Month: September 2015

Gotta Catch ‘Em All

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By now I'm sure most of you are aware of Pokémon Go, the recently announced ARG being developed by Niantic. If you've previously heard of Niantic it's probably due to their current game / tech experiment Ingress. Where Pokémon Go will have you traveling to various locations to catch Pokémon, Ingress has you travel to locations to capture portals and establish territorial control fields by connecting them.

I played Ingress for a while, starting last year when I first got a smartphone (yes I'm a late adopter). It's a fascinating and compelling game, but in the long term there wasn't all that much there. Part of the problem is that where I live is not at all a pedestrian friendly city, so playing required driving around to get to various portals. The other problem, which ultimately was why I decided to stop playing, is that Ingress is an entirely PvP game. Players are all on either a blue or a green team and compete to control territory. In practice, one team seems to dominate in most areas with the other scrabbling for resources. A PvP game that requires traveling to real life locations also opens up the possibility of stalking and actual conflict; a combination of serious players being serious and stories of real life altercations between players was part of what led me to stop playing.

Gotta Catch 'Em All
Having a portal by my house sounds like an utter nightmare.

I'm hoping that Pokémon Go will be more of a fully cooperative game. Obviously there will have to be some sort of duel mechanic, but if Niantic avoids players having to compete over resources I think it will be for the best. I'm actually curious if there will be resource requirements to catch Pokémon. Will it be necessary to find / purchase Pokéballs, potions, and so forth? It seems like a logical part of the game; we'll see if an how its implemented.

The thing I really liked about Ingress was how it led me to discover interesting places that I never knew existed in my own hometown. Pokémon Go has the opportunity to do the same for a wider fanbase. In Ingress portals are supposed to be associated with unique points of interest. New portals get submitted by players, and there's some gaming of the system that goes on. I know of a 'memorial wall' portal nearby that's really just a wall near enough to where a number of serious players work that they can guard and collect resources from the portal throughout the day. In Pokémon Go I would assume that Pokémon will simply be placed by Niantic; hopefully a lot of them will be in places that are interesting in and of themselves. Not having the territory control aspect would also remove a major limit on placement; there's no real downside to having a lot of similar Pokémon all near each other.

One of the fascinating things about Ingress is how popular something that is ultimately an ongoing experiment in gamifying Google Maps has become. The fact that it's free obviously doesn't hurt, but there are massive community meetups and events, and many players travel hundreds or thousands of miles to capture out of the way portals. Imagine now combining that with a proven IP with tens of millions of existing fans. If done well, this has the potential to be the new biggest MMO ever.

I'm hoping that Niantic has learned the proper lessons from Ingress and that, combined with the greater resources associated with a true commercial game using a proven and massively popular IP, they'll put together something truly impressive. For now I'm cautiously optimistic, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the project. Maybe a year from now I'll be out catching Pokémon.

Section X

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Life With a Teacher

Section X

It feels like I don’t have a whole lot worth talking about this morning.  My evening was rather fragmented, in that I got home fairly early and then spent the next couple of hours trying to pass the time while waiting on my wife to get home.  We had tentatively made plans to go out to dinner, and on a normal evening I would have fixed something and been engaged in a game by the time she got home.  This school year has been rather rough for her, and she is spending silly amounts of time up at school grading and planning.  It gets annoying at times because it is super hard to plan my life around her ever changing schedule, but I manage.  There are certain aspects of being a teachers husband… that no one will ever really understand fully.  We ended up going to a BBQ place near the Walmart Neighborhood Market, because my thought was after dinner we would walk over to the market really quick and pick up a few things.  This seemed like a simple in and out trip, and we could get on our merry way homewards.

Fate stacked against us, and of all of the places to have “back to school clearance” I did not expect a Walmart Neighborhood market.  For those who do not have these in their area, they are essentially a grocery store only Walmart, but have some minimal other items.  As we were rounding the bend past frozen foods I saw that they had a kiosk of back to school stuff.  I didn’t think anything about it, but next thing I knew we were sorting through all of the folders trying to pick out nine of each color from a mixed up bin of them.  I cannot count the number of times I have had an experience similar to this one.  There really wasn’t much space so my wife did most of the sifting through the folders but in the past I have had my hands knee deep in vats of assorted merchandise looking for that one item that matches the rest of the things we had pulled out.  Part of being a teacher is trying to find all of the things you need for your classroom as cheaply as humanly possible, and while I am fairly used to it… it just surprises me sometimes when I am not expecting it.  After all of the bin sorting… we got home a little later than I had expected.

Section X

Section X

When I finally got settled in for the night, I made a blanket cocoon on the couch and booted up Star Wars the Old Republic.  I am now on this kick of trying to get through all of the story line that I have missed before the release of Fallen Empire.  For this I am going to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Disney.  You cannot go anywhere right now without being deluged in Force Awakens merchandise, and with it comes an upwelling of all of the other movies that I am really damned nostalgic about as well.  I have these designs on making a Marathon of the movies this weekend while working on the SWTOR content.  It has been a really long time since I have watched the prequels, so I am honestly hoping I can bury the hatchet that I hold towards them.  The prequels broke me, and came damned close to breaking my love of Star Wars as a whole.  So when I heard about Force Awakens I was mildly interested, but now I feel like I am full on in the thrall of overwhelming feels towards the franchise I grew up with.  I even went so far as to order the Disney Infinity 3.0 Saga Edition… because it was on sale and two I had enough saved up discover credit to get it essentially for free.

