Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

So why did I just post about a five-year-old PC game that I don't play anymore in my Xbox-centric blog? It seemed like good background for introducing my next game, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

This game was completely off my radar. When I heard that some Geezers were looking into it, I was completely uninterested. Although it did have "Enemy Territory" in the name, I didn't connect it with my previous hobby. After all, despite being from the same publisher, Wolfenstein and Quake are very different games. But when a couple brave Geezers picked it up and started talking about it, it caught my attention. They talked about Engineers and Covert Ops and calling in air strikes, and I started to realize: This is Enemy Territory. So, despite their somewhat negative reviews (which seemed to revolve around being unfamiliar with the game and having some difficulty picking up on the mechanics), I went out and bought a copy and joined them that night.

Being a W:ET veteran, I found it very easy to jump right in to ET:QW. The basics are all there, with the same five classes with very similar abilities as before. However, one thing that stands out right away is that the objectives are no longer focused on the Engineer with such myoptic tunnel vision. While yes, there is a lot for the Engineer to do — things must be built, and escorting a tank could take numerous repairs as it gets repeatedly stopped by the enemy — objectives in general have been spread across other classes as well. Planting explosives is now the duty of the Soldier (although it still takes an Engineer to disarm), and there are "hacking" objectives that belong to the Covert Ops class. And to give you a little guided boost, when you're selecting your class, the game indicates which class is required to accomplish the next objective.

Also new to ET:QW is AI. Whereas W:ET required human players, ET:QW will fill out the teams with bots. And, as an added bonus, when it comes to man-to-man combat, they're halfway decent. (Friendly AI does seem to have a problem with vehicles, though, whether controlling friendly or eliminating enemy.) AI medics also seem eager to heal, sometimes not even waiting for a request before dropping a medkit on you (or rushing at you with a pair of electrically-charged paddles). AI Field Ops sometimes take a little nudging to get them to give out some ammo, but eventually, they, too, will help out.

The environment is very different, of course. Instead of Axis vs. Allies, you have humans vs. aliens. To go with that, the weapons and equipment have been vastly upgraded from their 1940s representatives. Engineers can now deploy auto anti-personnel and anti-vehicle turrets, and their landmines arm themselves and only trigger when an enemy approaches. Covert Ops carry PDAs that, in addition to performing hacking functions (completing objectives and disabling the aforementioned turrets), perform the disguise function using some sophisticated holographic projection, instead of physically stealing a uniform — very useful in that it doesn't leave a half-naked body behind. ;)

The way they did weapon/equipment cycling, I found took a minute to get used to, but very handy. Weapons cycle on the right bumper, and equipment on the left. You still only hold one thing at a time — if you're placing a mine, you're not holding a gun — but because they're on different buttons, and because equipment can take time to deploy, it does make it convenient. More than once, I had a mine waiting to deploy, and an enemy approached. It was always a single right-bumper tap to switch back to a gun, instead of, say, rotating through all available equipment to cycle back to guns.

The game definitely moves faster than W:ET. There is a very strong aim assist function that I dare say almost makes it too easy to shoot, but at the speeds at which players moved, it was most welcome, especially on those rare (and they were rare) occasions when the lag kicked in.

I definitely had a lot of fun with the game, and from what I can tell, so did my fellow Geezers, especially as they got to know the game a little better. I do admit, it was a lot easier for me, being so experienced with Enemy Territory from the Wolfenstein version. That's not to say there's not a lot for me to learn here — I still don't know what happens when you "level up" a class, as it doesn't seem to be immediately obvious; and although the game prompted me to use the alt fire of certain equipment, I couldn't figure out what happened when I did; just to name a couple unknowns — but I think it won't take long for those in unfamiliar territory (so to speak) to get up to speed, and hopefully we'll get a few more Geezers to take the plunge. After all, with this game, the more you have working together, the better it gets.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

About five years ago or so, id software released a game that was originally to be an expansion to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. For some reason, instead they released Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory as a free download in 2003. It was online multiplayer only, and it became a bit hit.

At the time, I was active in the online forums at the UserFriendly webcomic. Over time, a couple members hosted dedicated servers for the UserFriendly community. The members were fairly decent at maintaining "house rules" — basically, things like no cheating/exploits, no spawn killing, etc. and so forth. For the most part, people respected the rules, and just got together for the fun of the game. I logged many, many hours in W:ET in those days.

