Tim the Corsair’s Slightly Less Than Conventional TF2 Class Strategies Part One - Strategy Guide

(The first part of a three part article dealing with some slightly unusual personal strategies for Team Fortress 2) 

    

There is just something vastly appealing about doing things a little differently to other people.  It feels good to buck trends; to break the rules occasionally.  It’s not about gaining attention, or being a rebel (with and/or without a cause).  For me personally, I just love to look at something that is always done a certain way, and instead think outside the box and tackle it from a different angle.  It’s just my philosophy on life; the only way isn’t the only way or even the best way, if you catch my meaning.

Gaming hasn’t been an exception for me in this regard.  When everyone else was tank rushing in Red Alert, I was the guy thinking of unique strategies involving attack dogs and mine layers (…that never worked).  In Counterstrike I was the one using the ‘useless’ guns simply because no one else took them seriously; and in Halo I made it a mission to kill as many people point-blank with a sniper rifle as I could, simply because I could.

Team Fortress 2 is a game that can really encourage the lateral thinkers out there.  While your initial experiences will probably revolve around just getting used to the mechanics and play styles of the different classes (even if you are a TF veteran), a time may come where you start to think “why does every Engineer build his sentry gun in the same three spots on this map?” or “why do Medics only ever Uber Heavies or Soldiers?”

Not everyone questions this kind of thing; many players are content to sit back, have fun, and rack up the kills, and more power to you if this is what you enjoy.  For other people (like myself), the real meat and potatoes in any gaming experience comes from trying to mix things up; it’s not so much about your score, as it is how you achieve it.

So with all of this in mind, I bring you Tim the Corsair’s Slightly Less Than Conventional TF2 Class Strategies; the name may not be catchy, but hopefully the article helps you look at your TF2 experience in a new light.  Most of the stuff written here I’ve kind of figured out for myself, or adapted from my experiences online; I don’t claim to be an expert by any means on the game, and I’m sure many experienced players would know some of (if not all of) the stuff I’m going to talking about.  If anyone feels that I have somehow ripped off their patent-pending ultra-effective strat or something, feel free to leave a comment or email that I can promptly ignore.

This article will be presented in three different parts, representing the different class categories of the game.

Now onto Offense:

      

Scout - The Best Defence…

    

Scouts are a pretty interesting phenomenon on public servers.  Generally speaking, every time the map changes and everybody starts choosing classes, there will always be one or two Scouts; on some maps where speed is very much rewarded, oftentimes many more players will choose this, the speediest of the classes.  There will be a few kills, maybe a point capture or two.

But like clockwork, the inevitable sentry guns will go up; the Demomen will start placing pipe bombs; and all of a sudden there is maybe one Scout left on the team, and he is usually completely ineffective unless his team mates on attack have removed all the enemy defences.

This is the big mistake that a lot of people make when it comes to playing the Scout class effectively.  While rapid attacks on the intel or control points are sometimes effective, the fragility and lack of long range firepower means that this class will be dominated by a static defence unless you are very, very good at hit and run attacks, or unless your teamwork is so good that your weaknesses are completely compensated for; not too likely playing with a group of strangers.

This is where the defensive or ‘harasser’ Scout comes in.  Don’t let the manoeuvrability, rapid point capturing, and being lumped into the ‘Offense’ category fool you; Scouts can make an extremely good defensive class in capable hands, making up for the lack of toughness and firepower with the ability to hit from any direction and cause absolute chaos in the enemy ranks.

Take the map ‘Granary’ for example; this symmetrical control point map is very dependent on the speed of an attacking team.  The team which takes the central point first can often get a massive roll on due to momentum, and can win the round with a minimum of fuss if they can outflank and push back the opposing team.  Defending in this situation is very tricky, as the multiple approaches and wide-open nature of the level make static defences like sentries or pipe-bombs limited in effectiveness; one multi-prong attack or Uber-combo will soon take these out, and clear the way to the last point and a relatively painless win for the bad guys.  The same can often apply to any of the maps; there are usually too many different ways into a point or intel room to make static defences the be all and end all.

A harassing Scout can change all of this.  Any team worth their salt on offense will leave static defences of their own behind, limiting (although not preventing completely) the Scouts ability to take points back singlehanded.  However, the defensive Scout will instead seek to confuse and disorient the enemy, either making them attack your own defences piecemeal, or (even better) causing them to fall victim to a rather nasty counterattack by your teammates.

Hit and run is the order of the day here.  Discover where the main attack is coming from, and use the other entrances to sneak up behind.  Destroy teleport entrances and exits, and any dispensers you find.   Ambush lone Engineers, Spies, Demomen, or Snipers; kill them if you can, but if you can’t then disengage; if they call for help and pull combat classes back from the frontline, you’ve already partially accomplished you goal, and any weakened enemies will be easy prey for your more deadly colleagues.

The most important task for the harassing Scout, however, is to kill any Medics you find.  In this way, the defensive Scout is much like the Spy class, but uses blistering speed instead of stealth to accomplish his aim.  Jump into the centre of an enemy group, kill the Medic, and escape before coming from a different direction to attack the rest of the group; take on the targets you stand the best chance of beating, and never stop moving.  Remember that causing injury is still helping the cause, and living to fight another day will cause the group to pursue you and worry about where you’re coming from next, rather than attacking the point or capturing your intel.

Surprisingly the defensive Scout will often have quite high scores; aiming for ‘softer’ targets, as well as the general chaos of attacking the attackers close to your lines means that you will quickly build up quite a collection of kills and kill-assists.  More importantly, most teams will not expect the slashing at the flanks that playing the class this way brings, and the chaos caused will help out any Spies or other counter-attackers on your team by drawing attention away from them.  Plus, killing Medics and preventing Ubers from going off makes defending and counterattacking so much easier for your friends.

So forget trying to recap the points in a tight game; leave that to the Heavy-Medic combos.  Instead, just beat up the Medics and those who can’t defend themselves against you.  After all, nothing is more frustrating than an enemy you can’t catch, and frustration leads to people making stupid mistakes.  Stupid mistakes lead to victory for your side.

