Warning: This article contains spoilers. I would, however, appreciate if you did not spoil anything beyond the point of the game that I discuss.

Areas spoiled: The Joining, The Battle of Ostagar, Aftermath of Ostagar


When last I wrote I had just finished up the Origins story for my elven mage, Fiona, and was preparing to dig into the meat of the game. Unfortunately reality bit me in the rear, and I've only been able to invest another four hours into the game (bringing me up to a total of six).

I'm still having a blast with Dragon age Origins and have been pleased to see that the difficulty has been slowly ramping up. Here is another batch of random thoughts on the game:


- Yahtzee's review of Dragon Age origins is hilarious, as always. It inspired the title for this article, in fact.

- I've seen numerous complaints that the NPC speech in the game gets tedious after listening to it once. Here's a hint: press ESCAPE to force an NPC to shut up!

- Likewise, I heard one intrepid podcaster bemoan the lack of hotbar real estate. Pro tip: you can expand the hotbar to fill the entire bottom of your screen, opening up roughly a dozen new spaces to slot in skills.

- I have a love/hate relationship with the design decision to severely limit exploration in outdoor areas. One one hand, it's so old fashioned to artificially wall off entire areas of the game world (or to prevent players from walking into ankle-deep water). On the other hand, these limitations prevent me from obsessively combing every inch of every map in a desperate quest to find hidden items and areas - which saves me a load of time.

- The Joining ritual, which sees your character become a full-fledged member of the Grey Wardens, is powerful stuff. I have to wonder though, would it have been more interesting to have the player choose what to do after Daveth dies drinking the darkspawn blood instead of showing the explicit price of failure through Jory? Clearly Duncan couldn't just kill off your character, but the decision would have been far less black & white.

- Why can't any fantasy game make helmets look decent on a character? Every character that puts on a hat in a fantasy game immediately ends up looking worse. I turned them off back in World of Warcraft, I disable them in DDO, and it kills me that there's no way to hide head gear in Dragon Age Origins because they are terrible. My version of Alistair is stuck looking like a moron now, and I'm avoiding wearing a hat on Fiona.

- The movies for the Battle of Ostagar are slick and polished, although quite cliche. Tolkien would be proud.

- Speaking of the Battle of Ostagar, the tower sequence is a nice introduction to some tougher content, and the Ogre at the top is a particularly mean customer. He ended up not liking my mage at all, and I had to kite him constantly to keep from dying. (And yes, Alistair was trying to tank.)

- Also in the tower, the clickable ballistas and dog cages were a great way to mix up the experience, and add in a layer of strategy above simply moving around and manipulating skills on my hotbar.

- With the battle over with, I'm currently sitting on the outskirts of Lothering and deciding what to do next. I'm tempted to side with Morrigan and go after Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir first. The treacherous bastard deserves death.

Left 4 Dead 2 is easily one of the most hyped releases of the fall gaming schedule. Despite some rabid fans being opposed to a sequel, Valve's zombie shooter was anticipated by players of the first game since it was announced. As someone who has never played Left 4 Dead, I felt that I should at least check out the free demo to see what all the excitement was about.

Allow me to skip right to the point: after playing through the single player offering of Left 4 Dead 2, which took me about an hour, I was left utterly disenchanted by the game. The entire experience felt banal, immature, and more than a little bit predictable. Now I know that someone is going to leap in and tell me that L4D is all about the multiplayer experience and that playing with bots is doing it wrong, but frankly I stopped playing FPS games online back in university, and what I saw in this demo did nothing to convince me to change my ways.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy a good shooter; one need only to look at the gobs of drool dripping of my discussions of Half Life (here, here, here, and here) and Bioshock (here) to realize that it's a genre I love, but Left 4 Dead 2 is so much weaker than any of those games.

The core of my problem is that the antagonists - the infected - are comedically grotesque, and do absolutely nothing to get my heart racing. They are littered around the level in clumps, and once killed off, periodically respawn from wherever the game's AI director deems appropriate. (I should note that the Director is a brilliant piece of engineering by all accounts, and I tip my hat to the developers who created it.) The sheer number of zombies that you are forced to mow down in a level is ludicrous, and since there are only so many skins that can be put on the models, they get tedious to look at quickly. Not only that, the zombie running animations are absolutely terrible, a flaw that is especially aparent when a huge herd of the beasts is closing quickly. This all stands in stark contrast to Bioshock's enemies, which are so superbly designed that they can often creep a player out with their voice alone; just knowing that a spider splicer is in the area is a cause for fear. Not so with Left 4 Dead 2's infected.


