Teaching and Gaming - a short reflection at the start of 2016

It has been two years since I have written about gaming. Domestic life and professional considerations are serious demands. However, I have been nourishing my imaginative life again recently, through films, books and games.

As an English teacher, I believe that (at its best) language learning is about experiencing how perception can be created, both consciously and otherwise. Students can experience life that exists beyond that immediately in front of their face, and games can do this.

Of course, I no longer have time to read and watch and game for many hours. Often this time is a little snatched. The hours free at the weekends and evenings are filled with family and friends, and gaming takes its rightful place as an enhancement of my imaginative life.

Fortunately, we will in a time where a great many games are made for those with little time (and much experience).

Games like The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide, Dear Esther are all experiences that last a few hours at the most. All challenge expectations, though, and link directly to my experience of literature. Other games like Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron scratch an itch to experience a lifestyle that (frankly!) an English teacher is unlikely to experience.

Part of playing games, and gaming culture, is (I think) to begin to make them myself. I have friends who have made indie games, usually point and click adventures.

The games that I would like to make are like the books I have written: ones that involve making difficult moral choices. Currently I'm happily working through revamps of the 80s Gamebooks (Fighting Fantasy et al).

What games can do with this style of narrative fiction is to sustain a more invisible narrative that tracks the relative level of 'morality' that the reader chooses. Put another way, choices can be 'scored' and open other choices or paths in the narrative. Ultimately, the kind of Gamebooks I want to write are those for an older teenage or an adult audience - ones that challenge the reader to truly interact and experience moral situations which they would (hopefully) not experience in RL. Such texts would need to be literary, and perhaps use Shakespeare or similar canonical stories to frame their narratives.

Frankenstein and 80 Days around the world have recently experienced some excellent revitalisations.

On a final note, I would like to draw attention to the Institute of Gaming's new course to teach gaming in schools. While this requires a fairly fluid international/private curriculum to truly integrate into a classroom, this is something that deserves some judicious attention.

Read more »

Tomb Raider

With the end of the year looming in earnest I find myself happily distracted by many things. The purpose of these things is to:

a) Saying goodbye to my current school.
b) Ensure that all feel that they should improve in the weeks we have left.

My gaming has become more focussed. I have for a long while wanted to game for 15-30 minutes at a time. An article on this should be written soon, but I thought that something on my completion of the latest Tomb Raider game last night is worthy of some thoughts.

The first Tomb Raider is a classic game that was constructed with ambition. Its latest in carnation is bred from such rich heritage, and it does not disappoint. Beginning with as decent a story as a platform game allows (trapped on an island), the game unwinds its gentle rhythms to ease you in. Grinding is kept to a minimum, and even then is judiciously created to balance action.

Many moments have stayed with me, most notably:

a) The easy 'trapped with wolves' scene in the thunderstorm.
b) The arduous 'navitage through a wood' parachute scene in the sun.
c) The first time you use a rope ascender to escape a burning boat.
d) Lara becoming progressively more adept in her survival skills.
e) The varied and pleasing nods to the other games, such as the infancy of a theme, and the dual wielding pistols.

There were a few puzzles that, although tricky, trapped you in a room so as you did not have to venture outside the level to solve them. I must admit that once I used an internet solution to fire an arrow into a wall (mostly because the level allowed me to venture too far and wide to focus on where I should have been going). Aside from that, the level design I think develops contemporary expectations for both pace and challenge. Such love and expertise for a seminal series shows how gaming takes itself seriously as both art and entertainment.

That statement is perhaps a little too much to say. However, this game is good - a 4.5, and worth your time. 

Read more »

Does making a game 'hard' make it better?

An excellent question OP. I have become more of a content tourist with my time, and certainly appreciate the ease of games like Max Payne 3 and the latest Tomb Raider.

I don't really have time for games that require an absolute dedication to discovering their mechanics before I can actually being to 'play' them. Even then, I appreciate a space for making mistakes and being naive. Therefore, some games that I love (Sins of a Solar Empire; Dawn of War franchise) tend to be underplayed because they rely upon discovering build-orders and requiring an intense focus for the entirety of the game.

Saying all this, there are some games during which inevitable progress ruins the experience. Space Marine, for example, had very few sections that were 'difficult' in the sense that it was a necessarily monotonous mod for Gears of War rather than a game in its own right (a comment which perhaps won't hold up under scrutiny, but drives the kind of point that I am trying to make).