  

Soldier - Double the Boom

  

There’s not a great deal of finesse required to play the Soldier class effectively; even with the ability to rocket jump around the place, at the end of the day you’re a big, slow, tough guy with high explosives, and this limits any real fancy thinking.  While this tactic isn’t exactly the most exciting thing going, it is surprisingly effective for your team, and at least involves doing something besides running headlong at the enemy.

The first thing you need to do is team yourself up with a good Demoman.  As we all know, the ability to place sticky bombs makes the Demo the premier class when it comes to creating a killing field of explodey death.  The main problem with said killing field is that, once it’s been detonated, all those bombs have to be replanted again; a time consuming process, and that’s ignoring the very real chance that some enterprising Spy or Scout hasn’t come up behind said Demo and whacked him.  Combining this prowess with a Soldier, however, makes the Demo a much tougher nut to crack, and the combined unit can prove equally effective at forming a deadly attack force as they are at impenetrable defence.

When defending in this combination, the secret as the guardian Soldier is simply to watch your Demo’s back, and help finish off anything he doesn’t.  It may sound boring, but it doesn’t have to be.  By intermittently firing rockets and shotgun blasts along the path being covered by the stickies (as well as any other approaches to your position), it’s almost guaranteed that the occasional Spy or Scout will be cleaned up by your combined firepower.  Furthermore, by providing this backup (and highly intimidating) fire, it allows far more time for a detonated sticky field to be replaced, and makes it much more likely that surviving enemies will die a horrible death via rocket to the face.  When pulled off properly, this kind of combination is impossible to dislodge without a concentrated effort by the enemy team, and as we discussed in the Scout section, if they’re concentrating on kill you, they aren’t concentrating on completing their objectives.

Offensively, this combination of Soldier and Demoman firepower becomes much more interesting.  It is often the natural reaction for an enemy confronting a Soldier to duck around a corner to hide from the rocket damage, darting out to confront you once you are reloading or within range of their own weapon.  What most people fail to realise in this situation is that they tend to focus entirely on playing chicken with the rockets; they most likely won’t see the grenades bouncing off the wall into them, or the stickies placed on the ceiling just so.  In the same way, the Engineer and sentry gun combo guarding the intel will most likely be so focused on the Demoman firing stickies at their gun that little attention is paid to the rockets flying at them.

The secret is to find a dependable Demoman and work to each other’s strengths.  The combination of direct, indirect, and controlled firepower means that you can deal with almost any situation efficiently, and are perfect for covering each other’s weaknesses (the Demo’s lack of short range firepower, for example); you are also the only two classes which can reach certain out of the way areas through rocket/pipe bomb jumping, further increasing the potential to create a bit of explosive mayhem.  It can take a bit of practice to get the timing right, but the Demoman-Soldier unit can be the most potent attacking or defensive force on the map, and all without needing a Medic tagging along (although an Uber never hurts).

    

Pyro - Intimidation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

   

Most people that play Pyros have probably realised by now that, despite being lumped into the Offense category, the class really shines when the enemy is coming at you.  Due to the short-range nature of all of the class weapons, the kill-count favours those who sit around corners or in little nooks, waiting to spray fire all over any enemy foolish enough to walk past.  This can be fun, but isn’t always very effective, especially when you’re on a solely attacking team (like Dustbowl) and there are four sentries between you and the enemy.

Even if the situation does favour the tactic of sitting back and ambushing the enemy, it isn’t the only way to play the class. Sometimes, getting a million kills from an ambush just isn’t as satisfying as knowing that you have scared the crap out of every opposing team member through your crazed desire to set them on fire no matter the risk to yourself.

In much the same way as a good Scout or Spy will have the enemy confused and chasing their own tails rather than going for the objective, a Pyro set to intimidate (or perhaps more accurately, burninate) will seek to get behind enemy lines and cause pure chaos. Getting kills is not the aim, and indeed it is unlikely that you will gain as many as you would by ambushing constantly or working alongside a group of teammates.  Nonetheless the enemy will learn to fear you, as everyone hates being set on fire; in one fell swoop it is possible to turn a structured attacking force into a rabble, as the Medic runs back to base to heal, the Soldiers go haring off after medpacks, the Heavies just sit there looking stupid, and the enemy Pyros decides to hunt you down personally, forgoing the attack on the point.

Continuing in this way, patiently working your way behind the enemy lines and pouncing when the opportunity is right, will dilute attacks on your position (or the defence of theirs) as players go searching for a way to kill you or preserve their own skins.  In a similar way to the above Scout strategy, this will also help your teammates finish off your weakened enemies, and counterattack if necessary. 

One way to vastly increase the effectiveness of this strategy is to pair up with another Pyro for your raids; hit from different angles, finish off the softer targets, and soon enough half the enemy team will go Engineer and build sentries just to stop you from rampaging around.  Really, a Pyro teaming up in this way with any class can be highly effective; work with a Scout or Spy and the sheer amount of chaos caused will have the whole enemy team in a tizzy.

At the end of the day you want to use guerrilla tactics to make this strategy work.  Not so much the hit and run aspect; you’ll hit, but a lot of the time you won’t survive to run.  Rather, you are aiming to make the enemy so scared of the fact that you just might appear amongst them that they spend half their time watching their backs and too intimidated to think straight.  When you finally do hit them, even if not one of them dies in the process, it’ll make it that much more likely that they will lose focus on the task at hand.  After all, who isn’t intimidated by someone wielding a big flamethrower and a suicidal disregard for personal safety?

   

Stay tuned for Part 2: Defence

   

- Tim Sweeney

Busy, busy, busy

No updates for a couple of days, oh the humanity!

I’m terribly sorry to everyone for the lack of content this weekend; it’s not through a lack of working hard, but rather through a lack of working hard on stuff that I can actually post up.

For you see, the submissions to other publications are causing me no end of headaches as I try to, you know, actually earn some money.  Nonetheless, I have got some things I’ve been working on, including an in-progress Team Fortress 2 ‘alternative’ strategy guide, the first part of which will be going up as soon as I’ve finished this news post.