The other part of the demo that bothered me was that the shooting mechanics didn't feel as solid and satisfying as I would have hoped. Valve knows how to make a brilliant shooter - Half Life 2 feels perfect - unfortunately I never felt the same tactile precision when playing Left 4 Dead 2, despite trying out a wide range of weapons. The melee weapons are particularly poorly implemented - there was no difference in feel between wielding a machete and a frying pan.

In closing, I guess you can mark me down as an aberration. Unless Valve deeply discounts Left 4 Dead 2 (perhaps for a weekend sale), there is no way that I am going to be picking up the game. The demo did nothing to make me want to try anything further than the single player level I experienced - it was simply too weak. I'm left wishing that all of the resources that went into making this game were instead invested in Half Life 2 Episode 3.....

Steam: link
Demo parameters: One campaign, limited online play
Release date: Now
Cost: $49.99

A recent post on Kill Ten Rats got me thinking about the various methods of splitting up a game's population that are utilized in the industry today. At one end of the spectrum are the shard-based games that create solid barriers between different populations to prevent intermingling, and at the other end are single shard games that create a coherent virtual world that every single player shares. Between these two extremes lie a myriad of hybrid solutions, although there are two major population dividing solutions that are more commonly seen: highly instanced games, and shard-based games that allow players to migrate freely whenever they choose, with no penalty.

I thought that it would be interesting to examine these four different flavors of virtual world population division, and to consider the pros and cons of each.

Isolated Worlds

Description:
The player population for an MMO utilizing the Isolated Worlds model is broken up into one or more shards that function as fishbowls for the players within it. From the perspective of a player on any given shard, nothing exists outside of their shard's boundary; they have no way of affecting or communicating (in game) with players on a different shard, and likewise players on other shards cannot affect or communicate with them.

Exemplars: World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Everquest 2

Pros:

• Technically speaking, the easiest architecture to build. Developers can assume a maximum population cap, and design their software and hardware with those specifications in mind.
  
• Isolated communities facilitate the formation of player groupings (e.g. guilds) by limiting the pool of potential members.
  
• It is possible to configure different shards with different settings to provide more tailored experiences for different types of players. (e.g. PvP shards, Roleplaying shards, etc.)
  
• In non-deterministic games that allow a high degree of player customization (through housing, government, commerce, culture, etc.), it can be fascinating to watch how different shards evolve in different manners despite sharing a common starting point. (e.g. Darkfall EU vs Darkfall NA)
  
• As pointed out by Muckbeast, multiple shards allow a greater number of people to be "the best" at specific activities.

Cons:

• Once selected, players cannot change their shard (without an often steep monetary penalty). This makes it difficult to interact with friends who started up on different shards.
• If the game contains factions, shards may have too many or too few members of certain factions. The success that these factions subsequently attain only further exacerbates the imbalance.
• The community is divided into many sub-communities, often to the detriment of the overall game.
  
• During non-peak hours there will be less people around to interact with (group, pvp, socialize) since shards are scaled based on peak time capacity.
  

Bridged Worlds

Description:
In a similar fashion to Isolated Worlds, players in a Bridged World cannot interact with members of other shards during the course of normal game play. What differs is that at any time a player can choose to switch to a different shard, bringing all of their characters belongings with them.

Exemplars: Free Realms, Wizard101

Pros:

• Facilitates play with friends and family by eliminating the need to reroll characters on different servers.
• Allows a player to select a shard that has the desired population density to suit their mood. Sometimes playing in a crowd is a blast, while other times playing in relative silence can be liberating.
• Provides an easy escape from griefing, highly camped quests, and other MMO annoyances.

Cons:

• Difficult to organize players into social groupings (e.g. guilds) since each shard is walled of from the rest and yet players may hop between them.
  
• Ability to traverse shards can be exploited by griefers to preserve their reputation for longer than otherwise possible in other models.
• Can give rise to super-popular worlds and ghost towns as players migrate to the current hot area.
  
