How much is a good FPS trainer, anyway?

So I've been trying to get back into playing Halo. I really, really wish I knew how to get better in that game, or in FPSes in general. "Stick together", my teammates say. Yet, it doesn't seem to matter if I'm standing next to a teammate or across the map from them; when I die in two shots, I'm no good to anyone, including myself. When I hit someone in the back, they turn around, give me a noogie, and I keel over dead, HOW DO I FIX THAT?

Here's the thing. I want to actually play the game. To me, playing the game is not spending most of my time watching a respawn timer. That is not fun. Neither is knowing that your team would've won, if it wasn't for your double-digit negative K:D ratio.

The new maps came out this week, and I did get a chance to play on them. Until they get into the main matchmaking playlists, not too many skilled players are voluntarily playing them — which means I've actually been able to play. Unfortunately, it also means I've been able to roll over these real "newbies" (I don't know that it's fair to call them n00bs, unless they really do suck). See, I may get wasted going up against people with real skill, but I do have some skills of my own. My real rank is probably around 20. Anyway, wasting another team isn't fun, either. It's like running around with god mode turned on — sure it's fun for a few laughs, but it gets old very quickly.

So tonight I was playing with some rather skilled players who are on their way to level 40, hoping maybe they could drag me along. Stupid, stupid me. My level in Team Slayer is already up to a laughable 32. I'm sure the other team had a good laugh when they saw my name appear in red over their reticule. "Ha ha, look at that, CyberKnight just hit me in the face with a hammer. *bang* He's dead." "Ha ha, CyberKnight is shooting me in the face with his little water pistol. Watch me take him out with one shot with my battle rifle." "Ha ha, CyberKnight just dropped this grenade under my feet, and he thinks it'll do some damage to me. Little does he know he can't hope to penetrate my Mark VII armor."

In a way, I'm glad I don't have hours to spend trying to improve, because I can't seem to improve at all, and this way I still have an excuse. A flimsy one, to be sure, considering other working parents don't seem to have the same troubles I do. But I guess it'll have to do. I don't see me spending money on a personal trainer because (1) it's just a game, there are more important things to spend the nonexistent money on, and (2) I have my doubts as to how helpful it'll be, since what help my friends have offered seems to be "about as useless as JPEGs to Helen Keller".

It seems, when it comes to playing FPSes online, I'm doomed to mediocrity — which I suppose wouldn't be so bad, if Microsoft's precious "TruSkill" algorithm would do as promised and actually match me up with people at my skill level, instead of constantly matching me with people so much higher (thus frustrating me to no end) or lower (thus boring me) than I am. Believe me, I don't want to be at this skill level, either, but it doesn't seem I have a choice.

Out of the mouths of babes

Expanding a bit on my gamerscore challenge experience, I thought it might be interesting to mention how my kids reacted to some of the games that were played. I admit, more than one game was aimed at kids. Achievements for kids' games tend to be easier to get, so for a challenge, they're ripe for the picking.

As I mentioned, my oldest son just happened to rent Open Season just as the challenge started. What did an 8-year-old boy think of this game? Honestly, he didn't seem to like it very much. He played it the first night, but on the second day, he really wasn't that interested in playing, even when we warned him that, as a rental, the game wouldn't be with us for very long. The following day was a weekend, and he did play a little more then, especially when he found out that the little treasure gems unlocked facts. Being a little know-it-all, he's very into facts with which he can show off later.

He seemed to have a little more fun with TMNT. Its game mechanics are really simple and easy to pick up, and the game has a lot of action. My second-oldest, who isn't as big a gamer as his big brother, liked to watch his brother play this one. I don't recall him getting very far in it, but he did have fun with it.

My son likes playing EA's NBA 2002, the last basketball game I purchased (and still playable, thanks to backwards compatibility), so I figured besides the easy points, NBA 2k6 would be an appreciated upgrade. The first game we played together was full of frustration — despite the fact that we were playing a team whose every player's stats grossly outranked every player on the computer's team, we'd miss wide-open shots the computer would make under pressure, easily. He complained the whole game (as he's wont to do) how he'd rather play the old one.