 Things should be back to normal now, especially with all the internet problems sorted (at long last).

 Cheers,

  

- Tim Sweeney

Enchanted - Movie Review

Shrek has just messed up the landscape when it comes to kids’ fables; once upon a time they were sweet and innocent affairs, with stories involving dwarves, charming princes, copious amounts of singing, fauna suffering from a severe bout of anthropomorphism, the whole works.  Nowadays it’s all about the modern fairytale stylings, with the stuff that kids these days enjoy; stuff like robots, the Pokemans, cutting-edge computer graphics, and dollops of sarcasm.  Enchanted (from Disney) feels like a return to the old school fairytale movie style; princess sings with animals while preparing to marry the handsome prince, but before you know it the evil step-mother steps in with poisoned apple; it’s a classic formula.

But Disney turned out to be just a little sneaky with their approach to this movie.  Enchanted starts out as a classically animated tale, but through the actions of said wicked step-mother we find the princess, prince, and company suddenly shunted into real life New York City, complete with rude pedestrians and Patrick ‘McDreamy’ Dempsey as the lovelorn dad who just needs someone to come along and reignite his passion for romance.

Naturally there’s a big culture shock, various awkward situations, a cute little girl with a heart of gold (and just enough sass), and an unconventional relationship or two; honestly, the plot itself is fairly formulaic once the initial fun of the unconventional change from animation to real life occurs.  The basic story will appeal to the little ones; the romantic aspect will make the girls happy, the humour and minor action scene will cheer up the lads.  Nothing here sets the world afire, but it will provide a little entertainment to the kids and, more importantly (at least where the big kids are sitting), there is just enough satire of the whole fairytale thing to keep the parents busy as well.

Formulaic main story aside, a minute doesn’t go by in this movie without some form of in-joke being made at the expense of all the old classics; from Cinderella to Bambi, Snow White to…errr, some other famous kids story; there are a tonne of little sight gags or cute lines of dialogue, many of which will register with the older children. There are also some which will only really register with the grownups, and some of them aren’t bad; while it’s doubtful that guffaws will be launched from your body like some form of humour-laden missile, at the very least you’ll crack a smirk every once in a while.

The movie has the typical Disney high quality production values, with beautiful animation, good special effects, and the acting is adequate for what it is.  At the end of the day this is a kids’ movie, and one for the young kids at that, but at least there’s enough here to stop the  adults from being too bored; besides, it’ll score you brownie points if your significant other happens to enjoy these kinds of movie, and at least it’s good for a couple of laughs.

                 

I rate Enchanted: 5.5/10 (It’s hard to rate this sort of movie as a childless adult male; the reviewer part of me says it’s a decent quality kid’s movie with a smattering of humour for the adults; the rest of me says “ewwww Disney movie.” At the end of the day, add another two points if you are into Disney movies or have small children; minus four if the only movies you ever consider watching are rated R)

   

- Tim Sweeney

Van Gogh versus John Romero - Feature

(This article was intended for print in a magazine, and as such has various sections labelled “box-out” which would appear, funnily enough, as box-outs throughout the article.  Enjoy, I rather like this piece if I do say so myself)

     

Van Gogh versus John Romero

By Tim Sweeney

    

“Video games [are] inherently inferior to film and literature.” So says Roger Ebert, famous film critic and hardcore Team Fortress 2 player.  Well alright, half of that sentence is correct; he really loves his Pyro.  While Ebert’s may be the most well known voice denigrating our chosen medium as an art form, it is simply another in a long line of people looking down on something that they most likely don’t understand.

Whenever the “games aren’t art” comments start flying, it’s almost inevitable that the gamers will come out of the woodwork trying to defend the artistic merit of Manhunt or Carmageddon (”the bodies and blood splatters are arranged just so, daahling,”).  The fact of the matter is that gaming, at only a couple of decades old, is a very immature medium compared to the traditional ones; more so when you consider a large part of the time it has been around was spent on systems that struggled to run Space Invaders.  Of course, it wasn’t really that long ago that film was being looked down upon by the radio stalwarts, and even less time has passed since television was universally crapped on as a means of delivering a serious art form; hell the first caveman to scrawl a stick figure on a cave wall was probably laughed at by all the storytellers around their newly-discovered fire. 

Once the inevitable unsavoury comments on message boards about Ebert’s lineage die down, the time comes to actually think of the examples that might refute the argument that gaming will never be mature enough to be considered art alongside the usual suspects.  It would be fair to assume that most people, when they think of the word ‘art’, would immediately think of visuals.  Something like Crysis, or maybe Assassin’s Creed, would be an easy way to point to games being an artistic win; I mean, they’re just so gosh darn beautiful!  Then again, 300 is an absolutely beautiful movie visually (especially if you like almost naked men) but I doubt anyone would consider it to be a great example of film as an artistic medium.

While games can be pretty to look at, they can never match the great works of literature, for example, or the impact of important films.  How can a mere game compare to the works of history’s great composers?  Suddenly comparing Citizen Kane to Kane and Lynch doesn’t quite seem to gel.  Nonetheless, a little research into our admittedly somewhat shallow medium shows that there are at least a few contenders in gaming that go beyond mere craftsmanship, and indeed may be worthy of standing alongside the Casablancas and Hamlets of the world. 

We’d like to share some of them with you:

    

•1.      Ico - Team Ico / Sony Computer Entertainment

The word ‘beautiful’ gets tossed around quite often when describing the visuals of a game; it’s much, much rarer for it to be used when talking about any other aspect. After all, how beautiful can a story about one stereotypical action hero murdering a million faceless Nazis be?  Ico is one of those incredibly rare games which bucks this trend.

The player is the titular Ico, a 12 year old boy who has the misfortune of being born with a set of small horns.  The people of his home village believe that this is the cause of all the ill fortune they have experienced, and it is decided that now is the time to sacrifice him.  Left to starve and/or freeze to death in what is believed to be an abandoned fortress, Ico soon meets and befriends a strange girl named Yorda; a pale, almost ethereal girl with no knowledge of the outside world, and a wish to be free of her evil mother.

