Achievement Unlocked 7.25.08: A Bunch of Uncreative, Non-Artistic Games

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 07.25.2008

Rod Oracheski takes a look at four games that he's played lately, then goes over a few reasons why Vimeo.com's community of elitist hippies sucks and why games need more farting.



I played a whack of games this week, and - with no real Achievement news this week - I'll take a look at some of them in lieu of making fun of Sony's Trophy system. Quick looks at Unreal Tournament 3, Alone in the Dark, Beijing 2008, and NCAA Football 09 - all today on Achievement Unlocked.

We'll start things out with Unreal Tournament 3, Epic's run-and-gun shooter that appeared a while back on the PS3 and PC, seemingly having zero impact at all in terms of sales.

I don't know why the game was largely ignored, given the outstanding graphics, but it's possible that people are - like myself - just tired of the run-and-gun style of gameplay. UT3 offers up some variations in the gameplay modes, but the heart of the game is still the frag-or-be-fragged nonstop action.

The Xbox 360 version doesn't support the custom user mods available for the PC and PS3 versions, though - again - the game's expected community of rich content never really materialized anyway. There were some early things done, including a Master Chief replica that Microsoft should have found a way to include, but it seems to have really dropped off after the first few months.

The 360 version does have all the DLC available for the PS3 and PC versions, in addition to five 'exclusive' maps, so it's not exactly hurting for content anyway. It also offers up a split-screen mode that allows you to play with a friend on the same screen, even going online that way.

As I've said in the past, UT3 just isn't my style of game anymore, but I have to admit that it's fun to fire it in every once in a while and play some mindless CTF or Deathmatch. The split-screen play also gets my wife involved, something that's a huge positive.

The only chance of UT4 catching my eye is if they revamp the gameplay a bit, to give it more depth. There's nothing wrong with the occasional run-and-gun outing, but I'd love to see what they could do with something squad-based that depended more on strategy and less on timing spawns.

Speaking of revamps, next up is Alone in the Dark - Atari's revamp of the series to make it more relevant (read: popular) in today's gaming world. While opinions vary on this one, I'm of the opinion that this revamp stinks.

While it's the best looking Alone in the Dark title ever, the game is riddled with problems, from poor controls to gamebreaking bugs and glitches. In one of the first of the game's 'cinematic' sequences, you enter an apartment and the room breaks apart. It's not quite clear what you're supposed to do, it feels a lot like a QTE where the buttons just don't appear on the screen, so I tried to go for the hole that appeared in the wall - thinking I'd have to move out onto a ledge. No dice on that idea, and the roof collapsed. Instead of killing me, it pushed me through the wall and out onto a ledge where I found myself unable to move. I sat there for 10 seconds or so, until the game arbitrarily decided I should die.

The next time through I noticed the room split, but an area to the left remained in good shape. OK - so I have to go that way, I thought to myself. Sure enough, jumping up into that area left me alive - but where to now? There was a door in one wall, so I headed that way only to have it blow open with a fireball shooting into the room, along with a pile of debris. I was strangely unaffected by the fireball, though I was directly in its path - or appeared to be in the suddenly side-view camera, at least. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't immune to the chair that came flying out of the doorway, killing me instantly.

The third play through, I did the same 'turn to jump into the room' move and found a broken - yet still live - electrical wire blocking my path. That wasn't there before! Getting past that and into the room, I found another one that kept me from moving into the path of the exploding doorway. Were those supposed to be there before?

Couple the glitchy gameplay with some boring design decisions like having to put out fires using an extinguisher that's woefully underpowered and you have a recipe for a snoozefest. What I've played of Alone in the Dark just hasn't been fun at all. As I said though, opinions vary. It seems like most of those who like the game didn't encounter the many glitches that I - and others who disliked it - ran into.

While Alone in the Dark might have you breaking controllers in frustration, Beijing 2008 - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games (great name guys, very original) will have you wearing them out.

