(Another 2-hour break narrative)
Most of my palls know that when school isn’t there put a choke hold on my free time, I am an avid gamer, and have been for some time. However, contrary to some might believe, I don’t play every game that I come across. In fact, although I have the ability to make any game fun in one way or another, I prefer a very small scope of games. These games are ones that I find myself to be good at, especially when it involves online play against other players. But one of the biggest things I look for in a game, especially single player campaigns, is a good story. Flashy graphics and PvP play, although good to have, doesn’t mean much to me. I want more… It is hard for me to explain what exactly I mean by that, so I will go through a number of games that defined my experience as a gamer.
These are my all time favorites.
Command and Conquer: Tiberium Dawn
1995, 13 years ago. I was 7.
Besides playing Lemmings and various Indiana Jones games I played with my father, C&C was the very first real computer game I played. At that time I did not own a SNES, or even a SEGA Genesis, and my dad’s computer was all I really had gaming wise.
Now, Command and Conquer TD has a campaign based single player aspect to it, and no Skirmish mode. The story depicts the struggle between a “World Police”, USA like, team known as the GDI who’s goal is to rid the world of the bad guys, while protecting the good guys, and against them, the radical terrorist group the Brotherhood of Nod who after discovering a new economical good, are growing very powerful and aim to expand their influence around the world.
The emblem of the Brotherhood is a scorpion’s tail, and being a 7 year old (although I don’t think I have changed much) I decided to play their missions first, because it looked cool.
Before every mission, your ‘commander’ named Seth comes on screen and tells you what is going down? Being a super terrorist group, he talked all about his worldview, and how the oppressors must die. Lets just say as a kid I found it a bit hard to follow the complex plot that rivals some Tom Clancy novel, but I did pick up on brutal and crafty nature of the terrorists, and how they were aiming to take down a far greater foe for their cause. Your commander even starts a separate sect from the main cell, and is killed on screen by the Brotherhood’s big cheese, Kane.
The single player, although simple, was very difficult for me as a 7 year old. Some missions required me to do some rather daring things, like assassinate a chief scientist, steal a nuke from a base, nuke the base with it, overcome a force much larger than your own, constructing a base in secret knowing that a single attack from your enemy will destroy you, plan and conduct an attack on a heavily defended foe, and ultimately take control of the enemies dreaded satellite born super weapon and use it against them, destroying the White House, Eiffel Tower, some building in Beijing (you got to choose, and then watch the landmark explode)
I got through the campaign maybe after a month. Around the middle of the campaign your team starts to lose it, and the commander clearly makes this known by getting pissed. I was drawn into the game so far, as it was such a new experience, so I literally felt bad for my team, as if I was on it. The propaganda they spewed throughout the campaign denouncing the GDI actually prevented me from playing their own campaign after I finished the other campaign. It was indeed a pretty crazy experience. And it set the ground for what I liked in games from then on out. 12 years later, the third sequel of this game came out, and like I did 13 years ago, first chance I got, I hopped on the Nod’s team and led them to victory.
But I am so past being a fanatical follower to a video game charact…
KANE LIVES IN DEATH!!
Bioshock
6 months ago or so.
Wow, where to start. One of the greatest games of all time, it proved that you don’t need an awesome multiplayer system, nor amazing combat scenes, to become an epic experience.
What did it in for this game was the storyline, and the chilling atmosphere this game creates, which takes place in a city at the bottom of the sea called Rapture.
The storyline is so extensive there is no way I could sum it up. But geez, when Andrew Ryan preaches the words,”Would you kindly… such a powerful phrase…”
Wow, before he could even explain what was going on the whole game suddenly made more sense. I mean, Jack somehow crashes right next to a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean, finds his way into an submarine utopia, finds a syringe filled with some strange fluid, and decides the best course of action is to stab himself with it, when actually he was commanded unconsciously to do all that from the start. I found myself never really asking myself why the heck Jack would be doing all this crap for Atlas, like tromping through rapture and bludgeoning to death every citizen he comes in contact with and going on a warpath with Ryan, a guy who liked to be left alone.
That feeling of suddenly realizing the plot twist, geez, it was a good experience.
Other than that, the atmosphere the game took place was chilling to say the least.
To see paradise on earth destroyed and tainted by it’s own citizens who now wander around the city muttering gibberish, driven insane by reckless genetic splicing.
They really did well when they portrayed human insanity.