At its very core Ico is not a game about puzzles or combat or even fun (although it is, despite some flaws); instead it is a very special and touching story about the developing friendship of a pair of young outcasts, and how their love for each other allows them to conquer the obstacles which cross their paths despite the fact they cannot even communicate in the same language. 

This simple yet deep relationship is not brought about through extensive cutscenes or droning dialogue (there is barely any in the game); it is instead developed almost entirely through little touches, like the way Ico holds Yorda’s hand, or in the waif-like girl’s cries when the going becomes particularly difficult, and Ico’s subsequent protectiveness.

Combined with a stark and washed-out visual style, Ico is a surreal experience with a simple premise, and yet themes of adversity, persecution, and even child abuse ensure that every single childlike moment is nonetheless a powerful one.

    

•2.      Planescape: Torment - Black Isle Studios / Interplay

Who would have thought that one of gaming’s biggest clichés - the amnesiac hero - would lead to one of the most original and earth shattering gaming experiences we have ever had the pleasure of playing.  More importantly than all that fun stuff however, is that Torment is a bonafide literary work in its own right.  With a meaty script weighing in at somewhere around 800,000 words, the even more impressive part was that it was actually very well written.

Set in the Dungeons and Dragons Planescape universe, Torment takes place in a city between the various dimensions of existence, and serves as a kind of central hub and neutral meeting place for the denizens of the heavens, the hells, and all the planes in between.  It is into this world that the player takes the Nameless One, an immortal with no memory of his past or why he’s just woken up on the slab in a mortuary.  In the course of his quest he meets a variety of equally tortured souls and seeks to rediscover his memories in a world where the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, and even law and chaos are a currency traded or discarded at will. 

The story, the mature dialogue, and the bleak atmosphere are more complete and far more compelling than you would find in any cinematic release, and indeed completing Torment feels more like completing a novel; a particularly deep and engrossing work of fiction dealing with themes of loss, redemption, personal tragedy, and the fundamental concepts of morality.

Planescape: Torment is that exceptional rarity among all forms of media (especially games); a well thought out, deeply provoking story with great emotional impact and notable characters.  Even more amazingly, this is all delivered in a way that equals, if not surpasses, many other literary works.

   

•3.      Second Life - Linden Research, Inc.

If, as we are constantly informed, art is defined by the viewer, then Second Life would have to be the perfect example of a game as art.

Admittedly the term game might be a bit of a misnomer, as Second Life initially consists of little more than the creation of an avatar in the virtual world.  There are no stats, no objectives, and nothing that you have to do if you don’t want to.  Instead, Second Life is designed to provide the user with the experience they want to create, and the sky is essentially the limit.

Using a real world economic system, players can purchase land, goods, or services in-game, often from other players providing said services.  The player is free to set up an island paradise, build a car dealership and design cars for sale, attend a virtual night club, roleplay an anime character with a group of like-minded individuals, play a game of giant chess, or even purchase animations which allow your character to do the naughty with other people so inclined.

Everything is open to being shaped as the individual wishes (provided that they have enough cash to back up their vision), and Second Life abounds with content that ranges from fun (virtual racetracks) to awesome (virtual concerts by real bands) to disturbing (child pornography, although this is stamped out as it is located) to the surreal (giant Warhammer land!).    Regardless of whether it’s all agreeable or not, Second Life accomplishes something only dreamed of by artists of all kind; placing the art itself in the hands of the masses, to reinterpret and re-imagine as they wish.

   

•4.      BioShock - 2K Boston and 2K Australia / 2K Games

“Hold the phone,” cry the naysayers reading this article, “a first person shooter cannot be art!  Even one with some shallow RPG mechanics.”  Well not only is this not the case, but BioShock is in fact the perfect example of a game as a work of art in its own right, even with the simple gameplay.

The underwater city of Rapture was meant to be a utopia; a place where the intelligent, the talented, and the artistic could come and express themselves without the prohibitions they would have found in the post-World War II world outside.  Alex Ryan’s city, as all visions of utopian societies inevitably do, naturally fell into chaos and ruin.  What we are left with is an art-deco dystopia into which the player is thrust, falling into disrepair and rotten to the core.

The beauty of the BioShock experience is that beyond knowing that you’re stuck in a submerged city you need to get out of, very little of the background needs to be taken in beyond the basic plot.  Like any great artistic experience (sense a theme here?), BioShock consists of layer upon layer of subtext.  In this case the most important are the various audio diaries lying around, and the environment of Rapture itself. 

Every single passage of dialogue, from the grandiose speeches of Ryan to thereminisces of a secretary; every rusted pipe or scrawled warning written in blood tells another piece of the story of Rapture, and the tragedies which brought about its fall from grace.  BioShock’s focus on the subversion and eventual destruction of a so-called perfect society, and the very human frailties which led to this ruination are every bit as poignant as the themes explored in a novel like Huxley’s Brave New World, and just as meaningful.

   

•5.      Audiosurf: Ride Your Music - Dylan Fitterer / Valve Corporation (Steam)

Music is perhaps the most overlooked part of any game, but can often be very important to the overall experience.  It is rare, however, for the music itself to be the centrepiece.  Audiosurf joins this very select group of games (consisting pretty much entirely of Vib-Ribbon and Rez), allowing the player to actually play their music and thus experience an existing art form in a completely new way.

A puzzle/racer/rhythm game hybrid, every aspect of Audisurf is determined by the choice of musical track.  A slow, low-key song will keep the experience mellow, with a slow, uphill track, few blocks to collect, and cool colours being the norm.  A fast, pulsing beat will suddenly morph the game world into a riot of bright reds and yellows, with fireworks exploding in the background and the track taking on a steep declination, or even corkscrewing around wildly.

Every song will give a completely unique visual and playing experience, and can be further altered by the choice of character (which radically shakes up the gameplay and visuals).  The feeling this gives you is unreal, and will bring about a new love for your music collection, as well as encouraging you to go out and buy new songs just for the pleasure of playing them in this new and exciting way. 

