The Space/Time Continuum of Multiplayer Gaming

It's not a particularly novel concept, but it is interesting to look at how we play games with our friends in terms of space and time. Are we playing together in the same room, or are we in separate places and competing over the internet? Are we playing together at the same time, or can our play time be mutually exclusive? It should seem quite obvious that the most popular form of multiplayer gaming is remotely synchronous. Every online shooter falls under this category, and it's this category of competitive gaming that companies spend the most amount of time and money on... Right?

Well, it's not entirely true, and I'll get to that in a bit. First, let's look at which realm the first form of competitive gaming was in: co-located synchronous. Spacewar! and Pong were both strictly multiplayer games that required both players being in the same room looking at the same screen. It's interesting to note this, because the next wave of arcade games were almost all single-player. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong; just about every other old-school arcade game you can think of is single-player, but they did issue in the second realm of multiplayer gaming: co-located asynchronous. While you were not directly competing against anyone, every game had a leaderboard, so you took turns going for the best score, and in that way you were competing against everyone who came before you and everyone who would come after you.

So, if you think about it, leaderboards are still the most common form of competitive gaming, but now they're all online. Just about every Xbox 360 game has some sort of online leaderboard, but when the boards are so expansive they tend to lose meaning. They're great for competing for the best kill-to-death ratio in Call of Duty or the for the highest Pacifism score in Geometry Wars 2, but they're such minimalist interactions that they barely qualify as competition. In fact, they're more of a meta-game than a game, since you don't play leaderboard. So, if you exclude leaderboards, the most common form of competitve gaming these days falls in the remote synchronous quadrant. While I would never complain about this, I would like to enjoy games in the other realms as well.

Party games, much like blockbuster PC games, seem to be a dying breed, which is just a shame. Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo: Combat Evolved pretty much mark the the last hurrahs of co-located synchronous gaming. We definitely live the age of online gaming, and the problem with it how impersonal it can be. Sure, split screen was and still is a nightmare, but we've become so spoiled by Xbox LIVE and the like that it's almost become taboo. Hell, Call of Duty and Battlefield won't even allow you take a friend online with you, which is almost unforgivable. LIVE games are great for keeping in touch with friends who've moved away, but it's ridiculous that if I'm hanging out with a group of friends and we all want to play our favorite multiplayer game, everyone has to return to their respective residences to play on their on 'Boxes. These days, the only company that seems to still encourage the party game is Nintendo...which not-at-all coincidently has the worst online gaming network.

So, there's my little rant about synchronous games, but what about the asynchronous? Well, if you take leaderboards out of the equation, they don't exist all that much. There are turn-based games like Chess or Advance Wars, but are they truly asynchronous? I guess I'll accept a "yes," especially if you're playing Advance Wars on a single Gameboy since people usually take turns observing the gamespace.

Something that I hadn't seen very often until quite recently is the asynchronous remote game. The first game of this type I remember enjoying was Scrabulous on Facebook. Now I play Words with Friends on my iPhone, and it's essentially the same thing, but I like it better because playing it on my phone is far more convenient. It's absolutely fantastic. For those who don't know, it's the classic Scrabble board game (with a few minor changes to avoid copyright infringement), but you can take as much time as needed between turns and simply play at your convenience. It's a way to throw in some quality gameplay with friends while you should be doing something else. I would love to see more games like this in the future.I'd love to see more original games of this type that aren't adaptations of established board games like Chess or Scrabble. Advance Wars (well, it'd have to be a copycat of it) would be particularly great.

So, anyway, I hope I've given you guys something to think about while I'm out of town this coming week. For those of you familiar with Words with Friends, check out the 1500+ point play in the picture above. Somebody had the play of a lifetime; although I suspect it didn't come about organically.