I think one scene in the game really made this whole fact chilling:
You walk into a bar that has long been deserted and trashed; yet one man is seen sitting up at the bar. He keeps muttering stuff like “Service sucks here… its really slow today” and “What is taking yall so long?” Even when it is clear no one is around to serve him. If you get near him he will scream “ABOUT DANG TIME!” and attempt to beat you to death with a pipe.
They also say some pretty funny stuff, given that they are insane, such as constantly repeating the “Jesus loves me this I know” song, and the docs mutter “Nurse… can you please help me find my patient, nurse.” When there is no one near him, or when chasing you with a bunch of grenades they yell, “It’s just a standard procedure! Gees!”
Yeah, pretty crazy. It’s like being placed into an insanity ward the size of a city, at the bottom of the ocean, without any guards or doors between you and the inmates. Oh yes.
With the motto “No God, No King, Only man”, it is obvious what happened. There will always be a God, and a king amongst men, and rapture tore itself apart trying to fight that reality, a concept, which I think, is foreshadowing to say the least.
Overall, I would say this was one of the better games I am going to see during College.
“Once again, young Fitz Patrick”
Company of Heroes
September 14th to present
This one takes the cake for sure. It was as if the heavens parted and sent down this game just for me, because it fits everything I ever wanted in an RTS game experience.
The moment I heard about it I was excited, as I was really interested in the WWII era, and to hear that a WWII RTS was coming out, I knew my time had come.
I jumped into the beta the day it came out using my FilePlanet account subscription. This ‘closed’ beta actually closed a few days later, so there really weren’t too many people on.
My first experiences of the game were some of the greatest I have ever had regarding an RTS game. I quickly got the hang of it, playing as the German army mostly, and after a couple crushing defeats I began to win game after game, trial and error style.
Once the actual game came out, and even before it in the open beta, I had a huge head start in knowledge of the games state of the art mechanics, realism based game play, and it’s ultra tactical style, all of which took a step away from anything before it. With such a lead, I butchered everyone before me. A factor I think lasts to this very day.
Why I like it:
At first, I was drawn into the fact that this game allows you to play as the Axis for once. Most WWII themed games pit you against the fury of the Axis war machine as an American soldier. Sure killing Nazi’s was fun, but it got old after a while.
I was really interested to see how they would portray them in contrast with the Allied forces.
I was not disappointed.
I think THQ did an amazing job keeping to history when they portrayed the two very different sides. The German infantry for the most part are as tough as nails, knowing all too well that their once glorious conquest is now coming to an end and they are fighting for the very survival of their homeland. Their war machine is frightening, displaying technology decades ahead of their time, yet it all costs so much to produce in game, which reflects the reality of how the Germans lost the war.
THQ also did a good job portraying the invading Americans, whose highly efficient war machine pumps out sheer quantity over quality, drawing from the fact that America as an industrial giant was spitting out tons of supplies, a pleasure the Germans did not have.
The two campaign endings are a good example of the contrast in tones between the Allies and Axis.
Even the music describes the two very different situations the Allies and the Axis are in. The allies have a fully orchestrated soundtrack, with proud marches and an epic sound to it. The German soundtrack on the other hand, depicts the sheer frustration and despair of an army witnessing their once glorious and proud empire dissolve into nothing before their eyes. Some of their music sounds pretty bizarre, as if the orchestra is trying to depict a dying animal, a huge change from the more pleasant music the allies have.
The Allies are fighting to rid the world of oppression, the Germans are fighting to prevent their nation from perishing from the earth.
To sum that up, they did a good job of showing the differences between these two opposing forces in every aspect. Not many gamers really care too much when it comes to the stuff I said above, but for me, very small details like that really add greatly to the experience. I value and praise creativity, and story telling.
The troops also interact with the terrain was well. For example, on one of my favorite maps I use a graveyard near a church for a rallying point, just because it is out of range of an enemy mortar position that they often use across a river. Sometimes the troops will say stuff when they walk by there like, “This is a bad omen…” or “I kissed my first girl in a graveyard.”
When walking about the map, they say stuff like “I miss playing the piano. I heard there are some laying about the battlefield.” Reminds me of a scene in the movie “The Pianist.”
EDIT: Here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkUVb1AJbSM
(For me, this scene + about 3 minutes after was one of the most touching I have ever seen in a movie, you can almost see the German officer being granted a revelation. Brilliance, IMO)
When walking by an abandoned farm tractor, the German troops sometimes say “We never had one of those on my farm, not even a mule, I had to do all the plowing” or “Who would leave this thing behind?’ Probably the German troops are pretty poor.