It is this fact that so impresses artistically about Audiosurf; this game, built by an independent developer and containing minimal graphics, has somehow managed to find a way to completely reinterpret an artistic medium which has existed essentially since the beginning of human existence.  Music is such a fundamental part of our lives that it is rare to think about just how we experience it; now we have thought about it, and the result is beautiful.

- - -       

There are many other examples which further the argument for games to be considered one of the arts; Deus Ex, with its biting political commentary on terrorism, globalisation, and the loss of individual freedoms; Shadow of the Colossus, spiritual successor to Ico, and a game which focuses on making the ultimate sacrifice for one that you love; or Okami, an artistic game in the most literal sense.

But why should a game need to have an overarching artistic goal to be considered the equal to other mediums.  Going back to the previous example of the movie 300, are the quite revolutionary visual aspects of the film any less important to the medium simply because the rest of the movie is as shallow as it’s possible to be.  In the same way, is the subtle anti-war message in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s Spectre Gunship level any less valid than the message in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket?  Why is Blade Runner the game a footnote in history when Blade Runner the film is a classic, despite going above and beyond the themes present in the original?  

The definition of what makes something ‘art’ has always been open to some quite liberal interpretation, much in the same way that the art itself invites personal opinion and analysis. Perhaps the problem is instead the vocal minority who nonetheless have the influence to determine what Joe Schlub on the street thinks of our favourite pastime.  The opinions of people like Roger Ebert and his fellow critics would carry far more weight if we didn’t know that they had most likely never even picked up a controller, and most likely never will because they aren’t comfortable with thinking outside of their comfort zone.

But at the end of the day it isn’t overly important what these people do think about our medium.  Those who are in the know understand that gaming will one day be considered every bit as important as cinema or poetry or anything else; it’s inevitable.  Perhaps it’s the term ‘game’ itself that so hurts the seriousness with which gaming is taken; art isn’t usually ‘played’ after all.  Once those who grew up on games become the Roger Ebert’s of the future, perhaps we’ll be heading to galleries to marvel at the way Counter-Strike helped bring about world peace and equality for all humankind.

It could happen.

   

- Tim Sweeney

- - -

Box-out 1: The Immutable Rules of Art

   

There are some rules common across all the arts which apply to one extent or another to the games mentioned in this article:

    

• 1. Thou Shalt Be A Commercial Failure

• 2. Thou Shalt Be As Depressing As Possible

• 3. Thou Shalt Be Created On A Shoestring Budget

• 4. Thou Shalt Offend A Vocal Minority

• 5. Thou Shalt Bewilder A Silent Majority

• 6. Thou Shalt Never Be Quite As Polished As Thou Non-Artistic Brothers

• 7. Thou Shalt Not Let Fun Get In The Way Of The Art

  

Box-out 2: Games as Education

     

Art and education have a good deal in common with each other, although thankfully gaming is taken a bit more seriously in the world of learning.  Forgetting kid’s edutainment titles, there are quite a few mainstream games which have shown they have quite a bit of educational merit.

The Age of Empires series of games, for example, have contained huge amounts of historical data on various civilisations, religions, and technologies from their respective time periods; don’t laugh, in the pre-Wikipedia days Age of Empires 2 was THE place to go when a medieval history assignment was due at school.  More recently, Neverwinter Nights has been used in UK schools, with custom-made educational modules requiring the students to slay goblins via algebra.

       

Box-out 3: Daikatana = art?

    

By this point everyone will be familiar with Daikatana, John Romero’s epic failure which nonetheless still managed to make the game playing public “his bitch.”

But what if Daikatana was not just an example of a games developer’s ego rampaging unchecked?  What if Daikatana’s terrible graphics and appalling gameplay were instead a satirical look at the modern gamer’s obsession with pretty looks and, errrm, fun?

Ok, so that whole theory just fell apart; Daikatana is pure shite of epic proportions.

More news on the employment front and some more articles

Quick update,

It’s all steam ahead with getting some of my articles published, with some interest being shown from a couple of different sources; I wish I could say more, but I can’t.  One is pretty major, and I’m really holding out hope to have something appearing in their pages soon.

In other news, there’ll be some more movie reviews going up tonight and tomorrow, including a couple more kids movie reviews (Enchanted and the Waterhorse).  There’ll also be at least one gaming feature going up, and possibly a review as well. 

Of course this all depends on free time, but I’ll do the best I can,

Cheers,

  

- Tim Sweeney

The Golden Compass - Movie Review

The search for the next Harry Potter continues to run roughshod over the movie business; for every new blockbuster movie that is released, there seems to be about ten other movies aimed at the kids in the works, and most just ooze that fantasy vibe.

Of course this isn’t really that surprising; the adventures of the oh-so-famous wizard have deservedly been very popular, and it’s only natural to jump onboard the bandwagon when there is money to be made.  The good news is that, between the successes of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, a whole bunch of fantasy authors out there are now getting a lot of mainstream attention, something that can only be a good thing for them and the public. 

One of the more recent examples of this whole new focus on family friendly fantasy movies is The Golden Compass, the film version of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (itself the first in a trilogy called His Dark Materials).  The novels themselves are fairly brilliant, managing to balance the heroic adventures that appeal to the kids with decidedly mature and darker themes; all of this means that the books will appeal to adults as well as the younger audience they might appear to be aimed at, and the same applies to the movie as well.

The movie itself is set in a parallel dimension to our own, and appears to occur in a Victorian-esque era judging by the clothes and general level of technology.  What is radically different about the whole thing is that the human soul, rather than being a metaphysical kind of thing, instead exists externally (and visibly) from the body in the form of a ‘daemon’, which appears as an animal.  These daemons converse with and aid their ‘owner’, and shift form throughout their adolescence until eventually settling in as an animal which most suits the personality of the person they belong to, be it leopard or guinea pig.