Then I introduced him to the sliders. We pulled the computer's abilities down to about ¼ and put ours up to about ¾, and suddenly it was the Harlem Globetrotters against the Washington Generals. I forget the final score, but it was well over 200 to zero. He (and I) had a lot more fun then. :D

Finally, the kids played a bit of Avatar. Turns out there is more to the game than the first five minutes. ;) After the whole family took turns milking the game's easy points (even my wife, boosting her score from a mere 40 to a whopping 1040), the kids decided to play the game the way it was really meant to be played. I guess you might cast it as an action/platformer, along the lines of the first three Harry Potter games — sometimes you're fighting bad guys, sometimes you're pushing giant blocks around to climb up on, sometimes you're just running through dungeons blasting giant rats. Occasionally they had a little bit of trouble trying to decide where to go next, but all in all it didn't seem too hard for them to pick up. It's pretty simple, with cutscenes that are fairly reminiscent of the cartoon show (or what little I remember of it — we don't watch a whole lot of TV around here as a habit).

If I had to rank the games, I'd say Open Season was probably dead last. TMNT and Avatar would be in the middle, although I'm not sure in what order — the turtles seemed to be on a slightly older level than he might be ready for, and I can attest to the game getting a lot harder, especially in the boss battles; whereas Avatar was definitely set up to be more of a cartoon feel, and they definitely liked that. NBA 2k6 is a little higher up there, as long as the settings are modified appropriately.

The real winner is one game that I haven't mentioned at all yet: Samurai Warriors 2. On the last night of the challenge, I called up local Geezer FireMedic41 to see if he had any games with easy achievements, and he loaned me that one. I didn't mention it because, although the achievements are fairly easy, they take a lot of time. After I played NBA 2k6, I started playing Samurai Warriors 2 to fill out the rest of the time (until I discovered that I needed to play Avatar), and I got about two-thirds through one story, which would've earned me one 50-point achievement. I'm still plunking away at it, because I'm a certified achievement whore, but it should be noted that my kids have played it just about every day that they've played any games at all. They have been loving the hack 'n' slash gameplay, even if they don't have a full grasp of the objectives.

So there you have it. Open Season, definitely bad; Samurai Warriors 2, definitely good.

What happens in Vegas...

I had high hopes for Rainbow Six: Vegas. I like the Splinter Cell series, and I thought a tactical shooter would make for interesting gameplay. When the multiplayer demo was released, I had a great time with it, in fact. It was interesting, heavily promoted team play. And the single player features were promising, not the least of which being the ability to use the Vision camera to put your face in the game. (Yes, I know it's a gimmick, but as the owner of one of these gimmicks, I'd like to get more use out of it.)

So the single player demo was released, and I got a chance to play it. Remember what I said about Gears of War and excessive swearing? This was pretty bad, too. I had the same feeling then. This was not a game I wanted to expose myself to, let alone bring into my home.

So along came Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (bottom of the eighth, Vegas is up, bases loaded, two outs...). I hoped that maybe this could be my entry into Vegas. If they cleaned up the language at least, then even if they released the same game, I could get some enjoyment playing one version of the game.

Fortunately, my participation in the Geezer Gamer community paid off once again. I can usually count on somebody getting a copy of just about any game on release day, especially one anticipated such as this, and posting their impressions. One such Geezer had this to say:

Sounds is as always amazing, with this game having the most foul-mouthed terrorists I've ever heard in my life. Apparently in Terrorist Training Camp™ they teach how to swear using the "Fock" word until they get it right such as: "Dude, they just focking killed him!!"

The reviews had been a little lackluster so far. It seems to be a good game, but not much of an improvement over the original. With a lack of community excitement, I was on the fence about this one, but that comment clinched the deal. No sale.

You Challenge Me?

This past month, I was involved in a gamerscore challenge called "You challenge me?"  This gave me an opportunity to put my gamerscore whoring to the test, as well as find some new games that I might not have otherwise played.