The Portal, Total War, and HL series have, even now, an almost flawless level of difficulty. I can progress through them in a relatively straight line of success and still feel that there are some action parts/puzzles that require some mulling over. For those who have a very limited amount of time and attention to dedicate to gaming, I would say that a game where you rarely die/get stuck at a place for more than three lives/attempts has the kind of difficulty curve that is well-designed (or at least designed for you in mind!).

Finally, the latest game that said it was 'hard' was Dark Souls. And blimey, that was a tedious game. Killed a few bosses, died at a few points and had to march back through a lengthy and easy section prior to it. Equally, Arma 2 DayZ is hard (to stomach) but actually becomes an experience rather than just a ludic challenge: that kind of 'hardcore' mode I can recommend.

Read more »

How to install mods onto Medieval Total War 2

After many hours of installing mods to Medieval Total War 2, I have managed to give a short list of instructions of how to do so.

I repeat it below for those who search for it via google. Good luck! The mods are definitely worth it...

The Quill Guy: Firstly, download this
The Quill Guy: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=2824
The Quill Guy: Then, with the third age mod in its own folder (not pasted like other mods into other folders)
The Quill Guy: start the app
The Quill Guy: Find the Third Age folder
The Quill Guy: Select
The Quill Guy: It'll select the config file that acts like the .exe
The Quill Guy: Choose kingdoms as the 'launcher' option
The Quill Guy: (All this is clear when you do it)
The Quill Guy: Then...
The Quill Guy: Replace the normal launcher with this http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2500705
The Quill Guy: Follow instructions (it's a copy job of one file!)
The Quill Guy: Restart steam
The Quill Guy: And it'll work perfectly. As will all your other mods :-D
The Quill Guy: Send me a message if it doesn't work; I've ten hour's experience getting it to work!

Read more »

Max Payne 3

It's been a while since I've committed myself to a review, even though I've been playing through a few games. Max Payne 3 is a game a decade in the making, and a true AA(A) title. It has its flaws, and it has its strengths, and it is still one of the best action games to be purchased.

Currently on regular sale on steam for under a tenner, Max Payne 3 happily fills the linear action shooter niche, complete with laughable dialogue and well-paced action. The story is predictably hammy throughout, yet pleasingly self-referential. Cover-glitch issues and unskippable cut-scenes sadly pull this down into an 8/10, but there isn't any to match what Max can bring.

Taking the story into a variety of scenes, we join on Max on some ridiculous quest-or-another across favelas, nightclubs, and his familar New York past. Much love has gone into the design of the game and it sustains its set-piece-and-then-another without entropy.

One criticism many have of this game is the unskippable cut-scenes. For a first-time play through I liked them: they provided a breather between the set pieces. On a second play-through, they were tedious. While most of them were merely 30 seconds or so, there are some that do last for several minutes (it seems). Poor design in here. Of course, playing in window mode allows you to Alt-tab into something else while you wait for the action to start. Rockstar have said this practice is due to the need for loading times (which can't be right).

A righteous criticism of this game that I suffered a well-documented cover glitch. On my previous gaming computer Max would freeze behind cover and only move out when he was rolled. This meant that enemies would auto-hit him. A frustration that hasn't been sorted (yet acknowledged by Rockstar) this made the game near unplayable at times near the end (particularly in the airport scene where use of cover is essential). All I can suggest, if you suffer the same, is to reduce the quality of your graphics. On my new computer, the game breezed through without any issues, and I clocked many sections much easier.

One tip I would give, too, is to realise that if you begin to reload behind cover and then select bullet time, your adrenaline bar does not decrease. Near the end of the game this is a boon, as you have to headshot most enemies to progress. At this point, too, the rifles are too inaccurate, and dual wielding is far superior at medium to close range.

Ultimately Max Payne 3 is well worth a purchase. It won't be a full meal for a gamer, but it is a juicy steak sandwich with graphical sauce to delight. Even with some very naff DRM, lack of graphical optimisation (with the cover glitch), and cut-scene design, I have managed to put 24+ hours into it laughingly.

Read more »

Playing multiplayer Shogun 2

I am playing an extensive amount of multiplayer in Shogun 2 at the moment. This is something I have wanted to do for a far time, and something that has been challenging.

As I said already in this blog, I played the original Shogun extensively, clocking the campaign on the hardest difficulty. While at the time I thought this an achievement, the truth is that I merely knew the game mechanics. I could beat the AI with any army as I know how to exploit it. It was to my sadness that I was uanble to play anyone online, as my success against the AI made me feel that I was expert.