Section X

 

I have to say playing this game again… and seeing fresh content in it… reminds me of why we were so damned addicted to it for a couple of month period after launch.  The story content is really good, and even though Makeb does not actually feature any “class specific” content I am absolutely enjoying myself.  I did however take a break from Makeb last night to start working on the Section X content.  I guess I played long enough to get that area unlocked for free, and with it should give me access to my very own HK-47 droid.  From what I hear it is a rather lengthy quest and involves collecting bits on several different characters, including a Sith.  Mainly I was told that if I cared about story progression, that I should go ahead and do that now before getting too deep in the new content.  As you can see from my previous pictures I went back to the Jedi Knight robes as seen on the box art.  I have to say I dig the Holowardrobe because it is way cheaper to change your appearance using it than re-modding your gear.  There are a few of us currently going through this Star Wars nostalgia attack, which makes me feel kinda sad each time I interact with the person who held down the fort while we have been gone.  I know that I am just here doing some MMO tourism…  and as soon as I am done with the story content I will be gone once more.  Even though I have not been playing a lot of it… Final Fantasy XIV is still my home base of operations.

The Future Is Mobile

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So, the Pokemon Go trailer is making the rounds. If you haven’t seen it, it’s here, and I’ve embedded it below.

The Future Is Mobile

Curious about the future of MMOs? I’m going to go ahead and say you’re looking at it, right there. It’s tech and concepts that have been around for a while, but it looks like they’re being polished to a mirror shine, and given a context that’s incredibly compelling. Look at what the video is promising– PvE (catching pokemon out in the world), PvP (trainer battles), and endgame raids (the final scene). It’s the essence of MMOs distilled into a mobile platform, and I have a suspicion it’s going to be massive.

Don’t believe me? That video has been up for less than 24 hours and it’s pushing a million hits. Pokemon has an absolutely enormous audience at a really broad age range– basically if you’re likely to own a smartphone, you’re probably familiar with Pokemon. The smartphone gaming market dwarfs any other gaming market you care to name, and it’s way, way more inclusive than other gaming spheres. You’re looking at an MMO that’s able to tap a market that dwarfs anything else out there.

The trailer is brilliant, too. Take a moment to watch it, if you haven’t:

Check out the people it’s showing. Opening shot of the world. We get some rapid cuts to a huge variety of people– a 20-something businessman, a dad and his kid, a studious looking woman, a bunch of teenagers, then a giant crowd at the end. The only child is the one playing with the dad– note: playing WITH the dad. This is a game where everyone can play together, friends with each other, parents with children, people from all walks of life, and everyone’s having a good time. There’s not a lot of advertising, especially in the game sphere, that promises that.

Just to further push that whole “this is a neo-MMO” concept, the trailer manages to capture that wonder of exploring as a newbie, the excitement of PvP, the fun of meeting new people in-game, and the tension and exultation of raid bosses in a three-minute trailer. The structure is identical to the trailers for a ton of other MMOs, down to the order in which everything is portrayed.

I’m pretty excited to see where this goes. It’s obviously a bit early to throw around words like “wow-killer”, nor is that even a meaningful concept anymore, but I have a suspicion that this is the MMO future we’re going to be looking at. I’m honestly pretty excited about it; it goes back to the roots of what got me into MMOs in the first place. I hope it takes off.

Bullet Hell

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Back when we played Astebreed for the Aggrochat Game Club, Ashgar also recommended the game Jigoku Kisetsukan as a more traditional example of the bullet hell genre that was free on Steam. Last night, staring at Steam and not wanting to start up anything requiring serious thought or time commitment, I decided to try it out.

I'm not entirely new to bullet hell shooters, though I'm nowhere near the aficionado that Ash is. There are quite a few examples of the genre on Kongregate, and I've played a number of them over the years, though never with any real focus. The gameplay is generally pretty similar throughout; you have a primary shot (often upgradable), a special attack that clears out all the bullets on the screen, and a button to slow your movement for maneuvering through tight spaces. That last one is crucial as the real challenge of a bullet hell shooter is dodging the insane storm of projectiles that get thrown at you. Most of the time in a boss fight my focus is squarely on my character to the point of having only the vaguest idea of where on the screen the boss is.

Bullet Hell
This is the second boss. On easy. It gets much, much harder.

The available characters in Jigoku Kisetsukan each have different attack styles that necessitate playing them somewhat differently. For instance the catgirl has a wide but short range shot that forces you to play further up the screen to keep enemies in range. The alien girl has a constant laser that narrows and powers up when in focus mode, so you have to pay more attention to where enemies are to keep damage on them. The starting character, some sort of minor forest deity or something, has a good middle of the road shot (wider than the laser and able to hit from the length of the screen) and gains homing shots when powered up. Those homing shots are especially useful since they let you focus entirely on dodging bullets and still be able to do at least some damage.

The story has something to do with trying to stop some sort of incipient darkness. I didn't really catch it. Mostly the motivation of the characters other than the primary one seem to be 'wander around and get into fights with other beings that look remarkably like teenage girls due to misunderstandings'. The story's not the point anyway; the point is to try and advance further through a combination of quick reflexes and pattern memorization. Much like a rhythm game now that I think about it; just themed as a shoot-em-up rather than a musical game.

Bullet Hell
Here we see an immortal diety and a centuries old extraterrestrial being.

Overall, it's a fun game with decent, if somewhat lo-fi graphics, (when you can actually look at them) and a catchy chiptune soundtrack. I would consider it worth the cost for a couple bucks, so for free I definitely recommend it if you have any interest in bullet hell shooters at all. And really, how many other games let you fly around blasting robots with a cat on your head? Actually, knowing Japan, probably quite a few.