W:ET is a team-based, class-based, objective-based first-person shooter that pits the Axis (Germans) against the Allies (Americans). In the majority of scenarios, the Allies are on the offense and have to accomplish some objectives, while the Axis are on the defense and have to prevent the Allies from accomplishing their objectives. (There are maps that switch the offense and defense, but they are the exception, at least in the standard set.)

Each class has certain, special abilities. Engineers can build and repair structures and vehicles, plant and disarm dynamite, and plant landmines. Covert Ops can steal enemy uniforms, which allows them access to doors only accessible to the enemy team. They can also plant C4 charges, which can quickly blow up small structures (gun emplacements, for example). Field Ops can call in air support, spot land mines, and resupply teammates with ammo. Medics can heal and revive teammates. Soldiers have access to heavy weaponry.

The game is very focused on team play. While it is possible for a single Engineer to play the game and accomplish all the objectives solo, he is far more effective if there's a Medic nearby to heal or revive him when he goes down, and a Covert Ops to let him in the back door. A Soldier with a portable gun emplacement makes a fair defense, but he will run out of bullets or die if he gets hit enough. Position a Medic and a Field Ops nearby to keep him healed and full of ammo, and he can sit there mowing the enemy down all day.

Probably my biggest complaint in the game is how heavily it focuses on the Engineer. Just about every objective requires an Engineer, whether you're building or destroying barricades, planting or defusing dynamite at critical locations. The other classes are very effective at what they do, but in the end, they come down to how well they support the Engineers at doing their job. Now, not to toot my own horn, but I got very good at being an Engineer (I tend to do better at objective-based games where the objective is something other than "kill the other team"), so although I tried to spend time building up my skills in other classes, I found I had to keep switching back to Engineer to get the job done. And, as I mentioned before, when other people who excelled at their "support classes" were doing their job well, the results were devastating.

I have many fond memories of that game, including my "Al Bundy" moment were I was on Axis defending our Very Big Gun when a team of Engineers slipped in and planted four packs of dynamite on the controls. I ran in, wiped them out, and while they were busy congratulating each other in the chat window waiting in the respawn for the kaboom, I defused all four dynamite packs just in time.

The game is still available through official channels, on the Enemy Territory website in the "Downloads" section; and although I'm all but forgotten in the UserFriendly crowd these days, I have noticed they still have the daily "W:ET Bar" post on the forum.

Bang, you're dead

One thing I hate in video games is the "instant death", where with one or two hits or shots or whatever, the computer can completely negate the past half hour or so of game time and end your game.

The biggest offenders I've noticed of this happen to be japanese games. I don't know if that's an element of the culture, or if it's just a coincidence or my dumb luck. With such a small sample size, it's hard to say.

Anyway, the games on my mind in particular are the Dead or Alive series, and Samurai Warriors (especially on the harder levels). Both of these games have this feature where the AI can "juggle" you, where each hit knocks you up in the air where you have no control, cannot block or counter, and it can hit you over and over and over again. Effectively, all you can do is sit and watch as your life goes from full to half or often below.

Not only is it extremely unfair that one series of unblockable hits takes off most of your life, but it's something that just seems impossible for me to do as a player. Dead or Alive seems to be especially cheap in this regard, in that I've seen the computer actually break out of being flung in the air. Lack of skill on my part? Lack of knowledge maybe; if there's a way to do it, it's not obvious to me.

There's also the blocking disparity. It seems the computer is capable of blocking any move at any time, while it laughs at my blocks. How is it that the computer can be standing still, I come at it with any attack (standard, power, charge, whatever is applicable for the game), and it blocks it perfectly; yet when I'm standing in a blocking stance and it comes with a normal attack, it scores a hit? Is it any wonder I haven't really learned how to use the block under stress, when even under the simplest of circumstances it just doesn't work? And yet, the computer reserves the right to block out of any attack or combo at any time, whether they're in the middle of being pummeled by a combo, stunned, in the air, or on the ground.

Sometimes, it's not the juggling, but the enemy will just be able to do so much more damage per hit. When I can sit there and wail on someone (actually hitting, when I get past their block) for a 50-hit combo and they only have maybe an eighth of their life gone, and in two hits I'm near death, that's just not fun. It's frustrating. I encountered that in Project Sylpheed as well, in some of the dogfights against enemy "bosses" — I'll score a few dozen hits and maybe take half their shields, and in half a second they somehow manage to remove my shields and half my armor in a single volley.