Into this rather interesting setting, steps our hero Lyra (played incredibly well by Dakota Blue Richards), an orphaned 12 year old girl living at Jordan College, Oxford.  She hopes to accompany her uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig) on his adventures to the arctic, but instead gets dragged along by the evil Miss Coulter (Nicole Kidman, who plays this role as well as she can: very poorly).  Shenanigans ensue, and she is soon enough haring off north to find her kidnapped friend, meeting witches, ‘gyptians’ (gypsies with firearms apparently) and talking armoured polar bears along the way.  Yes, talking armoured polar bears.

The story itself has been rather largely condensed from the novel, and has had some of the more controversial things removed or lessened a little; the focus on the philosophies of religion, and the negative aspects thereof, are largely absent (although the main religious body, the Magisterium, are still presented as ‘the bad guys’), and the ending is wildly different from the downer on which the first novel ends. Still, what remains is perfectly serviceable, and serves as a good, albeit slightly rushed and just a little neutered, introduction to Pullman’s work.

The glue that makes the experience hold together is Dakota Blue Richards; this girl, making her acting debut and who has received no formal training, brings such feeling and authenticity to the role of Lyra that she steals every scene she appears in. Her ability is little short of miraculous, and it must be hoped that her experiences in this movie will lead to her taking on other roles; she certainly blows most other child actors out of the water, including that other Dakota that seems to pop up in every movie ever invented (alongside Jamie Foxx, Kevin Bacon, and Morgan Freeman).

It’s a bit of a shame then that the supporting cast aren’t all quite as impressive as young Dakota Blue.  Sure, Ian ‘Gandalf’ McKellen shines in the role of the Iorek Byrnison, and many of the other actors play their more minor roles very well (keep an ear out for Ian McShane), but Daniel Craig feels like he is just phoning it in; the character of Lord Asriel may be a cold one, but Craig is so distant from the role that he might as well be absent entirely.  The fact that Nicole Kidman plays a prominent role is also a shame, seeing as how she completely lacks the ability to portray a character convincingly; or, indeed, act at all unless the role calls for her to play a vapid woman with no talent.

Production-wise, The Golden Compass is pretty spectacular.  The unique world in which the movie takes place is portrayed painstakingly through the use of costume, set design and CGI, and it is breathtaking to behold a zeppelin flight over London, or the charge of a certain very angry bear.  It should also be noted that the violence and mature themes weren’t spared too much in the hopes of making this movie kiddie friendly; the source material is very much about widespread conflict and some very nasty people, and this is represented fairly faithfully here; so much so, in fact, that it is surprising the movie received the lenient rating it did.

Perhaps it is due to how tightly packed The Golden Compass is, but it is really very difficult to write a review of it which does not spoil great swathes of the plot.  This movie, while inferior to the book upon which it is based (an inevitability), still manages to provide a good story in a very unique setting, and is far deeper in tone and complexity than many other similar works being adapted for the big screen.  If only the movie had gone on for longer, and not had some of the most important aspects of the novels removed from the script, it could have been a masterpiece which at the very least rivalled its more famous counterparts.  As it is, the audience instead gets a slightly rushed feeling, occasionally poorly acted version of a very good book which, whilst nowhere near perfect (Nicole Kidman!), is still worth seeing for its unique take on the genre.

               

I rate The Golden Compass: 7/10 (A good movie which has had some of the substance and controversy cut out of it in favour of being a bit more palatable to the masses.  Nonetheless it still represents the themes of the His Dark Materials trilogy well, and the positive performances of Dakota Blue Richards and most of the ensemble help overshadow a lot of the problems with the script and some supporting cast members.)

   

- Tim Sweeney

Ranting Wombat: “Everything Doesn’t Have to Mean Anything” - Editorial

Slightly confusing and possibly grammatically incorrect title got you down?

Allow me to explain; this particular rant is going to be about the fact that light entertainment seems to be disappearing from the world, and is instead being replaced by half-arsed attempts at achieving some kind of profound deeper meaning.

The most recent example of this that I have seen would have to be the movie ‘The Kingdom’ (a review can be found over in my movies section).  The movie itself was good, a mystery/thriller kind of affair with some action and an interesting concept (FBI agents go to Saudi Arabia to investigate attacks on American civilians).  Unlike most Hollywood movies, it even managed to portray the Saudi Arabians as interesting, complex characters; a different kind of attitude to what the rest of the movie biz does with Middle Eastern characters, treating them as the Nazis of the new millennium.

All good so far right?  Here we have a nice little movie, nothing overly complex but at least a little original in its setting and characters.  But then, right at the very end, we get some hackneyed attempt at a political statement that was just so over the top that it undid a lot of the good work the movie had already accomplished; I don’t want to spoil the ending, but keep an eye out for the repetition of the line “we’ll kill em all”, or something to that effect.  

The whole thing just feels like a cynical attempt to get across a message of “we’ve got things in common, it’ll take both sides to end the conflict, blah blah blah,” in a movie that was, up until that point, a fairly unsubtle, blow the crap out of anything with an AK-47, affair.  What is particularly ironic is the fact the ‘The Kingdom’, with it’s fair portrayal of Saudi Arabians being good police officers, loving family members, etc, actually does more to make the audience reconsider things about societal and religious differences between Western and Middle Eastern cultures than any amount of forced ‘makes you think’ moments could.

Now I’m not saying that social, political, religious, or any other kind of commentary doesn’t have a place in entertainment or the arts; there are movies, books, songs, even games which are fine examples of both their art and of saying something of import.  What I am saying is that this kind of commentary shouldn’t be appearing ina World of Warcraft: Shake Hands With The Horde expansion pack; I don’t want to see American Pie: Stiffler’s Communist Manifesto, and nor do I want to hear the Dixie Chicks telling me I should hate George Bush in between singing songs about trains, broken hearts, and whatever the hell else country music is about.

I just wish that this trend didn’t exist where every single thing has to have some deeper meaning behind it.  A song by your latest chart-topping rapper can’t just be about marijuana and girls with large posteriors anymore; now it’s a requiem for the loss of innocence experienced by a 16 year old heroin addict on the streets of LA attempting to make it big as an MC during the late 90s, before his life was tragically cut short by falling down an elevator shaft onto some bullets in what the police ruled to be an accidental suicide.

