Leveling Down

World of Warcraft & Team Fortress 2 continue to give PC gamers updates

It’s interesting for me to see the “evolution” of the PC gaming landscape. Growing up on Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem, I’ve lived through the rise and decline of the PC gaming scene, from the introduction of first person shooters, real-time strategy games, online multiplayer, 4X strategy games, and now MMORPGs. If you’ve also grown up with fond memories of Doom & Quake, I highly recommend checking out the book, Masters of Doom. It’s a well-written book that chronicles how John Romero and John Carmack met, formed id Software, and completely shook up the gaming industry. Having said that, today’s entry will contain my more general thoughts on the PC gaming landscape, and why I’m still excited for its present and future.
More »

Matchmaking has come a pretty long way in the last few years, but it looks like it’s going to be moving forward thanks to Stardock’s Impulse gaming service (Steam’s competitor). A Gamasutra article notes that in the next Impulse update, a new matchmaking feature is going to be introduced that allows for more “refined matchmaking”:

You [rank] a bunch of categories, like how competitive you are,” explained Wardell. “What matters to you in someone you want to play? Are they a similar age to you? Do they have a good PC? How competitive are they? Are they all about winning, or are they about having fun? Do they value their time? You don’t just get to say, ‘Yeah, max them all out.’ You put them in order of importance.”

Those self-identified traits are used to match up gamers. If you aren’t online when a match with your game is found, you’ll see the notification when you log in, and you can send a friend request if you choose.

“I say, ‘Alright, I want to play Sins of a Solar Empire or World of Warcraft or Team Fortress,” Wardell continued. “I can choose either a particular group of buddies I want to play with, or everybody on my friend list, or someone who’s similar to me, even if I don’t know them.

“Then it will tell me, ‘So and so, who is 84 percent compatible with you, is going into Sins of a Solar Empire. Do you want to launch Sins of Solar Empire?’ It launches the game, you find that person, you get together, and play with them.”

Added the CEO, “The idea is that now you can play with people who are similar to you, rather than some 14-year-old griefer who’s shooting you in the back every time because he thinks it’s funny.”

Initial reactions to this seem to be jokes along the lines that the gaming service is now combining with a dating service site to figure out people to “connect with” to play video games. In a sense, that’s very true, but I think it can definitely add value if implemented correctly. Of course, I don’t know if Impulse has any games that are so popular online that it can afford to really nitpick about the matchmaking, but I wouldn’t mind playing with similar minded people as me in Halo 3 or Left 4 Dead. The current rating system is just not working on the 360. What’s the point of picking which group your gamer profile belongs to if it just matches you up with everyone in every group anyway?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkYuK3AKrxc]
The sequence in the Transformers movie that changed our generation forever…

Guitar Hero: World Tour – Had to start playing it last night since Stan Bush’s “The Touch” just hit the marketplace as a free downloadable song. It’s actually a pretty good song to play with the guitar. Of course playing it with plastic instruments is not quite the same as tearing through Decepticons as Optimus Prime, but it does give me some good memories of the Transformers movie. Now if only we could also get “Dare” from the Transformers movie and Karate Kid’s “You’re the Best Around” – I’d be all set with the ’80s.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Starting to play more advanced scenarios lately. The longest game I played so far was a 4 hour FFA with 3 AI on normal difficulty. That one certainly took a while but it was pretty enjoyable. I even ended up allying with one of the AI to finish off the other AI. But as soon as it was down to just the two of us, the AI broke off all relations and I had to kill him to win. I’m probably going to try 3v3 with the AIs next, but I’m scared that’s going to be like a six hour game.

Conan – Just finished it, but now I have to go through on the hardest difficulty as well as do any of the menial Achievements if I want to get the 1000. I’m practically ready to move on to the next game, but I’ve always gotten all of the single player Achievements I could in games I own so I don’t think I should set a precendent with this one.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed – Ended up getting it due to its $5 sale price this week. I’m sort of excited to play it, but I’m also a little worried that it may be harder than I remember. After all, even with all the fond memories I have of the NES version, games back then were a lot tougher and less forgiving. I’ll probably start it up this weekend.