• Not ideal for PvP-based games because many players naturally gravitate towards a winning situation, and thus lopsided shards will often result in the absence of strict migration restrictions.
  

Instance-based World

Description:
In an Instance-based World there is no notion of shards, but instead the game dynamically adds and subtracts instances of content as the player population naturally fluctuates. Players are randomly assigned an instance of the content upon entry into the game world, but can choose to occupy the same shards as their friends and/or guildmates if desired. The player can communicate with anyone in the game world, however is restricted to only interacting with those few people that they share an instance with.

Exemplars: Champions Online, Guild Wars

Pros:

• The game world always seems to be populated with a optimal number of players. This (theoretically) eliminates over-crowding and the associated lag.
• If designed correctly, less expensive hardware is needed on the back end due to the fact that the load can be divided to a much finer degree than possible in other systems.
  
• A player can, with minimal organization, interact with any other player in the game simply by choosing a shard to enter together.

Cons:

• Such an extreme use of instancing often removes the feeling of "massive" from an MMORPG.
  
• There is a general sense of disconnect from the community. Unless a player is a member of a static group or the game is very small, they will tend to see different people all the time due to the shifting nature of instances.
• Specific sub-communities are far more difficult to create. (For example, there is no "RP shard").
  

Single World

Description:
All players are present in the same virtual world and can interact with each other freely; there are no artificial walls set up to prevent segments of the population from interacting with each other. While the Single World model of virtual worlds is the oldest of the models, it quickly fell out of favor as graphical MMOs developed a significant player base. Outside of small niche games, only CCP has designed a truly shard-less game on a large scale.

Exemplars: EVE Online, MUDs

Pros:

• The most "realistic" model of a virtual world.
• Allows for large scale emergent game play elements to evolve, given sufficiently complex game mechanics.
• Events in the virtual world are shared experiences by the entire player base, which allows a coherent history to form.
• All players in the game are potential group mates, or guild mates, or enemies.

Cons:

• Technically challenging to design and implement. The EVE Online Dev blogs provide a small look into the enormous complexity of the task.
• Hot spots within the game world can quickly become laggy and unplayable if too many players gather in the same spot.
• Increased competition for the game's resources (gathering, NPCs, real estate, etc.) which can create difficult game balance and/or usage issues.
• Sets up a single point of failure for the entire game. If an important piece of hardware fails, the entire population is affected.

(Many thanks to Bill for his input on this section.)

Feedback
As stated at the beginning of this article, there are many different ways of splitting up a game's population, and the four I listed are by no means the only possibility. Feel free to discuss others in the comment thread, and also augment the exemplars/pros/cons lists with your own thoughts. I will update this article with reader feedback when time permits.

Back in my teenage years I used to play pen & paper roleplaying games at least once a week, sometimes as the Dungeon Master but more often as a normal player. It's been a long time since I actually tried to force myself into the mind of a character in a format other than text, however tonight I will be participating in what will hopefully be the first of many permadeath roleplay sessions with my Dungeons & Dragons Online guild on Thelanis server. The plan is to meet weekly with our characters; we'll see how things go.

What follows is a bit of back story for the character that I will be using for this static group.

---

The night, which had got off to such an auspicious start, was well and truly ruined. Sitting on a hard tavern chair, gritty smoke mingled with the scent of spilled ale combining to tickle my nostrils, I tried hard not to squirm under the withering glare of the guard sergeant who stood over me, arms crossed.

"Name?", the gruff soldier demanded in an authoritative tone, easily projecting over the nervous shuffling of the tavern staff who had finally emerged from the kitchen to start cleaning up the mess. No doubt the guards positioned throughout the establishment helped assuage their fear despite my continued presence.

"Aylmer," I muttered, averting my gaze before adding, "sir". It would be easier to face the interrogation if I thought that I was in the right; easier if I didn't realize that I had lost control again; easier if I knew that the drunk was going to survive his burns.