Plus, I hate wasting time. I don't have a lot of time to play as it is, so when I spend 40 minutes attacking and parrying and trying to find a way to get health back, only to very suddenly and immediately lose to a two-hit, unblockable, unbreakable attack (or a fifteen-hit juggle, hoping my feet will touch the ground long enough for it to acknowledge a button press from me before scoring the computer's next hit)... I want to throw my controller through the TV, snap the disc into a hundred pieces, and never play again.

If I wasn't such a "completionist", I'd take my 950 points from Samurai Warriors and move on. But I'm so dang close to those last two — yet I've been there for three days, and the game seems determined to not let me have them.

I sing whenever I sing whenever I sing...

In my ongoing quest to become a rock star (ok, to earn as many achievements as I can realistically milk out of the game), I started a singing career in Rock Band. Singing, I figured, should be the easiest of the four "instruments". I'm not limited by my own lack of coordination, or by any interface issues or what-not. All I need to do is sing the notes. And since I sing in the church choir, I should be capable of doing this.

Now, I'm willing to concede that there is a big difference between singing church hymns and singing lead vocals in rock songs. Not the least of my problems, I sing bass, and most songs are sung in a tenor or soprano range; so I have to spend a lot of time trying to transpose notes into an octave I can actually reach. But, I do have certain basic concepts down, not the least of which being I actually understand the concept of transposing notes into an octave I can reach, carrying a tune, matching pitch, and other fairly generic fundamentals that should at least give me a leg up on the singing career.

So why am I failing out of the warm-up songs?

I can't figure this thing out. The little on-screen arrow tells me I'm singing too low, so I modulate up a half step, and now I'm too high? And for some reason, phrases where I seem to spend more time in the green than others, it'll actually score me worse than other phrases where I was supposedly more off.

Now, granted, I'm trying this tour on Expert, figuring that because others have done it, I can do it, too. But I can't seem to, and, much like any other game, I can't figure out why; and that's the most frustrating part. I can't fix what I don't know what's wrong.

Grand Theft What?

If you've read my Gears of Who? or What happens in Vegas... posts, then you probably can guess what I think about next Tuesday's big game release, Grand Theft Auto IV, but I suppose I'll go on record by saying: Not interested.

As I mentioned before, Crackdown is as much Grand Theft Auto as I need. I'm not entirely sure what the big deal is about GTA, to be honest. The reason I like Crackdown is that you get to be, for all intents and purposes, a super-hero, able to run faster than a speeding car and leap up tall buildings in a few bounds. The violence isn't my favorite; I definitely have more fun running and jumping than I do beating up gang members. Take the super abilities out of the equation, and I'm afraid I just don't see the point. :shrug:

So, yeah, as far as GTA is concerned, I guess it'll prepare me for the hours of relative loneliness I'll have when Gears 2 is released, as I'm sure I'll be one of the few who isn't playing it next week. Not like I don't have plenty of single-player achievements to earn, anyway; there's still Eternal Sonata and Blue Dragon to finish, the second half of Samurai Warriors to grind through, a couple Rock Band solo tours to complete...*phew*

Don't take away my shiny discs

I've been somewhat of a detached observer in the whole HD-DVD/Blu-ray format war. Although I'm intrigued by the possibilities of better pictures and more features, considering how few movies we watch in the Knight household that aren't produced by Disney and/or Pixar these days, it's just not a priority. I suppose now my preference here is moot, since the war is over (and, in my opinion, the inferior format won — but that's a rant for another time). But throughout the debate and beyond, there has been talk that has been bothering me a lot. It's this mantra from various executives saying how the whole format war is unimportant anyway, because the future is "digital distribution".

This bothers me for a lot of reasons, so many that I don't know exactly where to start. I suppose, though, I'll start with three little letters that seem to be at the root of so many of my issues: DRM.

Since this is a gaming blog, I'll start with one game-related anecdote that should get the ball rolling. It should come as no surprise to anyone with some interest in this generation of video game consoles that my first 360 died. At the time, it was over 3 months old, and Microsoft had not yet extended their initial warranty beyond the original length. So, rather than pay Microsoft to repair their faulty console, I used the Best Buy product replacement plan, exchanged my red-ringed 360 for a new one, and was up and running again that very night. The customer service employee even helped me open the new console and swap out the hard drive (they were quite familiar with this process). Smooth as silk, right?

