HEY KID I'M A CONSUMER

I guess the game can't "die" if it wasn't ever really alive to start with.

...stop all the grab dealin'!

Six years later, that video still doesn't make any sense to me. That said, there's something else that doesn't make sense to me and that's what I feel like I need to talk about today - namely, the handling of MechWarrior Online and the player base that's apparently just slightly more incompetent than the game's management. 

Anyone who's followed this blog since I created it about a year ago should know by now that I love BattleTech. It's by far one of my favorite IPs, and I still have great memories of playing the various games (video and tabletop) all through middle school and high school. The circle of friends I made through it was the closest to a real social life I've ever had, which I'm sure reflects poorly on me to a certain extent but nonetheless should make it clear as to why I hate seeing the property go through hard times. 

MechWarrior Online is thus a very strange beast. On one hand, the game has some of the best core gameplay the franchise has ever seen. The aiming system helps make it feel like you're piloting a giant walking tank with limbs rather than a fighter jet with legs, and the integration of proper BattleTech elements like equipment critical slots in the MechBay and the risk of ammunition cooking off in destroyed parts of your 'Mech that will gut you from the inside out bring back a certain level of depth that was missing from MechWarrior 4, even if certain elements (most notably active/passive sensors) are missing in action. The problem is that instead of adding those features, the developer, Piranha Games Interactive (PGI) seems dead-set on removing things that increase player immersion, all while adding elements that break the game in various ways and asking for more money while they do it.

Overdrive: Why Games Need More Run and Gun

In a world of cookie-cutter shooters, "ordinary" has once again become the extraordinary.

(Sorry for the long absence, real life has (sadly) caught up to me recently. Moving sucks. - VR)

This past week saw the long-awaited, totally free, and shockingly well-polished Black Mesa. A mod a full eight years in the making - and technically still not finished - has recreated Half-Life from the ground up using the engine that powered its sequel. Needless to say, the bar was set quite high. Half-Life has long been considered a cornerstone of modern video games, and with good reason. When it released in 1998, Half-Life was considered revolutionary, and many of its design tenets, such as the use of scripted sequences to both advance the plot and create dynamic scenes during gameplay, are still used widely in modern shooters.

Black Mesa, amazingly enough, manages to not only maintain the spirit of Half-Life almost fourteen years after the game's debut, but also improve upon it in several ways. By refining level progression, puzzle solving, and scripted events, the Black Mesa team was able to polish the few rough segments that were present in the original game. It is very much a 90's shooter in the clothes of the modern era. This isn't to say that Black Mesa is without flaws, but it did an utterly fantastic job at hiding them, considering the project was done entirely by volunteers. Black Mesa's greatest achievement, however, may be the complete shift that the game will represent to players new to 90's-style shooters.

A Tale of Two Spin-Offs: Ace Combat Cross Rumble and Ace Combat Assault Horizon

As someone whose childhood was defined by repeated viewings of Top Gun, it should be no surprise that I love the Ace Combat series. For the uninitiated, Ace Combat is basically an arcade-style flight action game, mixing an accessible flight model with plenty of missiles, melodrama, and music that results in a truly unique and enjoyable experience. However, after the release of Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, Namco saw fit to try and liven up the series by changing a number of the franchise's established concepts. After numerous sequels and spin-offs, evolving the series' formula was to be expected - one of the few criticisms that was leveled at Fires of Liberation from nearly all reviewers was that the game brought very little new to the table compared to the last 7+ games in the series, especially since most dogfights effectively boiled down to "do high-G turns until you can shoot a QAAM at the other guy."

Ace Combat Assault Horizon was to be the rebirth of the series, introducing a number of new features and concepts to the formula. Sadly, Assault Horizon may ultimately have done more harm than good to the series. But, before one can discuss what AH did wrong, it's important to understand what previous Ace Combat games did right that gained Project Aces both immense respect and the undying adoration of a legion of fans (myself included).

I TROL U: "Trolling," "Entitlement," and the Industry

Recently, there's been a rather interesting trend that I've noticed in the way game developers and publishers treat their customers. Perhaps not so coincidentally, it coincided with the popularization of internet trolling. Now, I'm not going to pretend that trolls haven't always existed, but in the past year or so it has gotten to be a bit excessive, especially with memes and general *chan culture finding its way into the mainstream via sites like Reddit and Facebook. Trolling has changed as well - it used to simply be things like griefing (think "that one guy who stands still in the hallway as your team tries to push through so you all die a horrible death when an enemy eventually notices").

These days, the most common method of trolling appears to be consistent repetition of intentional logical fallacies or insults with no real basis. It's exceptionally stupid (and in my opinion, not even nearly as entertaining), but it's very widespread these days, especially on any site involving video games. In a way, it should be expected - internet culture has been tied to video game culture for a long time - but it has resulted in some unexpected consequences. For every obvious trolling attempt where someone says "this game sucks, needs more ponies," there's a legitimate complaint that rabid fanboys, or worse, the developers themselves, will write off as "attempted trolling." Overzealous forum moderators like Bioware's infamous Stanley Woo eventually see anyone who isn't licking their organization's boots as a troll, regardless of whether or not their complaint had a point or a well structured argument. This ultimately impacts how companies see their customers as well.