--Chilly P

Balanced Brawl

You may or may not of heard of Balanced Brawl, but it's an impressive, FREE project made with the mission of balancing Super Smash Bros. Brawl (duh). Anyway, I downloaded it tonight and got it up and running in under 30 minutes, 95% of which was spent on my computer getting the SD card ready (All you need is an SD card; no hacking or Homebrew Channel required, and it won't keep you from being able to play standard Brawl). I've played around with it a little bit (just against AI opponents), and I can testify that it was really easy to set up. Just follow the instructions here. Hurry up, too, before Nintendo shuts it down or releases a patch that disables it. Hopefully they won't do that because this is no way shape or form causes them to make any less money, but who knows. It is Nintendo's right to make sure Captain Falcon blows nut sack.

The downside is that the way it works is by going through the Stage Builder, and a casualty of that is that you can no longer have custom stages. That makes me a sad panda. It's definitely worth it though (I hope) because if I can actually be competitive with Yoshi, I'll be able to get over the fact that I can't play on Wally McSpinzor anymore. Once I really sink my teeth into it, I'll be sure to report my impressions. I will say this, though, this is definitely still Brawl, so don't expect to start wave-dashing or L-canceling any time soon.

--Chilly P

p.s. I did go to the site to ask around about getting my custom stages to work, and there apparently is a work around, but you need the Homebrew Channel, which I have but don't trust. Anyway, if you can get into a chat with the Thinkaman, he can help you out.

Top 10: What the Hell Were They Thinking?

I like lists, so I'll be doing top 10 lists every so often. This edition is about some of the all-time fuck-ups in game design for this current generation (Otherwise the QB Vision Cone would be on here...possibly twice). Note that something like "The Javelin Glitch" won't be on this list, because there wasn't some fart-knocker over at IW who thought it'd be fun to sneak that into the code. It wasn't a design decision. So, here we go: a list of some shit that broke the game, some shit that was unfair, some infuriatin' shit, and shit that's just dumbfounding.

10. Brutal Legend-> Roadies
I know a lot people probably didn't play this game (let alone played it online), but let me run down the basics. It's an RTS (Schafer is lying to you) where the only way you can win is by destroying the enemy's stage, which is their only non-defense-tower building. Only one unit in the game (which belongs to one of three factions) is anti-building: the Roadie. The roadie is also the only unit that is invisible unless you are close to it. It's an invisible unit, which destroys your base quickly. Yeah, sounds balanced, right?

9. Mass Effect-> The Mako
Holy shit, I hated the Mako and I'm so glad they completely axed it for the far superior sequel. Trying to drive that jalopy over mountainous terrain was about as entertaining as rubbing my knuckles against sandpaper.

8. Grand Theft Auto IV-> Entertaining Friends
I'll never understand how this game got such a high metacritic score. You had your whiney, needy, backstabbing "friends" calling you every three damned seconds to insist that you go bowling or dart throwing or mini golfing (oh, wait, the mini golf course was just a prop), and they'd bitch and moan if you couldn't shake the cops in your greased up Admiral (more on that later) in time to satiate their spontaneous demands. Then, you finally pick up your annoying cousin or that incomprehensible Jamaican dude and when you finally get to the bowling alley, you find yourself spending 15 agonizing minutes playing a minigame that wouldn't make the cut in Fuzion Frenzy.

7. Halo Wars-> Prophet Rush
It is nearly impossible to beat a Prophet of Regret rush in 1v1 or 2v2 if you're using the UNSC. Even if you do possess the skill to fend off the rush, it takes way, way, way more time, effort, resources, and skill to defeat the rush than to execute it. I know they've nerfed the Prohpet by making him slower, but it's still a pain in the ass. Why the hell does he get an overshield? At least make him upgrade once or twice before you make him the only leader with auto-regenerating health.

6. Modern Warfare 2-> Akimbo Shotguns
I think anyone who's played Mod2 (and there are a lot of you) know exactly what I'm talking about. Sure, Akimbo made sense for SMGs and pistols because those are guns that lose significant accuracy when hip-fired, but who aims down sight with a shotgun? Ever? It just doubled the effectiveness of an already effective gun. That first patch couldn't come fast enough.