Well, almost. While all my disc-based games worked just like they did before, there was a little issue with the Xbox Live Arcade games. You see, the rights to play those games are tied to the Gamertag and the console on which they were purchased, meaning the purchasing Gamertag can play them anywhere, and anyone can play them on the purchasing console. My kids could play the full versions of all the games I had purchased before, but now that the console was no longer the "purchasing console", that right was denied them.

The more content I purchase over Xbox Live, the more I worry about this. I will say that, when my second 360 failed and was repaired by Microsoft (which was only in-warranty because it was within a year of the previous store exchange), Microsoft did transfer all the DRM licenses from the previous console to the new one (although the ones from the very first console are still un-linked). The fact that I must go through Microsoft to get this done, however, is unsettling to say the least.

Xbox has been heralding their Video Marketplace as the future of movie distribution, but this, too, I see has problems. To stay on the DRM topic, they place so many restrictions on how you watch it that it makes me uncomfortable renting a movie through them. For one thing, you can only watch said movie on the 360 console on which you rented it. If I rent a movie from the local video store, I can put that shiny disc into any DVD player in the house. I can even start watching the movie in the family room, move it to the computer in the office while I do some work, and move it to the bedroom and finish watching the movie before bed. Second, although the rental is supposedly good for three days once you download it, they place the additional restriction that once you start watching it, you get 24 hours, and that's it. With the interruptions that kids can provide, I can't guarantee that I can start and finish a movie in 24 hours. In fact, since I usually have to start such things after the kids go to bed one night, if I do get interrupted, chances are I won't get time to finish it until after the kids to go bed the next night, 24 hours later. Shiny disc? I get it for 3-5 days, and I can watch or not watch it as many times as I want in that entire time frame.

Another big, big issue around the lack of a physical disc is the fact that I can't borrow or lend it. I have a copy of Samurai Warriors 2 that I've borrowed, that my kids are absolutely loving. This would've been impossible if FireMedic didn't have a disc he could put in my hands. In fact, a lot of the events around that time — renting games from Blockbuster to get achievements for that challenge — would've been impossible in an all-digital world. The copy of TimeShift that hyperdive loaned me that I still need to mail back to him? Never would've happened. The copy of Call of Duty 2 that I loaned Solstice? Likewise. And although this isn't a problem in my household where we only have one Xbox 360, those that have more than one have expressed their frustration when they can't transfer a game from one console to another in the same household without having to carefully play the rules of DRM.

The lack of physical media has been suggested by some to be a factor in driving prices down, since there is a savings on distribution, production, retail overhead, and so on. However, I feared there would be an opposite trend, that it would keep prices up — and I've already seen evidence of this.

One of the things I offer as a reason games get cheaper is that publishers and retailers have to compete for shelf space. One of the things they compete with is newer games. In order to have the shelf space for newer games, retailers have to get rid of the older inventory; and because it's a physical product, their only options are to sell it off or throw it away. That, I offer, is a reason why game prices decay over time: retailers slash prices to move inventory to make space for the new hotness. Secondly, games have to compete with themselves. Because there is a market for used games, the same game can be available at a lower price. I admit I can't say exactly how this drives the retail price of new games down, but it does result in lower prices for the same game for consumers in the end.

In the world of digital distribution, however, physical space and used units are no longer available. Essentially, a distributor only needs one copy of their product available, which is then digitally copied and streamed on demand. And disk space is cheap. There is virtually no incentive for a distributor to clear out space.

I said I had evidence, so here are a couple examples. The Xbox Live Arcade game Wik: Fable of Souls was released early in the console's life, on 12/15/05 according to its Xbox.com page. It was 800 points on release, which equates to $10 in real money. Over two years later, the game can still be purchased on Xbox Live Marketplace for the same cost. There has been no decay in price whatsoever. And there are many, many more games like it. In fact, only a handful of games have been reduced in price since their launch, due to their "Arcade Hits" promotion (which, ironically, reduces the price of some of the best-selling games, instead of those that actually need a price drop to stimulate sales).

To take another example, a while back, a few of us Geezers decided to have a "retro" game night and play a little Call of Duty 2 (in anticipation for the upcoming Call of Duty 4). One Geezer managed to find a used copy of the game for about $7 at a garage sale (a transaction that would be impossible in an all-digital scenario), so he was pretty excited about being able to join in. He figured, too, that he could download the extra map packs. Surely by now, since there had already been one sequel published and a second two months away, the map packs should be bargain-basement prices, right? Au contraire! The map packs are still at their original prices, which, according to the Xbox.com page, are free, 400, and 800 points, respectively. Thanks to the wonders of digital distribution, the extra content for the game is now more expensive than the market price of the actual game itself!