Sins of a Solar Empire may seem daunting, but its core premise is easy to grasp: colonize worlds, defend them, and conquer the entire star system.

These last few days, in between my bouts with Conan I’ve been playing a different game I had in my backlog: Sins of a Solar Empire. Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the few PC games to be released last year to rave reviews, as it’s a game that’s like Civilization, but in real time and in space. I’m not the biggest fan of space/sci-fi type games, and when I first started playing it, I wasn’t too impressed. But after only a couple of hours, my wife was already calling me to bed and I realized that perhaps there is some sort of addictive quality to this game if I don’t even realize two hours have already gone by without my knowing! Read on for my impressions of the game some are calling the 2008 PC game of the year.

More »

Empire: Total War looks impressive, but there are definitely technical issues…

It feels somewhat weird for me to play the 360 these days since I switched over to the PC with Dawn of War II. Ever since then, I’ve been doing most of my gaming on the PC and I guess that’s a good thing since I do have a backlog there. And thankfully, it’s shorter than my 360 backlog. This week hasn’t been too eventful in gaming, but I can mention a few games:

Sins of a Solar Empire (PC) – I just started playing this game this past week, and it’s been the centerpiece for my gaming sessions these past few evenings. It’s pretty much Civilization in space but in real time, so it has enough going on that I’m enjoying it. I’ll put out some impressions on it next week.

Empire: Total War (PC) – With its recent price drop to $30 and it continuing to be in the top 10 PC game sales, I decided to check out the demo by downloading it off Steam. I guess the user reviews for the game is right. It is very buggy. It’s not just buggy, but very resource intensive. In any case, I’m not too big a fan of that period of war anyway. I guess I’ll skip out on this one.

Mother 3 (GBA) – Still playing this on my commute to work each day (when I’m not sleeping on the subway) and I continue to enjoy it. I’m almost halfway through and it’s just a nice simple RPG game that I can play without thinking too much. I’ll put out some detailed impressions soon.

Pure (360) – Ended up ordering it off Amazon when it went on sale for $20 this past week and I got it the next day. I haven’t had a chance to open it yet, but maybe I’ll end up playing it next after Conan since it seems mindless enough. People say it’s like the next version of SSX, which can’t be all that bad…

Street Fighter IV – After struggling to decide whether to buy it at launch or not, I ended up going for it. The presentation in this game is amazing! Unfortunately, I’m getting my butt whooped online. Playing the AI and online is so different – you can pull off flashy combos and stuff against the AI, but against humans, it seems like it’s all about safe moves and frame advantage. I’m such a noob when it comes to this stuff, but maybe I’ll get better in time.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – cmfl3x and I have continued to make our way through the campaign, just finishing off the last two missions on the Allied campaign late last night. We must have retried each of those missions 3-4 times, as it gets pretty hard on Hard difficulty. The last Allied mission is rough – there’s a timer and we ended up destroying the last building when the timer hit 0:00 (maybe it even hit -0:01 heh). It was funny because both the Victory and then the Defeat videos started playing one right after another, but luckily we got the Victory endscreen. Talk about a close call!

Left 4 Dead – Just when I thought I was done with it, the PC version has to go on sale and I ended up picking it up. Expect a write-up with my thoughts comparing it to the 360 version at some point.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 – Never considered picking this up since it’s a PC game, but the fact that it’s tied into the Live system and has its own Achievements has me interested. Maybe I’ll wait for a price drop.

Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad – Campy Japanese zombie beat-em-up playing as a girl in a bikini sounds like it could be enjoyable as I like zombies and I like Japanese developed games. A girl in bikini doesn’t hurt either but since my wife may not like the idea of seeing me play as a scantily clad woman throughout the game I’ll hold off on this one for now.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Picked it up since it was on sale at Best Buy this week. I think it got lots of 2008 PC game of the year awards, so I’m curious to check it out. Supposedly it’s a cross between an RTS and a Civilization game, but in space. I’m not the biggest space strategy gamer, but maybe this one will turn out ok for me.