceive of – at least in shape.  Functionality is being continually added, but even now, the scale of the game’s potential is staggering.

Since when did 'sandbox' mean 'construct a new civilization out of blocks'?

 

I understand that the Beta version of this game was essentially an epic sandbox that allowed you to build anything you could conceive of, and people have built incredible things.  The version I tested today, which I believe is the release version, is much more of a survival game.  You are in a world.  It has many resources, including animals, and you have just yourself and the ability to craft anything you have the materials for.  Thus begins your adventure, if you can call it that.  Your first challenge is to survive the night, when monsters appear.  So you gather wood, turn it into planks, and build a hut.  Then, like primitive man discovering technology, so too do you make a wooden pickaxe which lets you mine stone which builds a better house.  A sword will defend against the monsters and from there the sky is the limit.  Literally.  Find more resources, build bigger and better things, construct intricate tunnels and rail networks and jukeboxes and a trail of houses across a world which is significantly larger than the surface of the earth!  The game, though simple at first, becomes as complex as you can make it, and it is both breathtaking and addictive to see.

Now, the biggest gripe that I think most people will launch at Minecraft is of course its graphics.  They are very simple, and hearken back to an age closer to the original Warcraft game more than anything else.  It’s a shocking thing to see in a game being produced today. However, the gameplay doesn’t suffer significantly for it, and in fact having everything laid out in neat cubes makes planning structures just that little bit easier, although of course going in anything other than a straight line is a challenge.  The graphics can sometimes get in the way of understanding exactly what you’re seeing, especially if you get turned around in the tunnels you dig, but that’s hardly a significant problem.  Basically, after you’ve played it for even a short time, you suddenly realize you’ve stopped worrying about the graphics at all, and you’re entirely focused on dealing with the threat of this laughably pixelated spider which is jumping at you.

That’s the surprising thing about Minecraft: the danger of it.  Though the zombies and creepers aren’t particularly threatening visually, the pure terror you can have when you’re half a mile underground, digging away, and suddenly there is a guttural growl behind you... that sound will shake you to your core.  You look around in all directions, and there’s nothing there.  So you keep digging, and the zombie snarls again, this time closer.  In the mines, no one can hear you scream.  The people watching me as I played were laughing quite a lot about just how paranoid I was being – building a back door to my house by tunnelling for half a mile, and placing a door inside the tunnel to trap anything that got in.  When you suddenly realize you’ve constructed an elaborate security system out of pixelated cubes, you understand the power of Minecraft.

This is an excellent game, and I can see why even the Beta version became so phenomenally popular.  This is not the Beta version however, and it is far more of a video game and far less of the ultimate sandbox.  Or rather, it is still the ultimate sandbox, but now you have to earn your right to play in it.  The graphics are incredibly low, but the content is so vast that it makes up for it several times over.  It’s a game that anyone can play and pretty much all ages and demographics can enjoy.

Gameplay – 1 : Graphics – 0

RPG vs DND Part 1: Graphic Imagination

      So I love RPGs, both regular and MMOs.  They’re great fun, and I’ve already explained why they are amazing.  But given the opportunity to spend the afternoon playing Neverwinter Nights or playing Dungeons and Dragons, I’d choose D&D every time, even if we were playing multiplayer NVN.  Why?  This week I would like to look at the relationships between virtual and tabletop RPGS.  Conveniently, I have three points, so I’ll divide this into three posts. 

                    Part 1: Visual Graphics vs Imagination

Can you say 'special effects'?  I can.

One of the best cases in favour of virtual RPGs is that you can actually see what’s going on.  In Neverwinter Nights you can see the enemies, see how many, what weapons they have, and all of that.  Also, it saves having to listen to the Dungeon Master giving a ten minute description of just how imposing the fortress is.  You can see it.  Your eyes process faster than your ears, at least when it comes to images.  I suppose reading a description of a sound is slower than hearing it.

So is this a crypt or a marketplace?

In D&D (or whatever tabletop RPG you prefer.  We can discuss that another day.) you have to rely on your imagination and memory to keep track of what’s going on.  You can use models and grids to map out a battle, and maybe the DM will be nice and draw you a map or a sketch of a building.  Generally though, you have to visualize everything yourself, and this does lead to confusion.  As DM I often find that I have forgotten to mention something important, like the giant pit in the center of the room, or the description of the altar the necromancer is standing behind.  This causes problems that you don’t really have as often in a video game.

Nowadays, with 4^th edition, there is supposed to be a lot of software you can buy to make all the rooms on your laptop for your dungeon and visual aids are a lot easier to construct.  For those of us who don’t have that luxury however, the graphics and sound effects of video games seem much easier than belaboured and detailed descriptions of the stickiness of the floor.

Day 23: Game I think had the Best Graphics or Art Style

Very tough decision here. Many games which I would be tempted to put here, like Flower for the PS3, or even Portal, I simply can't comment properly on because I haven't played them. Even Smash Bros Brawl has excellently detailed renderings of all of the characters which I love. But there is one game which I feel deserves this title.

Starcraft was made in the mid 90's and so obviously, can't compare with games made today directly. But it remains one of my favourite games graphically, and the reason is quite simple. The characters are relatively rather small and if you watch closely, they only have a few different poses, but that doesn't matter. Everything in the game is simply done, but still detailed and interesting to look at, right down to the basic Zergling. They only have maybe 5 different poses they can stand in, but when watching a massive battle take place, you can still see everything which is happening cleanly and clearly. There is no confusion about what is going on which you get in other, more graphically advanced games. Just watch the Transformers movie and tell me that improved graphics makes for clearer images. Starcraft was smooth, streamlined, and remains one of my favourite games as a result.

It is this graphical style, which was used similarly in Warcraft II at the same time, which is what I didn't like about the graphics increase they made for Warcraft III (and what I am afraid of in Starcraft II). It's more difficult to make out what all the units are and what they're doing in a big battle in Warcraft III because there is more to them. More to see, more to process, more to be confused by. Starcraft was simple, but it was elegant, and I think it deserves this title as a result.