As a counter-example, I bought a new copy of Perfect Dark Zero a while back, about two years after its release, for a mere $20 in a retail store — and that was a "Platinum Hits" release that included maps that were released as for-pay downloadable content.

One thing standing in the way of digital distribution is the distribution part of the equation. When I was recently playing Rock Band over at Solstice's, I decided to download some of the songs I had purchased to his hard drive so we could play them while I was there. (One time when "DD" worked out in my favor; I didn't have to fret over not bringing a disc or memory card, I just downloaded it, and the game knows that it's ok to play when I'm there, but it doesn't "cheat" and give him a free copy when I'm not. I'll give it credit there.) I found the songs and started downloading. And then we waited. And then it finished, and I went to the next song and started downloading. And then we waited. And then we got smart and dumped back to the dashboard where we could use the background download queue, and I queued up six of the songs for downloading while we played.

The point is, in the grand scheme of things, these were not large downloads, and yet they took a not-insignificant amount of time.

For a bigger example, when Bungie released maps for Halo 2, they released them in disc format as well as online. I opted to buy the disc. Aside from an initial annoyance when EB Games refused to sell me the disc until a day after they were released online, I never regretted my decision. I was rewarded with this choice when I first got my 360. As I booted up Halo 2 for the first time to play with my friends, I realized I didn't have the new maps. I thought I could conveniently download them, since by this point they were all free. So I started the process. When I saw the progress bar and how slowly it was moving, I very quickly aborted the process and booted up my map pack disc, and loaded the maps from there. Now, at the time, there were three map packs. The disc had two, and a third had been released online later. Just the process of downloading the third map pack (not counting any extra time of booting up Halo 2 or entering the content download option) took nearly twice as long as the entire process of booting up the map pack disc and installing both of the other map packs.

Although we are a lot further along than we once were, having to sit through all these downloading progress bars makes me feel like we're back in the days of dialup.

I'm not sure if the Video Marketplace uses a dedicated network for distribution, but my experience there was quite different. They had some movies for free, and although my wife is not a fan of low-brow comedy, I was glad I had an opportunity to try out Video Marketplace by downloading Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. I was rather impressed by how quickly the movie was ready to play. And, fortunately, even with an interruption from the kids, we were able to finish it that night.

But while we're on the topic of movies, I do wonder what the digital wave will do to that experience. DVDs are loaded with extras these days. Admittedly, I only watch them once or twice (which is why I opted not to get the more expensive two-disc version of the last Harry Potter movie — the second disc almost always ends up gathering dust), but I haven't yet seen a digital download that I've had the option of watching with director's commentary, or with a French soundtrack, or even deleted scenes or so much as a chapter menu.

Even without all these extras, at least in our family, we need the discs. We need to be able to buy a disc so the kids can grab a movie and pop it in and watch it for the 27^th time this month, or so we can grab a dozen or so to put in the DVD player in the minivan to watch while we drive across the country to visit relatives — a scenario that wouldn't even be possible if all the content were digital (and, I presume, DRM-linked to a single hardware device).

Go strum sand

My friend Solstice has a Rock Band set now, and since he got his game room set up again, we've been meaning to get together and play. I finally had the opportunity over the weekend. He played drums, and I borrowed his Rock Band Stratocaster.

Wow, what a difference. I didn't realize how bad mine really was. I always felt like I had to put a lot of effort into strumming to hit the notes, but compared to Solstice's, mine is like trying to drive your hand into wet sand. Triggering overdrive as well, on his guitar, worked when you tipped the guitar, and only when you did so; whereas mine doesn't easily when you want it and does occasionally on its own.

The real test came on those long sequences of rapid, evenly-spaced notes that I almost always miss. I've tried strumming up and down, and I've tried shoving the strum bar down (pounding sand, as it were), and I just couldn't do it. On Solstice's? It wasn't perfect, but holy cow, it was a a vast improvement. I hit a lot of sequences with a very light touch, and even five-starred the Police songs (on medium).

Although I vowed to start the replacement process that very night, we ended up playing rather late, so I got some sleep first. Then I started the replacement process. The new guitar is on its way...