As luck would have it, my son just happened to decide to use the free game rental he got for Christmas on the game Open Season. So, to start off the challenge, I found a good FAQ on the Internet and set to work for the first thousand points. I only have vague memories of the movie. I saw it while I was in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy, and my attempts at watching it while my kids came to visit were interrupted by my falling in and out of consciousness. As such, I can't say for certain how faithfully the game follows the movie plot. It did seem familiar...

In any case, the game was fairly unremarkable. It had pretty simple gameplay, although there were a few achievements that weren't so easy to get, even with the FAQ at my side. The ones that stand out in particular in my memory were those that involved getting a certain score on levels where your forward motion was uncontrolled — sliding down a mountain or racing down a river on an outhouse. (?) Otherwise, as I said, pretty unremarkable. You could tell it was put together without a big budget. The menus aren't the easiest to navigate, and for some reason, while most of the movie scenes are recreated with the unimpressive yet capable game engine, the touching final moment is done as a slideshow of stills from the actual movie. If they couldn't have done full video, they should've just stuck with the game engine. Totally ruined the effect.

The next big rental was my own, and it was TMNT. I liken this to a low-impact Prince of Persia. The game is petty straightforward, and so are the achievements. Although I had a FAQ with me, it turns out it was completely unnecessary. Almost all achievements unlock just by playing the game. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the movie so I can't comment on its accuracy to that plot at all. It was good, simple, ninja turtle fun. Not a whole lot else to say about it.

Fellow Awesome Possum member Hyperdive was kind enough to support me in my quest. He mailed me his copy of the game TimeShift, and Maizrim added his support by helping me boost a few of the multiplayer achievements. Granted, I only got a taste of this game's potential, but this could easily ft into the same category as Shadowrun — a shooter with some unique elements that really set it apart and make it interesting, unfortunately overlooked by the community at large.

The last day of the challenge was really interesting. Ahead by only 500-some points, I was at work, watching the second-place challenger going through TMNT. I stopped by Blockbuster on my way home and found a used copy of NBA 2k6 for sale cheap. I knew the 2006 sports games were rather infamous for easy achievements. I also decided, since that would put me back up by only 500 (assuming she finished TMNT and I finished NBA 2k6), to rent Avatar. This game has the dubious honor of granting 1000 gamerscore for a mere 5 minutes of play. I felt it prudent insurance, in case the other player had something else up her sleeve after she finished TMNT.

NBA 2k6 reminded me of why I don't play sports games anymore. On the default settings, I watched what should have been easy shots miss, and the computer be unstoppable. When he can hit anything covered by 3 men and I can't hit closer shots wide open with statistically better players, the game just isn't fun. Fortunately, you can tweak the settings to ridiculous levels, and the game is a mindless blowout. As far as achievements go, I wish I had a camera to snap a picture for the end of the game, when the notification popped up: "Achievements Unlocked — 5 for 1000G"

For the rest of the night, I kept watch on the second player's profile. She finally finished TMNT with about a half hour to go... and then, she put in Avatar and picked up a quick 1000 points to gain the lead. It turned out that my insurance paid off. I put in my own copy of Avatar with about 15 minutes to spare and earned my own 1000 points, countering her last-minute cheap shot and winning the challenge.

Gears of Who?

At the GDC, Microsoft's keynote address listed a lot of new and exciting things coming up for 2008. At the end of the presentation, it was announced that Gears of War 2 was coming out for the 360 this November.

I couldn't be less enthused.

Gears of War was, arguably, the top game for 2006. As a gamer, I wanted to know about it, see if it was something I would want to play. The best way for me to find out something like that, of course, is to try out a demo. However, they didn't see fit to release a demo, preferring, as they said, to concentrate their efforts on supporting the game (DLC and patches as needed). Although, what I found interesting, is a press conference, when a reporter asked lead designer Cliff Bleszinski how he thought to convince people to buy the game without a demo. "CliffyB's" response? "Have you played the game?" As if he was completely unaware of the irony of his statement.

So, without a demo to go by, the next best thing is a gameplay video. I found one that happened to show some dialog between a couple characters as they were between battle segments. In just a couple short minutes of video, I heard enough foul language to make me feel physically ill. And then it got to the gameplay. "Bloody" and "violent" don't even begin to describe it. And, to be honest, I don't want to go into too much depth trying to describe it.