The first thing about mutliplayer in any game, let alone an RTS game, is that the difficulty is more than that of the AI. AI difficult often increases by making the game mechanics unfair (that is, making their troops simply better than your equivalents). This is, of course, not particularly rewarding. A human RTS player, though, has  psychology: they can intimidate or be intimidated. In the 80 or so battles that I have fought, many have been enjoyable. Players have brought balanced armies, and I have met some quality gamers. At the moment, I have 3-4 players I play against regularly who offer courteous banter always.

Of course, not all players are like this. Top peeves are:

1) Not saying hello in the welcome screen.
The community is poor. Forums are decent, but the actual chat is terrible, with no conversations, and with many players simply clicking the 'go' button as soon as the army selection screen appears. Depending on how good the player is, and if I've already had a few games, I give them a few different salutations before giving them the game.

2) Choosing a 'spam' army.
The game is not designed to hamper certain spam armies. Selecting solely cavalry or solely monk or even solely ashigaru swordsmen leads to easy wins against balanced armies. Of course, there are the counterbalances to these armies (an all-spear army vs the cavalry for example, or bows vs the monks) but there is no way this can be chosen in the battle selection screen. If I encounter a spam, I'll play on if the player courteously acknowledges that they are trying a spam build for whatever reason, otherwise I'll give them the points. Spam armies are poor

3) Poor match-making.
I have played too many matches against people who have topped 1500+ hours in the game. For me the game is a waste of time for myself and my opponent: they have top veteran units that defeat anything I can muster in 1-on-1 fights. Again, if the player is chatty, I'll fight on. Otherwise, if I've had enough, I'll give them the match.

4) Overpowered retainers.
What makes the game tremendous is beating another player through distraction or deliberate tactics. I'll go through some of my tactics soon, but I find that some retainers dispense with these. One in particular, 'World Weary' debuffs your veteran units (which are essentially to success in multiplayer). I played a game where I caught all my opponents cav, held him off with a spear wall, took the melee-based dojos, flanked him with swords and rear-charged him with cav. He didn't break, I did, and I laughed long and hard. The shame is that my opponent, rightly or wrongly, gets no kudos for the win. Again, if we were playing a series of battles he could at least bluff with the idea that I might take a vanilla (non-veteran) army to avoid the effects of this retainer.

My tactics
I can't even remember the tactics I first used when I went online. I lost many battles, and without really knowing why. The best video I saw, though, was by fishsandwichpatrol (google him!) He showed how to use group formation buttons, and how to control eight melee units with one button. This is essential to even begin to start playing, and something I have shown those friends I play with online most often.

The first tactics I used with success involved the following build:

General - bow
6 Samurai swords
2 samuari spears
2-4 cav
2 ashigaru bowmen

My tactics were to sacrifice my bowmen on one side of the field, largely to distract his cav. Sometimes I would lure his cav to attack my bowmen,who would last between 5 and 10 seconds. In that time, I would reveal my cav, would who get free charges against him. Sometimes, I would leave my bow to die while I micro-managed my melee force to hit him (usually on an angle or a flank where I could). I won many battles using this tactic, but came unstuck against against the all-veteran armies the better players employ.

My new build is

General - leadership
A spearwall consisting of either 2 Yari or 2 Naginata
Flanking units consist of 3 of Katana, No-Dachi or Loan-Sword
1 missile unit consisting of monk guns or monk bows
2-4 cav, depending on the cost of my other units. These range from light, yari and great guard.
1-2 naginata attendents
1 monk naginata

My tactics with this build are follows:

Skirmishing and establishing the initiative:

If I have the cav advantage, I see to take some of the dojos with an unmounted light cav whilst they are protected elsewhere. I will try to bait him into fighting, and will seek to get some charges against unprotected infantry units. These charges will see my cav retreat as soon as they make contact. Sometimes running a cav unit across the front lines is enough to make my opponent break his lines.

My spear wall charges towards a building, and forms a solid, thin line with one flank protected. The Yaris are less durable, but they offer a great dimension of tactics with their ability to run faster. Naginata are better against opponents who take missile troops. Few do, though.

My main block of infantry are in the Alt + 4 group formation. When behind the spear wall, I will either begin to snipe with the monk bows, or look to establish firing lines with my monk guns. Both these units will do little in terms of wiping out units, but they will hopefully force him to engage my spearwall.

Bow cav are tremendous for baiting opponents. If unchecked, they can caused tremendous damage. They can't flee forever, though, and need to be retreated back through your lines to truly protect them (or via a larger contingent of cavalry).

