Jeffool.com

Despite all of my problems with them, I’ve found one. Oh Urban Dead, how I love thee!

The zombie apocalypse has come to the city of Malton, and right now ~40000 players are waging war against each other to end it, one way or the other. Here, let me give you the quick rundown of the free browser-based game.

Players accrue one action point(AP) every half hour, capping at 50. Survivors use these points to move across the city, search for items, attack zombies, and barricade buildings. Zombies attack barricades, smash buildings, and attack survivors. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? It’s all done with a web interface an minimal graphics (though there is a Firefox graphical addon.) Different actions cost varying amounts of AP, and when you run out you collapse, so it’s important to make sure you always have enough to get back inside a building.

You level up every 100xp, and then turn around and use those points as currency to buy abilities, human or zombie.

Guilds, you ask? Well, groups are completely unnecessary for a casual player, but for me they play a large role in UD and that’s what I’m loving about it the most. I’m playing with a group of people who all jumped in at once and are starting to get pretty organized. Over a hundred members of a forum I frequent jumped in at once as Survivors, and some of the scarier zombie groups took notice and wished us luck, so that really makes the chest swell with pride. (Also, it worries us that we’ll be targeted and made an example of, while we’re still all at low levels.) We’ve made our forums password-protected to keep spies at bay, and closed admissions to ‘unknown persons’, but things are shaping up nicely.

Yes, there are spies out there, and that’s why the players are truly the highlight of this game. Aside from the gang at Evil Avatar that I’ve joined, there’s the Channel 4 News Team to consider. I mean, Ron Burgundy isn’t going to take a zombie apocalypse lying down. Hell, he wouldn’t even take the regular apocalypse lying down, unless he were on horse tranquilizers. Also, you’ve got the Drama Club showing us all what true professionals they are, keeping the classics alive in the face of undeath.

Urban Dead isn’t exactly passive gaming, as it requires about five minutes (tops) of interaction on the part of the player, but keeping coordinated with your group and planning that move can easily take half an hour if you’re serious about it. If you can spare the time, I highly recommend joining up with pals (or mine, or another group,) and help take back Malton!

So, I beat Mass Effect yesterday. I think it’s important to note that I’m someone who has to check every nook and cranny, making sure that I have every weapon and item around. This game almost fucking killed me in that respect with its shitty item menus and rules. BioWare, rap the knuckles of your GUI designer (and/or the guy who did the item design,) hard, so they’ll understand the pain of my fingers after having to delete hundreds of items. But the meat is, of course, the story and player interaction with it.

I’m NOT saying it’s a bad game! In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed it! I thought the story they told was very well done, if reminiscent of the Fifth Element. I think many of the sidequests had wonderfully memorable characters in their motivations, mannerisms, script, and voice acting. I can only imagine the poor bastard that pulled his hair out making sure all the actors got their lines right. (He should buy some Propecia from Morlan’s famous shop! (I found his nervous confusion one of the most insanely genius bits of voice acting in the game for some reason. Probably particularly because of his race’s traits.)) But now that I’ve sucked up for a paragraph, what I AM saying is that the five points of conversation didn’t feel like they were utilized to their full extent.

Actually, there were two complaints. First is a very minor complaint, that there were some choices that I felt didn’t reflect the spirit of what the actual dialogue ended up being. It’s no big deal as, in retrospect I understood where they were going with the choice, but I wasn’t always sure what was going to be said. I would’ve liked to have seen everything I would’ve said in each reply choice.

Secondly, and most importantly, the ‘extra good’ choices (and I assume the ‘extra bad’, as I just restarted to play that tree,) only served to get free stuff or cement your opinions over others, meaning I use it every time it pops up, otherwise I choose ‘normal good’. This pretty much only makes two of the choices relevant. I chose a ‘negative’ choice, literally, less than half a dozen times (because they were too funny to pass up,) and the middle choice even less!

I’d like to see them tackle their next game differently, rather than good/bad plotlines. I’d much prefer to see them offer different character traits to coat your positive or negative responses with. I’m still imagining a system similar to what they have, but pared down to mostly either positive/negative responses with the player choosing his attitude in the delivery. Give the player the ability to say things stoically, comically, menacingly, politely, or earnestly (between the prior two.) It’d even be mappable to the same wheel they used, just have each area represent the demeanor, and two different buttons (A/B, or left/right bumper) stand for the positive or negative response. You can still get the good/evil bit, but you get more control of the character’s… Character, I guess, as well.

Sure I just raised their work only by… Well, five orders of magnitude… But this is my blog and I can make up crazy shit if I want. Hell, I’d be happy with threat, polite, and earnest, raising it by only one order of magnitude.