5. Call of Duty: World at War-> Bouncing Betties
The very first time I my head got blown off by one of these little bastards, I was dumbfounded. Where the hell did that explosion come from. I then sat back, stupified, as I watched the killcam show a nearly-invisible mine hop right out of the ground and explode in my face. It was from that moment on that I realized that World at War was not a game I would enjoy. Now, before you say, "Just put on Bombsquad," let me say this: fuck you. Don't defend them.

4. Gears of War 2-> Grenade Planting
I talked about this in my Rules for Shooters. A lot of people complained in the first Gears that it was too easy to get kills by grenade-tagging, so they responded to that in the sequel by letting you grenade tag EVERYTHING. The best part is that before they patched the game 30 times, the planted grenades were nearly impossible to shoot down if you did luck into seeing one before it killed you, and any douchebag running around the map controlling the 'nade spawns could actually plant infinite grenades. How the hell does it not occur to you that some douche is going to just plant a grenade next to grenade spawn and then run around planting grenades all over the damn map? They didn't even disappear when you die, so every game of Annex turned into a damned minefield. Ugh, terrible. To make matters worse, some maps had rotating weapon spawns that switched between frag and ink grenades and one team would get frags every time while the other was always stuck with inks (they patched that quickly, but what an inexcusable oversight). They have since patched the game numerous times so that a player can only have two active mines at a time and they're slightly easier to shoot down (although it still takes multiple shots for some reason). It's an improvement, but I would still prefer this feature be removed entirely.

3. Grand Theft Auto IV-> "Realistic" Car Physics
Hey, remember in GTA: Vice City when it so entertaining to just drive around in a Comet or a Cheetah and e-brake your way around every turn? Remember in GTA IV the first time you tried to e-brake around a turn, and the car went careening uncontrollably into the nearest pole, and then you went flying out the windshield, and a cop ran up and busted your ass on the spot? Yeah, that was fun, wasn't it? I looked "realistic" up in the dictionary, and this may shock the folks over at Rockstar North, but "fun" was not listed as a synonym. Also, Niko, buckle your seat belt. Not that hard.

2. Gears of War 2-> Smoke Grenade Stuns
I mentioned this in my rules post, but yeah, the 2 second rag doll effect was awful. The worst part is that it was inconsistent, too. Get stunned on some stairs and your floppy ass is gonna slowly slide all the way down while Cole Train patiently follows you down so he can chainsaw-domize you as soon as you get up. I actually remember wondering why they didn't just use the same animation they used for when your teammate hit you with a mortar. It only took them about a year to figure that one out.

1. Super Smash Bros. Brawl-> Random Tripping
Here we are, folks. The most mind-boggling design decision of all time: random tripping. I'm really not even sure what to say about it. I guess it's supposed to be some sort of rubber band system for leveling the playing field, but why can't I at least turn it off? I'm really just dumbfounded by this one. It's just so profoundly stupid. I guess I can postulate as to how the idea came up in a meeting:

"Alright guys, we've already taken away wave dashing to make sure our game is less fun for the people who will play it the longest, but I'm still worried our game is too good. We certainly want these people to buy our game, but we can't offer downloadable content on the Wii, so we need them to get bored with the game and buy Wii Fit. Any ideas?"
"We could take Mario out of the game."
"No, we need them to still buy it in the first place."
"Let's have the guys who compiled the soundtrack for Sonic Adventure 2 do the game music."
"No, no, the soundtrack really is a purchasing incentive for a nostalgia-based game like this."
"I got it. Let's make people trip randomly like they slipped on one of Diddy's bananas."
"My God, Jusaka-san, you've done it! It's perfect! It won't keep anyone from buying the game, and the hardcore players who buy a lot games in the first place will be infuriated by such a blatant random event! Fellas, crack open the sake and break out the hentai!"

The reason this is number 1 is because out of every fuck-up on this list, this is the only one where I really can't imagine any reason a sane person would include this in the game. It's not a balance oversight, it's not there to show off any sort of techno-babble, and it's not supposed to simulate something observed in real-life (maybe Bugs Bunny cartoons). I really just don't know what the fuck they were thinking.

--Chilly P