Friday, May 30, 2003

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault

Picked up a new game, Medal of Honor - Allied Assault which is a first person shooter based during WW II. The version that I actually bought is the deluxe version which includes the base game, plus Operation Spearhead (the first expansion). Game play is pretty solid and the level scripts (sometimes you have other AI toons helping) seem to be pretty resilient.

So far I've completed the first level (which has maybe half a dozen sub-missions) on medium difficulty. The worst performance that I've put in was having to take 3 attempts to shoot up the airfield (there are no health packs, and you're riding in the back of a jeep, manning a 30 caliber mounted machine gun). First go I almost managed to do it all, second go I died before even getting on to the airfield, third go I managed to do it with only a few percentage points of life left. Still, it's a fun, "shoot everything that moves" mini-level.

Getting to the lighthouse mission is probably my favorite so far as the best strategy seems to be go slow, pick your fights wisely. Only thing I wish I had different on that mission was grenades (can't ever seem to find the silly things unless they're being thrown at me). Memorable moment was expending 10 clips of rifle ammo (80 shots or so) over 5-10 minutes killing off all of the lighthouse guards as I crouched at the bend in the road. Sniper scope would have made that much easier, but I just kept returning fire at anything that shot at me until all of the incoming fire stopped.

posted by Wuphon's at 8:05 AM

Sunday, May 25, 2003

Bye Bye EQ

So, I finally canceled my EverQuest account. Primarily due to the developer's continued focus on "dumbing down" the game so that it appeals to the lowest common denominator. There's not much left to the game other then race to level 65 and get the uberest of the uber gear so you can brag about it. A large number of the simple, every day challenges have been removed. The latest example:

Casters get a spell book that has the capacity to hold roughly 400 spells (50 pages with 8 spells on a page). Not that any of the classes get that many, but a level 65 enchanter has around 280ish if they never delete their low level spells. Keeping your spell book organized so that you can find a spell quickly (about half your spells end up at the back of the book anyway) is one of the challenges of the game. Nothing rocket-science about it, but everyone has their own methods of organizing the spell book. A good, smart caster can sit (ctrl-S), open their book to the proper page (/book 8 or ctrl-B followed by the left-arrow or right-arrow to flip pages), memorize the spell and quickly stand back up. A badly played caster who hasn't organized their spell book takes a lot longer. Again, nothing difficult about it - but it gives you positive feedback every time that you're able to quickly swap spells due to the foresight of organizing your spell book. Now the developers have decided that this isn't dirt-simple enough and have added a pop-up menu that appears when you have an empty spell gem (you can only memorize 8 spells at the same time, which limits what you can have at the ready). This pop-up menu is a fully categorized menu tree of all of the spells that you have memorized. Pick the spell and your toon will stop, sit down, open their book, memorize the spell and stand back up. And everyone goes "Cool! Neat! Wow!" over the menu. While those of us with the big picture view see this and wonder WTH the developers are thinking - was having to organize your own spell book that difficult for the masses? I can hear some whiners complaining now that it's "too difficult" to keep their spell book organized, or to find a spell quickly in a pinch... well, the whiners won yet another round and EQ is a much less challenging game as a result. Now you can be lazy (not learn your spell book, or figure out how to swap spells efficiently) and yet still be as effective as someone who was willing to step up to the challenge and get the reward of efficiency.

Well, for me, lack of a challenge equals a boring game. Everyone says that this one little change isn't that big of a deal, and they're right, until you stack changes like this on top of all of the other "dumbing down" changes - then suddenly, the game looks a lot less complex, challenging, and rewarding then it used to be. (PoP book ports, lack of faction issues in the latest 2 expansions, the ability for 2/3 of the classes to easily solo to 50+, destruction of the community feeling by the developers...)

Labels: EverQuest

posted by Wuphon's at 7:38 PM