Why can’t an action movie just be an action movie?  I don’t mind a bit of subtext with my fluff, but when they feel the need to hit me over the head with a big political message with all the subtlety of a kick to the proverbials, it just makes me feel hostile towards writers that can’t make a point without it being on the business end of a sledgehammer.  There are ways to effectively comment on a sensitive topic; a clichéd line of dialogue is not one of them. 

I guess this whole thing is just a logical extension of a problem which has plagued mankind for ages; the celebrity who believes their opinion matters.  No matter how famous you are, if you want me to take your opinion seriously, then you better have done something to make yourself worth listening to; investigate, form your own opinion, and present a logical argument…otherwise, you’re just mouthing off and embarrassing yourself and everyone who has to listen to you.  The same thing applies collectively to movies, songs, etc because, at the end of the day, these are just a way for the people behind the other celebrities to get their opinions heard too.

It’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with the point being made; it’s a matter of whether you are expressing something well considered and significant, rather than just getting up on stage at the Grammy’s and screaming a single line at the end of an otherwise mundane speech; something like “Bring our troops home!” or “Visit the Evil Wombat’s Lair, it’s the greatest thing since Portuguese chicken burgers!”

Of course, if you said that last thing you can feel free to disregard this whole rant; you are obviously a person of great culture and personal intelligence, and we should feel blessed to hear the opinions of one so markedly superior to the rest of us mere plebeians, who are simply honoured by basking in your magnificent presence.   

    

- The Evil Wombat

   

(And yes, I am aware of the irony of mouthing off on a world stage about other people mouthing off on a world stage.  Hypocrites need love too.)

Stranglehold (360) - Review

John Woo and gaming go together like bacon and wasabi (try it sometime!). Woo’s movies are chock full of everything that has made gaming great over the years: hard as nails action heroes; rescuing the princess…errr, girlfriend; and of course “gun-ballet”, or as it is known in the industry which ripped it off mercilessly, “bullet-time”.So when a gaming sequel to Woo’s much-loved classic Hard Boiled was announced, with Chow Yun-Fat reprising his role as Inspector Tequila and Woo heading up the project, it seemed like the perfect melding of cinema and games.  What we got instead was a somewhat shallow action shooter with a smear of storyline and so much style that it’s impossible not to grin at the sheer absurdity of the whole thing.

The player takes the role of the aforementioned Tequila, the most dangerous cop in Hong Kong, as he travels around putting bullets into pretty much anything and everything he comes across; subtle police work this ain’t.  The story continues on from the original movie, and is also about organised crime, betrayal, unrequited love, and blowing the crap out of things.

Woo’s influence on the style of the game is obvious; it looks, sounds and feels exactly like a one of his movies.  Visually the game looks good, with the characters looking realistic and the environments being quite pretty in places; it’s no Assassin’s Creed or Crysis, but the visuals are a bit more than merely functional.  The sound is pretty good, with the music being provided by none other than everyone’s favourite Armenian metal muso, Serj Tankian (from System of a Down).

The voice-acting, however, runs the full gamut from quite good to so awful it hurts a little.  The fact that everyone speaks English feels pretty false, and Chow Yun-Fat comes across as being a little uncomfortable with some of his dialogue.  Astonishingly, many of the Chinese characters speak with American accents for no readily apparent reason, and it really is jarring to hear an old Hong Kong native sounding like they grew up in New York; they could have at least gone for a somewhat region authentic pommy accent if they didn’t want to sound like stereotypical Asian impersonators.  Thankfully enough of the voice acting is decent that the script doesn’t suffer too badly for it, although the script itself is such a hackneyed (albeit entertaining), stereotypical action cliché that you probably won’t worry too much about the authenticity of the voiceovers.  

There is nothing subtle about the gameplay of Stranglehold.  You shoot a tonne of enemies, go through to the next area, shoot some more, maybe blow something up for variety, and then shoot some other people because Hong Kong’s gaols are apparently overflowing, and arrests take too much of your valuable time.

While the concept may not be particularly exciting, how you go about it certainly is.  Feeling like an evolution of Max Payne, Tequila has the similar ability to slow down time to that original constipated hero; you’ll find yourself diving around in slow motion, firing at enemies and wrecking the world around you.  What makes Stranglehold a little more unique is in its environmental interaction.  Beyond the fact that most things in the environment can be destroyed in a fairly spectacular fashion, many parts can also be interacted with, helping the player kill their foes as stylishly as possible.

Swinging on chandeliers, sliding down stair railings, running up the back of a dinosaur skeleton (!); all of these allow you to dispatch the bad guys in a way that is both efficient (who really expects someone wielding a shotgun to come sliding through the kitchen on a trolley?) and very stylish.  Style especially is very important, as it is what allows the player to take advantage of their Tequila Bombs.

Sounding somewhat like an alcoholic drink involving Redbull, the Tequila Bombs are instead special abilities which can be used whenever enough style points have been earned.  The four abilities (self healing, precision aiming, barrage, and the infamous John Woo spinning gun-ballet of death) are all very useful and amazingly pretty to watch, and are a smart way for the developers to encourage the player to take advantage of the environment and their abilities to dispatch enemies in the most spectacular way possible.

The Tequila Bombs will also be necessary for dealing with some of the more over the top situations in the game, especially the bosses.  These bad guys will always have an advantage over Tequila unless you make extensive use of all your special abilities, and it is a hoot to be diving backwards in slow-motion, shooting rockets out of the sky as they are fired at you by a Russian attack-chopper.

Thankfully, the developer did not just focus on the stylistic aspects of the game, and seem to have tried their hardest to ensure the mechanics are up to scratch.  The camera almost never gets in the way of the action (a rarity for third-person action games), the controls (mostly) feel pretty comfortable and accurate enough, and the gunplay is entertaining in all it’s diving, slow-motion glory.