Engaging
When my opponent chooses to engage me, I sometimes retreat my spearwall a second or two before it is due to hit. This allows me to rear charge him with my flanking swords easier, and serves to unnerve him, too.  At this point, some opponents will seek to overwhelm your spear wall. I vet my spearwalls with melee defence as much as I can, as their job is to hold the enemy line in place for as long as possible. My 2-3 swords will flank where they can.

Better opponents will seek to flank your position. It is now that I place my general just behind my spearwall (something that causes many opponents to launch more melee against my wavering line to get to him). The stand and fight buff, though, causes them to stay for between 15 and 30 seconds, which is enough time to get flank charges off.

If one part of the spearwall breaks (thanks to excessively vetted opponents, for example) then my monks charge in to plug the line. Otherwise, they seek to engage and flankers and/or cav. If I have some spare koku, I take some unvetted nag attendents to hold up rear cav charges. They can't hurt any unit 1-on-1, but are excellent support to slow down cav attacks.

Winning the melee
I regularly beat superior numbers by compressing the battlefield. When units are taking morale shocks, it doesn't matter too much how many men they have. I have many replays where I am outnumbered 4 or 5 to 1, and yet my flanking wins the day.

Against campers/camping, I usually sacrifice a unit (such as the bow cav) in order to distract my opponent. By microing my cav as I engage in melee, my opponent might miss the initial charge. The remainder of my cav then seek to exploit a hole in his line when he moves to engage and break my spearwall, usually by charging his general. It is a worthwhile loss of most/all my cav to kill his general.

Finishing off your opponent
When your opponent is fleeing, seek to chase down his most dangerous units. It is no good having nearly all his units broken if they reform. I have many replays when my units have rallied and counterattacked, and won.

Flanking is everything
One battle against a great opponent with 5k Koku (small) saw me end with 1 unit of katana and my general against 3 units of ashigaru, and 1 unit of katana. My opponent charged uphill at me, outnumbering me 4 to 1. I stretched my remaining unit wide (so they wouldn't be flanked) and then flank charged the initial unit that hit me with my general. Upon hitting, I immediately retreated him and charged again. On the second charge, his unit broke, which then led to chain-routing by the rest of his army. I had already gg'd (good game - term when you finish a game) by that point, and we were both astounded that I had won. A great win!

Overpowered units are not rewarding
I have a battle where my opponent outplayed me on all fronts. He took the dojos, he shot my cav, and he engaged me exceptionally well. My melee units were surrounded, his cav had just down my archers, and he had caught my two units of great guard with Yari Samurai. I had 3 units of melee left (all wavering) while my general stood in stand and fight in the midst of their last stand.

Cue the Great Guard: with one unit down to 10, the other unit (down to 40) charged through (!) the spears and engaged one of his two bow cav units (the other bow cav flank charging my cornered army). The Great Guard decimated this unit from 60 to 40 in about four to six seconds. At this point I was down to two wavering units in melee, both either side of my general.

The only mistake my opponent made now was the charge his general into melee. A full general unit was wiped out by my half-strong Great Guard unit (even when he was supported by the remnants of his bow cav) in about another five to eight seconds. This caused the morale of his melee units (even though they were moments from winning) to drop dramatically.

The fragment of my Great Guard unit (who never flee!) then spread themselves at the rear of his main body of troops, and charged. Instantly his entire army shattered. From an entirely losing position, to winning emphatically - the Great Guard's overpowered status was proved yet again.

The battle ended with his original Yari Samurai unit that had held up my Great Guard charging towards my remaining two units, and then thinking better of it...

I am thinking of creating a youtube channel of my battles, not least as I think some of the best battles for me are fought at my level. Those who are much better (1500 hours+) seem to know the mechanics of the game to extent that I once knew the original shogun. At that level, I wonder how psychology plays a role, and how much of the game is having the best retainers and the best-vetted units.

Read more »

Total War and Day Z - some thoughts

As I sit today on the top of Scarborough Esplanade, looking far across the frothy waves, I feel the discomfort of the breeze against my bare arms. It is not entirely unpleasant, but it is something that jolts me out of the expectation that I will be here forever.

I will one day die. Playing Shogun 2 makes me think repeatedly about the prospect of death, and of the purposes of guiding men to their deaths. Whether those deaths have meaning, those pixilated imagined men, is not just down to me. As their general, I can control the logistics of the battle, but I cannot control entirely how they perceive themselves, and the purpose of their deaths.