When I called one of my damaged halftracks back to the base for repairs, one of the engineers whispers to his buddy “Look… there is blood on the door handle…”
When you reinforce a German Volkes squad, the squad captain will say in a rude manor, “Want to know how the man you are replacing died?” or “Hey new guy, you better not screw things up.” While the more elite Grenadiers simply say, “Welcome to the squad, brother.”
A German Sniper after killing several troops will mutter, “God, please have mercy on my soul…”
They also say some humorous stuff, like when the German troops sometimes yell to the Allies, “Are there any POW camps in California?” Or when it is raining, German tank crewmen will say, “Rain… Open-top tank…genius engineering…”
THQ did a good job of humanizing the models on the battlefield of a computer game.
Now onto the game play.
What I like most about the RTS experience CoH brings is the focus on realism.
Games like C&C were not realistic at all. While not a huge problem, it did get a bit annoying when infantry shredded tanks with no problem at all, or troops and tanks had such amazing accuracy they were able to hit 100% of the time.
Here are several of the things I find make CoH such a unique experience while playing.
In CoH, tanks are portrayed as they were meant to be portrayed, hulking metal behemoths invulnerable to small arms fire. They are huge, unlike other RTS games, and smash their way around the battlefield. Some people may get frustrated when their tank clumsily clips a building, causing it to get stuck, or misses infantry almost all the time, but in reality, the crewmen really couldn’t see too much of the outside world from inside the beast, and it took a well coordinated crew to move, locate targets, and destroy them.
And the noise they make… geez. One of the most chilling scenes in Saving Private Ryan was when the greatly reduced American defense force was guarding a bridge, and waiting for the approaching German army. Before they even got close, the poor soldiers could hear the grinding wheels of an approaching tank as it thundered its way towards them, growing louder and louder. Tanks are loud and scary things. CoH brings that to the game quite well as I relived that scene time and time again, since I can hear a tank approaching the front lines well before my troops can actually see it.
Troops miss.
Yeah, seems like such a small thing, but if you think about it, not too many RTS games really show that. WC3 is the only RTS game I can think of that this concept is actually shown, and even then the game only shows a MISS sign pop over their unit when he misses, yet you see the projectile clearly slam into the target.
In CoH, troops miss. A lot. Almost 70-80% of the time. Whether this percentage accurately portrays how often a trooper missed a target I don’t know, but I would bet it is pretty close. Troops miss so much it often becomes frustrating, and this factor alone can decide the victor in small skirmishes.
In this game, the difference in damage inflicted between two different units is based on what gun they are using, and how accurate they are with it.
For example, a German Volks Squad (Noob squad) and the more elite Grenadiers both use the same rifle, yet have different damage ratings. This is because one unit is more skilled with a rifle than they other. Real cool.
Even snipers miss, up too 30% of the time.
Artillery is amazing too, from incredible explosions to the sounds they make when they fire. I like how you can clearly hear incoming artillery fired from the other side of the map, giving you a chance to move your troops back. Artillery is also pretty darn inaccurate, and hits all over, and sometimes around, the target area. It is pretty devastating too, as a direct hit from a howitzer on an infantry unit will pound them to dust.
Another thing I like about this game is that each team is not good and bad at one thing, i.e., have a weakness and a strength. Most RTS games strive to banish that issue from the start, yet it develops over time that one team is good at say, defending, and another is forced to rush or be put on the offensive just because of this. In CoH, the army you play as is a conventional army, and you have everything you need to win a war. Starting a multiplayer game and saying, “I’m going tanks.” Or “I’m massing infantry” will immediately prove to me that CoH is a bit too much for you. It doesn’t work that way. Thinking WC3 style won’t cut it. For example, Infantry and Artillery are to support tanks. Units are meant to work together. Blitzkrieg was so successful because of this.
Time and time again I play against a player that will spit out several tanks and try and attack me head on with them. They are nothing but scrap metal when not supported, unless your enemy is a moron.
Sure some players can point out the fact that Panzer Elite is amazing when played aggressively, and the British can defend like no other team. It is a lie. No team is limited to a few strategies based on their abilities. I gunned down hordes of rushing Allies with the Panzer Elite, and Blitzkrieged my way through enemy lines with the British. In fact, I play the British aggressively, I think they are good at it.
All in all, CoH is one of my favorite games. Hopefully, another will take its place some day, because CoH is spoiling me. It is all I ever wanted in an RTS, I just hope another will outdo it someday.
There is my rant, all done during a break in the MU.