Other small things about ME:

The ability to actually alter the narrative of the game is exactly where I want to see games evolve in their future. One day we’ll reach a point where commercial games take all actions into effect, not just those it prompts the player with. Like Facade, only with a big budget… And probably guns.

Skipping through conversations I’ve already read is a horrible pain, as I’d inevitably click a conversation choice I didn’t want when trying to skip exposition.

While I wouldn’t have minded it if there was no voice acting, it was done phenomenally well. Also done well? Their focus on good filter use over polygons. I can ever forgive the pop-up because most of it looked so good. I was even able to watch my brother play often, as it was a pleasure to watch.

Williams’ incessant racism was crazy. Unfortunately, her being so damn good with a gun made me keep her around anyway. *sigh* Women. There’s always something.

Okay, there is no “skate. club,” but there should be.

I feel the need to preface this by saying that I loved the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games. LOVED. Of course, being as I loved them, I didn’t care for THUG, and didn’t play THAW or Project 8. Pointing out my love of THPS (and rebuke of its later iterations) is required because I feel like I’m cheating on it’s spirit by enjoying the skate. demo so much.

The game by EA Black Box (Black Box Games) has a demo on Xbox Live. I was impressed that someone, even EA, would challenge Tony Hawk for this crown. I was even more impressed by the fact that this game may just do it. I think the new control method presented in Skate is far more intuitive. While it has some problems, it seems likely that they will disappear with more time playing the game, like timing exactly when I should stop pushing and prepare for my ollie, or occasionally tweaking my board doesn’t go where I expect it leaving me feeling like I’m button-mashing.

What I loved was the presentation of the game; you’re a new guy learning to skate at the skate park, and that the entire purpose is to put together your own tape. Even the gameplay camera seemed to be through the lens of a viewfinder, though that would’ve worked better if it were explicitely stated. Maybe establishing a ‘friend’ carrying the camera and speaking to you, shouting words of encouragement/mock as he skates behind you, recording and instructing you?

I’m nit picking there, but it comes from the fact that I really enjoyed that in-game tutors explain things in mostly in-game terms. They tell you why the given instructions work as a skater, in addition to explaining how it works on an Xbox controller. I enjoyed it so much I think they could’ve taken it a bit farther and not had the in-game tutors explain how to manipulate the controllers at all, rather solely using in-game explanations like “put pressure on the back of your board, and then pull up quickly, causing the board to go airborne.”

When they introduced a new skater, a short “In your face! I drink Mountain Dew and eat Doritos!” style clip is shown, and while I didn’t mind a small clip to show him skating (it could’ve been used to add character,) I do think they squandered a tiny bit of goodwill by taking it overboard. Showcasing that skater’s board brand surprised me, his wheel brand puzzled me, but his shoe brand? Instantly annoyed me. Watch any skate show and they’ll occasionally mention who the guy’s skating with, but his shoes? Come on, we’ll never hear Sal Masekela say “Those Nikes are really holding him back this year!”

The tape editor that lets you creat your own ‘skate tape’ is a great thing, even if it isn’t what I’d call the most user-friendly thing in the world. More than once I found myself confused as to what the hell button I had just pushed, but I’d imagine most problems with it would be cleared up simply by spending more with it. I love that making tapes is apparently “what it’s all about,” but I do have one major complaint against it. There is no movable camera; you’re able to cycle through a few fixed views, and this hurts the feature. I’m not sure if the decision to not include free-range was by design (nah,) or technical (my guess, they were running out of time,) but I think the decision was wrong. In the real world tapes are often not only about kick-ass tricks you pull in crazy-ass locations, but about the way you show them to people. A movable camera is truly missed.

Overall I was very impressed. The new control scheme is exactly what was needed in a skateboarding game and they pulled it off (largely) just how you’d imagine it would work. Sure it’s not easy, but it shouldn’t be easy. It’s challenging in a correctly-fun way. In fact, I’ll go so far as to call it the Guitar Hero of skateboarding. Skate was built from the ground-up to to emulate skating as best possible with a controller, rather than being a video game first with a skating context added later. Proving Ground may have the big name behind it, but that doesn’t guarantee anything after playing this demo.

If this game were not published by EA, I would be buying it on the demo alone. Yes, I’m one of those people who sticks to a boycott. I suppose it’s time I reevaluate my years-old position as I already know I’ll be buying Spore… I mean, we haven’t had any more EA Spouse-ish stories for some time… Though, EA were dicks about removing that from their Wikipedia page…