With steel and wood, men once battled .If they were to kill someone, they would have to face him. Combat was brutal, and I imagine men could not train for that without actually experiencing combat themeslves.

It is with this idea that I think towards my own future. I am of a certain age where I can believe, or perhas more likely fool myself, that I have all certainities planned.

Playing a game like Shogun requires some dedication. Since starting my multiplayer experiences, I realise that just because I can beat the computer heavily and frequently doesn't mean that I stand a chance against those who play the game regularly. I say regularly – most of those I play have clocked between 500 and 2000 hours on the game. And that is in the space of a few years, maximum. This time seems exorbitant. Why spend so long on such a game, or even just one game? In doing so, it seems clear to me that th epurple flowers that strain against the seas breeze will only be here for a short length of time. They will one day pass like all else on this island.

Writing, creative writing, is not something that I want to do in my apartment much. At least not at this time. It is, instead, something that I am happier trying to do amongst other people.

But yes, the game, and time spent playing it. The thing about games is that they are an imitation of real life. That is, they have their exploits and they have their limitations. There comes a point where someone is so incredibly able to play the game, so intuitive in terms of what unit beats what, that they can beat anyone with 'only' a few hundred hours of experience.

I have found myself on more than a few occasions a poor loser. I don't rage quit, and I don't disconnect – I always take defeat to give my opponent credence. But I detest losing to self-conscious power-gaming builds. If I see a spam of monks, or of cav, or of heroes, then I give my opponent the game, with a few choice words too. If my opponent doesn't speak to me, even to say that universal greeting of 'hi', I tend to give them the game, too.

When I do play, I find myself wanting to play until I have a win. Yet that win is not always so simple; I often want to win a great battle. And so I find myself on a streak of losses until I play someone who has only played 50 more hours or so than me. And then it is apparent that they are much worse than me.

All of these experiences mean that when I do find myself in an excellent battle that flows back and forth, I enjoy it tremendously. I have a few that I will probably upload, along with some defeats, too.

Day Z. The game has the unusual quality of creating tension and keeping it there. The possibility of being killed by another player makes the game what it is and will make it a huge success.

However, the nature of that killing matters. If, for example, I am kiled by a collection of elite bandits who intend to steal my loot so as to better survive, then that is the game. If I am double-crossed by someone, then that is also acceptable. But some of the current mechanics break the immersion.

One is the killing of newly spawned players. This isn't a problem for the game mechanics in terms of breaking the game itself, as this is the best time to be killed. However, the reasons to kill a newly spawned player are only to grief others. There is nothing to be gained loot-wise. And there is nothing in role-olaying a bandit that means this makes sense.

There are many many players who are, I think, perhaps incapable, rather than unwilling, to roleplay a character. That is not their fault, because that is not the game they want to play. They want to play CoD, with its ocrridors and its upgrades, and its kill streaks. They want to get a gun with big numbers so they can get bigge numbers in their debug table (of player kills.)

Expert players hunting and killing other players is a judicious part of the game. Collections of players fighting other players is, again, part of the game. But this appeals to a fraction of the gamerbase – those who focus solely on competitive FPS games. And this minority have influenced the rest of the game. Most players, now, shoot on sight. They don't talk; they kill. Many, I have found, can't hit a player who runs. But their shooting has replaced their talking. And this removes the tension of the game.

The first and foremost concern of a large budget game like Day Z is to make money. And appealing to the expert FPS crowd will create self-marketing. Therefore, PvE (player Vs Environment) zones would water down the game's brutality. Instead, there should be consequences that force FPS griefers into roleplaying certain characters. For example, someone who kills new spawns or unarmed survivors should gain negative traits. Those who kill groups of amred survivors could gain positive traits.

Survivor traits should trump bandit traits. Some of these should be much more powerful.

NPCs should be in the game, in the absence of players who will talk. These will offer food and/or shelter ,or can be killed like anyone else.

But these facets are second to the fact that the game makes you feel like your death matters. I managed to get out of one of the cities, and picked up a rifle. With it, I found my way far far north, and currently raid a nearby town for supplies. Other than that, I amble around the countryside, surviving as long as I can.

Some say that this leads to boredom. That the long you survive, and the more you have gained, the less inclined someone is to talk to someone. Indeed, letting in someone who you haven't played with for many hours before is a foolish thing – they could undo many hours of work, possibly hundreds. But that is the game.

It has made me wonder whether all the things I have gained now have made me soft. Of whether I do not want to gamble with my future, and my school with the opportunities that might be found in this kind of climate.

Read more »