"Aylmer, eh?" the sergeant echoed and, as if reading my mind, stated, "You damned near killed a man, halfling - maybe still will - and burned this place up real good." I remained silent, not wishing to relive the past half hour. A scowl darkened his sturdy face as he continued, "and then you had the gall to stay here until we showed up. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I...." I trailed off, the statement aborted before it had even really started. How could I possibly explain what had happened to a military man who had as much experience with magic as a swine does with knitting? It was impossible. I lost control; I let the drunk goad me into a rage, and I let the fire out of the tight little box that I had sealed it into. Once out, it consumed me like it did all those years ago. How could I explain that?

Against my wishes - perhaps aided by the stench of burning that hung in the air - my mind lurched back to my childhood and those terrible events that shaped my life ever since. The horrible fight with Gabriella, my older sister, over the toy blocks. The anger I felt as she pushed me away from her little castle, and the sound of my juvenile voice as I shouted "I hate you!" at her. The sting in my shoulder as Gabriella slugged me, hard. The horrified look on her face as her rough smock burst into flame, and the terrified scream that tore from her lips as the fire seared back her skin, revealing the white bone beneath. The tiny tombstone erected behind our family home, and the last words that my father ever spoke to me: "You are not my son." I remembered it all.

My mother, bless her heart, forgave me. Her doting love - though it cost her dearly every night when she argued with my father - saw me through the next few years. Despite the loss of Gabriella she found a way to forgive me, and told me so every day. When it finally became too much for her my mother sent me to the academy, where I finally learned to control the fire and, with effort, lock it away deep inside me. Though I never saw the dear woman again she wrote me every fortnight while I remained at the school.

"Well then? Out with it. Quick now." The sergeant's irritated voice snapped me back to the present. I knuckled my eyes, smearing dirty soot across one cheek.

"I don't know, sir" I stumbled, fatigue drawing out my words, "I don't remember anything." A lie - it was seared into my mind just as surely as Gabriella's dying shrieks. "Why would I stay here if I did this on purpose?"

The sergeant grunted something unintelligible, disgust obvious on his face. "Hey Smeadley, get over here and help me tie this one up," he ordered a freckle-faced guard who was pacing nearby, "it seems that Mr. Aylmer here wants to pay the station a visit so he can explain himself properly."

Clearly the night was only going to get worse....

Machinarium, by the independent developer Amanita Design, is a point-and-click adventure game (developed in Flash) that recently won the "Excellence in Visual Art Award" at the Independent Games Festival. This is a game that I have been meaning to play ever since Steam released a free demo and the guys from the Idle Thumbs podcast discussed how much they enjoyed it on their show.

The best part of Machinarium, hands down, is the absolutely gorgeous visuals that the developers have obviously spent hours crafting. Every level in the game looks like something out of a quirky comic book, and the characters that inhabit the levels are equally charming. The objects that you interact with do not stand out in a disjointed manner (as with some games), but neither are they particularly hard to spot. The entire atmosphere is extremely pleasing, and immediately makes you want to explore the world.

Unfortunately, the visuals are the extent of my praise for the title. From a game play perspective, Machinarium manages to be exactly the type of point-and-click adventure that annoys me to no end.

First and foremost, the puzzles are far too frequently of the non-obvious variety. Instead of using my head to deduce how to solve a challenge with the tools at hand, I was constantly forced to randomly click around the screen to identify all of the hot areas, and often had to randomly try objects on areas with no idea ahead of time whether or not they would work out. This is exacerbated by the fact that Machinarium has no tooltips for anything, nor any way to examine places/things to gather more information about your surroundings. Instead you are left with random bits of unidentifiable junk in your inventory that you must combine in an arcane manner in order to bypass obstacles. (Level three is the worst example of this.)


Adding to the frustrating experience, the game lets you walk around the screen and only as you approach an object that you can interact with does the cursor change from a pointer to a hand. This means that puzzle solving involves a lot of wandering around the screen wasting time. It would make for a much better experience if you could detect hot spots from anywhere on the screen, and your character automatically walked to them as you clicked instead of forcing you to walk around hoping to locate interaction points.