I've heard plenty of justifications for all of this, usually revolving around how it makes it more "realistic". If I were fighting a swarm of evil monsters, I could probably expect those fighting along with me to drop a few swear words. Even though I try not to use such language, I might be so inclined to do so myself. The next time I'm in that situation, I'll let you know. And if I were taking a chainsaw to an alien, chances are there would be a lot of blood and body parts that wouldn't magically disappear when the enemy dies.

My response to this, though, is simple: this isn't reality. It's a game. It's how I choose to be entertained. Call of Duty and Halo managed to be entertaining first-person shooters without spraying the screen with blood or setting new high levels of fps (f-words per second), so yes, it can be done.

CliffyB gives me the impression of a boy who never grew up, who never learned things like "restraint" and "temperance". His over-the-top swear- and gore-fest of a game does little to assuage that.

Of course, I speak only for myself. As I said, the game did very well. Of course, so has the Grand Theft Auto series. (Heck, The Jerry Springer Show is still on the air.) I make no attempt to account for the tastes of the masses. I'm sure Epic Games will hardly notice my lack of purchase. My only regret is that I may have very few people to play with this November when my Friends List is a long series of "Playing Gears of War 2", much like it was back on "Emergence Day" when it was almost all "Playing Gears of War".

Maybe then, though, I'll finally have some time to finish up Blue Dragon or Lego Star Wars...

Turning in my drumsticks?

Last night, I played some Rock Band online. I got an invite from Maizrim and SifuTed offering to let me play drums. Since the baby was just getting to sleep, I figured I should decline, and they switched around and graciously let me join as a guitarist. Had some more fun and started to play a few songs on hard difficulty, which increases the notes and adds the fifth fret. I still think there should be something in between. It's not fair to increase the number of notes and chords and add hand-shifting at the same time. Although my companions were complimenting my efforts, it was still humbling to be scoring a lower percentage on hard than they were on expert. (Even if I had just started on hard, and I had never played most of these songs before, where they've been practicing quite a bit.)

After the east-coasters went to bed, and my wife took the baby up to his bed, I decided to try and make some progress on my solo drum career. I forget what song I was playing, but it starts out with a fairly simple pattern, one that is taught in the training for drums: yellow on the beat, kick-drum orange on 1 and 3, and red on 2 and 4.

Could. Not. Do it. At the risk of sounding insensitive to those who are so afflicted: I felt retarded. I could not make my hands and foot work when they were supposed to.

After getting booed off the stage twice before the song even got started, I went into practice mode, where you can set the song section and speed. I put it on the intro only, and set it at 50% to start. That was fine. Increased to 70%. Took a few beats to get set, then fine. 80%, ok, definitely not perfect. 90%, not good.

Have I done this beat before? I'm pretty sure no, not at this speed. And this was only on medium. How on earth was SifuTed doing this stuff on Hard and Expert? For that matter, how do real drummers do it?

In training, it made it sound really easy. And, at a 5,000' level, it is: your right hand taps on every beat, your foot taps on the even beats, and your left hand taps on the odd beats (or vice-versa — it's hard to say which one is the downbeat when you're just trying to keep up with the scrolling track).

I don't quite know what the trick is, though. Can I get my right hand to just tap out the beat on autopilot so I can concentrate on alternating left hand/foot? Nope, my right hand doesn't seem to work on autopilot. Am I just thinking too much about it? Hard to say; I would imagine if I could get into the rhythm, it would start to fall into place, but I can't get there to find out.

In any case, I guess I affirmed from where my son gets his lack of coordination.

Do you wanna get rocked?

We decided to get me an early birthday present today. I wasn't sure if I was going to get Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I wanted to be able to play with Solstice, who has Guitar Hero, and the Rock Band guitar doesn't work with Guitar Hero, so I thought Guitar Hero would be my first pick (and maybe pick up Rock Band at a later date, perhaps splitting the cost with Solstice or something). On the other hand, Rock Band comes with more instruments, which would mean my two boys would get to play with me — although it only comes with one guitar, and the cost of a second guitar is almost as much as the cost of Guitar Hero bundled with a guitar.