But of course it’s not all perfect; the context sensitive environmental interaction button, like all context sensitive buttons, will occasionally make a stupid decision (run up that banister? Don’t be silly; let’s dive into that laser trip-mine instead!).  More seriously, however, is the fact it all just gets repetitive after a while; the baddies at the end might be slightly tougher, but you’ll still be diving around, shooting at them in slow motion while they stand there and bleed everywhere.  The boss fights and strong level designs help a little, but it starts to feel a bit too samey after a while.  Of course there may not be enough time for this to turn into a problem, since it’s quite feasible to clock the game in well under eight hours on normal difficulty without even breathing hard.

Multiplayer is present, but unfortunately not accounted for; despite trying to get a game on a few occasions, there appeared to be none available.  If there is an opportunity to give it a go in the future, this section of the review will be amended.  As it stands, the multiplayer can’t add anything to the experience if no one is playing it.

Stranglehold is yet another game which is trying desperately to cross the multimedia divide into cinematic territory; unlike many other examples (Enter the Matrix), it even succeeds to a certain extent.  Stranglehold is easily as stylish as a big Hollywood action blockbuster, and is presented as such with the involvement of Woo and Yun-Fat in the process; being presented as a legitimate sequel to a classic movie doesn’t hurt its claim to fame either.  Unfortunately the gameplay is also very ‘cinematic’; kind of fun, but immensely shallow and too damn short.  Stranglehold is entertaining and is easily worth a rent, but forking out the cash to buy it probably isn’t worth it unless you’re a Woo fan, or desperate for some gun-ballet.

          

Graphics: 8/10 (Good looking and stylish in the extreme, but not really mind-blowing.)

Sound: 6/10 (Really good music, good sound effects and some decent voice acting.)

Gameplay: 6.5/10 (Good fun to play, especially with the slow motion and Tequila Bombs, but ultimately a shallow experience which feels too samey too quickly.)

Longevity: 3/10 (Criminally short, and with little incentive to play it again beyond achievements and a couple of entertaining set pieces.  Multiplayer does not appear to be popular enough to add much to the life expectancy of the experience.)

Overall: 6/10 (A fun game let down by an attitude of style over substance; add an extra few hours of gameplay, a couple more special powers, maybe a few more action set pieces, and this could have been a damn good game.  As it is, it’s above average, but not by too much.)

      

-Tim Sweeney

The Ranting Wombat - oh noes!

Well it finally happened; the Evil Wombat has awoken and man is he unhappy. Now he’s left the Lair (because burrows are for good wombats only), and is ready to unleash some ranty goodness on anyone and anything that angers him.

The fact that he writes remarkably like myself, and in fact references things that I have done as his own is besides the point…so is the fact he posts under my name…

Moving right along then, the Ranting Wombat is the name of a new, hopefully weekly editorial I’m launching here at the Lair.  While the first rant is about a particular facet of gaming, no topic is safe from the Wombat.

Each rant will appear on the Evil Wombat tab, and will have a little bit of info regarding the topic in the title.

Finally a reason to get angry…you know, for the Wombat…

Enjoy,

   

- Tim ‘ Really not the Evil Wombat…honest’ Sweeney 

Ranting Wombat: “Press X to Win!” - Editorial

(The first in a hopefully regularly occourring series of articles which should fulfill the “all around rantathon” part of the heading.  These editorials can and will be about anything; if they fit a category on the site, they’ll be placed there; otherwise they’ll be under the wombat tab, looking lonely and a little malevolent) 

Look, everyone knows I’m a big defender of Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed; hell, the first article I wrote for this site was an editorial condemning the games media for, well, condemning Assassin’s Creed because it didn’t live up to their preconceived notions of what the game was meant to be.

But even I will admit the game is too damn easy.  I applaud the developers for experimenting with a new control system, and indeed the virtual marionette style of controls is comfortable and intuitive to use.  In fact, they are so intuitive to use that the term ‘Press X to win’ has begun floating around the interweb in reference to said ease of use, leading to a game where it’s almost impossible to die.

I don’t think that the flaw is necessarily in the idea behind the control system.  Rather, I think it came about because Ubisoft had come up with this control system that hadn’t been seen before, and someone in the marketing side of things went “oh crap, hardcore gamers are going destroy us for changing the time-honoured 3^rd-person action game controls; better dumb it down so they can’t actually be challenged enough to be angry!”  And dumbed down it was. 

This attitude isn’t specific to Assassin’s Creed; great ideas like the co-op play in Army of Two, or time powers in TimeShift, have been hit with the dreaded over-simplification ray of doom.  Honestly, are gamers such chimps that we can’t decide for ourselves whether we’re trying to jump onto a ledge or fire our gun?  Why would you bother designing a game with  complex mechanisms like being able to take cover, commando roll around, climb ledges, boost a teammate into hard to reach places, give orders, stop time, rewind time, or whatever the case may be, and then work as hard as possible to take away any chance the player could have of experimenting with these abilities, instead forcing them into doing a specific thing at a specific time?  If I am standing next to a ledge, I want to be able to take cover, climb over it, hang off it, or get down on one knee and propose to it if I so choose; why is that so hard?.

I’m not asking for a return to the days of PC games have such a stupid amount of controls that we needed keyboard overlays (although, why not?), but how about, instead of having X be the context-sensitive button to block, we instead have ALL of the buttons be context sensitive to something meaningful; parry with X, lunge with A, attempt to disarm with B, deliver a nasty headbutt with Y, something like that.  Why does Assassin’s Creed kill your opponent for you simply because you successfully timed a block, instead of giving you the option to actually, you know, fight?  Why can’t I individually order my teammates around in Mass Effect, instead having to rely on the four simple and completely inadequate commands available?

I don’t expect every single game out there to offer the emergent game world capabilities of BioShock or HL2, but when so much effort has gone into establishing a skill set and a world which encourages freedom, it seems mind-bogglingly stupid to put such strict rules in place that said freedom is just a manufactured illusion.  Leave the one-button-does-all gameplay to the platformers and stupid titles; we want more than just the illusion of choice in our gaming experiences.

If Psychonauts has taught us anything, it’s that the brain is mightier than the sword.

  

- The Evil Wombat