The final straw - at least for me - was the tip feature in Machinarium. Many point-and-click adventure games have a hint button that you can press to receive a gentle nudge in the right direction. I got stuck in the final level of the demo after acquiring both obvious items on the screen, and after fifteen minutes of fruitless toying around decided to resort to a hint. Clicking the button brought up a book with three buttons, one of which invoked a mini arcade game where (it turns out) you had to guide a key through a bunch of spiders and into a lock. Unfortunately nothing in the game tells you this, and it took numerous failed attempts before I realized that the "start" button on the book doubled as a "shoot" button in the arcade game. After finally beating the little mini-game the book opened and revealed the entire solution to the puzzle! I didn't want that - all I wanted was a little tip (akin to what Monkey Island would give)... but there it was, a step by step guide to solving the entire level.

For a game with such a promising beginning and high accolades from the Independent Games Festival, Machinarium is an unmitigated let down. There is no way that I would pay any money for a game with such a poor demo, let alone the $20 that the developers are asking for. In the end, Machinarium is just a disappointing Flash game.

Steam: link
Demo parameters: three levels
Release date: Now
Cost: $19.99

I picked up Dawn of War 2 when it was released back in February, played lightly for a couple of weeks, and then abandoned the game as my World of Warcraft addiction prevented me from properly enjoying anything else. It's a shame really; I played Warhammer 40k, the tabletop game that Dawn of War 2 is based on, extensively for a number of years and I still love the flavor of the world that Games Workshop has built.

Unfortunately playing Warhammer 40k is an expensive and time consuming hobby, and eventually I got annoyed with the constant price hikes and forced obsolescence of my existing miniatures as new rule sets were constantly created to keep consumers buying. Like my Magic: The Gathering collection, my Dark Eldar and Tau armies were sold off and I quit the game cold turkey. Unlike Magic, Games Workshop has been more than willing to license their intellectual property for affordable video games and so I have been able to recapture some of the flavor in electronic format.

At its heart Dawn of War 2 is a real time strategy game, however unlike the majority titles in the genre it focuses strictly on controlling a small handful of squads and eschews concepts like base building and resource gathering. Instead, DoW2 adds squad progression (via experience point gain) and a robust loot system to the traditional RTS mix, an unexpected blend for many genre faithful. Thankfully, the result is an extremely intense combat-heavy game that is surprisingly tactical and pleasantly addictive.

While I was skeptical at first, it was actually extremely liberating to not have to worry about resource gathering and base building, and just get down to combat right away. Squads are small (between one and four members), possess unique abilities, and are led by a unique character. The average mission is action packed and lasts between ten and thirty minutes depending on the objectives and the approach that you take (stealth vs zerg vs move from cover to cover, etc.), which makes Dawn of War 2 a relatively manageable pick-up-and-play title. This speedy game play is a far cry from the marathon-like levels that most RTS games are comprised of.


Perhaps one of the most satisfying aspects of Dawn of War 2 is the character advancement system. Taking a page from role playing games, each squad earns experience as a battle progresses and at the end of the mission all squads earn bonus experience based on your overall performance across three categories (percentage of the enemy destroyed, percentage of your own forces preserved, and speed). Squads gain levels after accumulating a certain amount of experience, which in turn allows them to invest points in one of four traits which grant extra combat effectiveness and abilities. In addition to the level-up system, enemy squads drop random loot occasionally and each mission has a loot reward. These weapons, armor, and accessories can be equipped to your squads to further customize them and change how they behave on the battle field.

Gameplay wise, Dawn of War 2 rewards sound tactical choices, careful planning, and a knowledge of the opponents that you expect to face. Prior to starting a battle is crucial that you consider your opponent and objectives and ensure that you deploy complimentary squads that are properly equipped to the field. For example, if you are fighting the Eldar and know that they have grav tanks available then you may want to bring along your devestator marines with a missile launcher equipped, as well as your assault marines. If, however, you're meeting the Tyranids then you are better off using heavy bolters on your devestators and switching out the assault marines with your scouts.

As previously mentioned, combat is both fast-paced and tactical. It is important to position your squads intelligently and take into account concepts such as firing lanes, cover, support, and paths of retreat. Once combat begins it is a much more active process than in most RTS games. Since you control only a small handful of squads you must pay close attention to each of them, and micromanage their abilities. Proper use of cooldowns on abilities like frag grenades, sniper kill shots, and shielding arrays are often crucial to surviving massed assaults. This is easier than it sounds: you will rarely have your forces spread more thinly than will fit on a single screen, and so all you need to do is cycle through your squads (bound to number keys) and make sure that each is in the proper location and using the proper ability.