Although I was going to take my Best Buy 10% off coupon and pick one up, I checked the fine print: "Excludes new release DVDs, Power Price items, video game accessories and video game hardware; Guitar Hero bundles and accessories; Rock Band bundles and accessories." As it turns out, Sam's Club carries the games at prices more than 10% less than Best Buy anyway. And, since Sam's Club's inventory is often like a box of chocolates, I suspected perhaps that would decide which game I got today.

Turned out, I was right. Sam's Club only had the 360 version of Guitar Hero III (with "X-plorer" wired guitar), not Rock Band (full set, although they did have the game and the drum kit separately, which I think is more expensive than the full set right there). So that's what I got.

When we went to Wal-Mart, though, my wife saw Rock Band, and she actually pressured me a bit to get it, because she figured the kids would enjoy it. I couldn't deny they'd probably love banging on the drums, or that they wouldn't give me a moment's peace anyway if I didn't constantly let them have a turn on the axe. So yes, we ended up getting that, too.

In the end, I'm very glad we got both. My oldest son and I played Rock Band most of the day. (My next oldest isn't quite old enough to get rhythm down yet.) He first tried the drums. He went through the tutorials and was doing fairly well, until it started to put three things together. He's still just a little too young to get both hands and a foot to coordinate. (So that job went to the second son, who of course didn't fare any better in the actual game but has a lot of fun with the controller unplugged just banging the drums along with us.) He next tried singing, at which he did very well, especially considering his age. (Heck, I tried singing later, and I don't think I did that much better, honestly.) I give a lot of credit to how they implemented singing in this game, where you sing along with the band and you are shown the pitch you're actually singing in relation to what is expected, so you know how to correct it. (And credit to my boy for doing pretty well with the talent God gave him.)

Finally, though, he tried the guitar, and that's where he ended up having the most fun. And because we had two guitars, he could play along with me. We played most of the time, me playing lead guitar on medium, him playing bass on easy, and we were doing really well, even getting a couple 5-star scores.

So perhaps it was a bit of an indulgence getting both games, but I really think it worked out for the best. (Although we still can only use one guitar with Guitar Hero, which is too bad.)

Later, after the boys went to bed, Solstice came over with his X-plorer to jam with the new games. We started out with Guitar Hero III, since I happened to have that in the 360 when he came over (getting that "complete the training mode" achievement). We played through the first few songs, since I hadn't unlocked any yet (yes, I know there's a code to unlock them all, although I don't know if it was deactivated with the latest patch that fixed some of the other glitches — in any case, we had plenty of songs to play without going to look it up). Then we moved on to Rock Band and took turns trying out the various instruments. I had only done the guitar up until that point. I discovered that, yes, I am a bass, and no, I can't match the pitch of the singer; I do have to drop it an octave. It doesn't sound as "cool", but at least I don't get booed off stage. I also discovered that I am a lot better at the drums than I expected I would be. Not great, but hitting in the mid 80%s consistently just starting out. Solstice is a much better singer than he admits to (we'll get him singing in the church choir yet), and if he knows the song really well, he can even pull off singing and playing the guitar at the same time, which is impressive. He's more into rock music than I am, so he's more familiar with more of these tunes, which means he ends up singing most of them a lot better than I do. (So if he's a better singer, why am I in the choir and he's not? Good question... *cough* *cough* *ahem*)

I'll have to spend some time with Guitar Hero III before I do a comparison post, but it was definitely interesting when I put the Guitar Hero disc in after playing Rock Band most of the day. The mechanics of the game are almost identical, but with that much being the same, it made GH3 feel like so much less of a game than RB — and, when the tutorial in GH3 started talking about "battle mode", I almost felt like it was trying too hard to add a gimmick to make it different than "just another release of the same Guitar Hero game". But these are only first impressions. Like I implied, I really didn't get into GH3 yet, certainly not enough to get a real feel for it, and definitely not enough for me to say anything but "this is just a quick first impression; take with a generous helping of salt."