One of the only failings of Dawn of War 2 is the game designer's insistence on creating "boss" enemies at the end of nearly every mission. These unique enemies are usually fought alone, and completely change the rules of the game. Instead of worrying about precise positioning and ability use you are forced to react to a series of special abilities that target random areas and/or directions on the screen. For example you may need to frequently move out of the way of a charge, away from a plethora of grenades, or out from beneath an incoming barrage. These boss battles do nothing to enhance the game, but instead detract from the otherwise superb tactical combat experience. Smart movement is replaced by random dashes to safety. Ugh.

My other minor quibble with Dawn of War 2 is that, near the end, the game starts to bog down in a swamp of optional side missions and territory defense scenarios. Perhaps this was just the unopened copy of Dragon Age sitting on my desk speaking, but I found the single player campaign far too long, and eventually I just stopped playing the side missions to plow through to the end.

Those two minor gripes aside, I still firmly believe that Dawn of War 2 is a breath of fresh air for the RTS genre. I would encourage any strategy game fans or Warhammer 40k enthusiasts to pick up a copy of the game and give it a try if they haven't done so already.

Warning: This article contains spoilers. I would, however, appreciate if you did not spoil anything beyond the point of the game that I discuss.

Areas spoiled: Mage Origins story

The past week nearly killed me: I had a pre-ordered copy of Dragon Age sitting on my desk, yet did not want to start it up for fear of abandoning Dawn of War 2 for the second time. I'm a completionist, you see, and hate not finishing games. Thankfully I pounded out DoW2 a few nights ago, and so last night was finally free to play some Dragon Age.

My character, Fiona, is an elven mage. While I don't usually play female characters in games like this, I was not a fan of the look of male elves, and so decided I'd try playing a lady.

Some random thoughts on my first two hours of play, which saw me through to the end of the mage Origins story:

- Within five minutes of starting the game I already had a male NPC hitting on me, which was awkward given that the voice acting was fairly convincing. I was creeped out enough to avoid that particular NPC for the rest of the Origins story, although I didn't tell him to go take a leap when the option was added.

- The persistent blood splatters that quickly gather on player characters is neither realistic looking nor particularly necessary. It was utterly silly to watch Lily (an otherwise soft spoken Chantry initiate) engage in normal conversation while seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was coated from head to toe in gore. I have no idea what Bioware was thinking when they incorporated this feature; it seems like blood for the sake of blood, and detracts from the experience.

- While I appreciate the wide range of dialog options, it would be nice if the game learned what sort of responses that I was inclined to choose, and did not simply hand me a laundry list of all possible options. For example, I could play Fiona as a racist elf with a huge chip on her shoulder if I wanted to - which is great - however after not selecting those options for two hours it would be nice to see them drop off the quick list of dialog choices (or at least be hidden by default, with a "more options" button available).

- The Harrowing was extremely well done, especially how it ends with Mouse. I hope to come across him again, because he seems to be a much deeper character than I initially thought.

- The repercussions of choosing to freely help Jowan (which I was really leery of) made me squirm. I tried to find proof of my friend's alleged misdeeds but couldn't and so gave him the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately that was a mistake. While I didn't want to fall on my sword completely, especially in front of Greagoir, neither was I completely innocent. The dialog options presented through this part of the game forced me into some hard choices, and I can easily see the results turning out differently.

- Interestingly, a co-worker of mine is playing an elven mage as well and decided to rat out Jowan. While this didn't change the sequence of quests that he ran, he was not treated nearly as harshly as I was at the culmination of the quest.

- Is it bad that I'm thinking I want to specialize as a blood mage eventually? Already I'm picking spells that have that flavor: entropy will be my primary school, and I'd like to collect a lot of the ice spells from the primal school. I don't want Fiona to be a goodie-goodie; I'd prefer her to be fairly self-interested, although not to an extreme.

- Small-scale combat feels really fluid so far. I appreciate the ability to pause the action whenever I want and issue specific orders. I've definitely found it helpful to have multiple crowd control spells even through the early quests - both Paralyze and Blizzard can be used to stop an enemy for a significant amount of time.

My wife works all weekend, so I suspect I'll have a lot more to say soon!