In the July Roundtable I said that it looked like they were moving away from the game being a "button-mashing, controller-destroying festival" but sadly it appears that's just not the case. In pretty much every event you hammer on two buttons, alternating to build speed, or flail the left or right stick back and forth wildly.

There's a bit of a cool idea with the take-off for various events, where you need to use the triggers to build a gauge, keeping it just under the red (launch) mark until the starter pistol goes off. It's a little clumsy to do that when you then immediately need to switch into button-mashing mode, but at least it's something different.

The graphics aren't anything to write home about, and though the game claims you can customize your player all you can really do is choose one of a number of pre-formed characters. You were hoping you'd be able to look like yourself in the game? Better hope you're a bit of an ugly bastard, with a weird nose and strangely-sloped forehead.

On the bright side, Beijing 2008 has a ton of gameplay variety. Foot races, weightlifting, pistol shooting, swimming, discus, high jump - you name the Olympic sport and it's probably found among the 38 different events in the game.

From 38 sports done passably well, lets move to one sport...also done passably well - NCAA 2009.

I had a pretty good time going through the game in Campus Legend my first time through, not noticing any glaring bugs at the time. The second time through, however, getting into the game's Dynasty mode shone a light on several huge flaws.

I'm not a huge stats guy, I've never printed out page after page of stats for a sports game I was playing so I could go through them. I do some basic "do I have more goals than this other guy?" stuff in the NHL games I play, but to scrutinize quarterback completion percentages or a running back's average yards-per-carry is generally something I just don't do.

But I did notice when the stats vanished entirely, however. Part way through my season the passing stats were just gone...vanished into the ether. After a few more weeks, they were back - but I was wondering if I could trust them at that point. Looking closer, I found some pretty weird anomalies in the numbers. A dozen quarterbacks with 75%+ completion - at the NCAA level? Maybe after a game, but after a season?

Like I said though, I'm not really a stats guy so the oddities - while funny - weren't really gamebreakers for me. What was, though, was the stuff that affects the actual gameplay. Defenders who continually readjust their intercept angle so they will never intercept your player, for example - particularly noticeable on sweep plays. That's the kind of thing that drives me crazy - how is that making it to the game? Times where I should have been taken down behind the line turned into touchdown runs, simply because the defender couldn't figure out how to catch up to me.

Ah well - Soul Calibur IV showed up on my desk today, so I'm hoping that one will rescue me from this run of underachieving games. UT3 was the best of the bunch, and when you say that about a style of game you don't really enjoy that's saying something.



This week I found out that videos about video games, regardless of how much you've edited them, just aren't "creative" or "artistic" enough for Vimeo, the site I used to host all the high-def videos I've captured. I have to admit that my efforts weren't as good as some of the other videos found on the site, though I was improving - partly by studying what others there were doing. The site creators weren't happy with the way video game vids were becoming more and more popular there, and have banned them entirely - on the grounds they're not "creative" enough.

It's a little disappointing that they took that stance, especially when clips of people farting, filmed then uploaded without editing one bit, are considered "artistic" and "creative" enough for Vimeo. It's also disappointing that Vimeo admins initially claimed they weren't going to be deleting machinima, but when asked for clarification on several videos that were clearly within the category of machinima, they said that they would be deleted. Way to know your own *new* rules, guys.

They later clarified, or attempted to, saying that it was mostly because game videos are larger and longer than other types of videos - another complete falsehood. The majority of game videos that I perused, excluding machinima, were less than a minute long - primarily Skate videos showing a single trick or short trick line. There were some CounterStrike kill videos that were longer, but they were all heavily edited, set to music, and used a variety of filters and other effects. Meanwhile, most "real" video, regardless of content, was two minutes or longer - often without any editing done to it at all.

In any case, every Vimeo user is confined to 500 MB worth of upload each week - no more, no less - so it's impossible for them to have videos that are larger than what everyone else was allowed.

Here's an awesome Vimeo clip for you:

A guy shitting his pants? Now that's truly some creative artistry.
The whole thing has cost them a decent portion of their user base, though it's a portion they admittedly didn't care about. It's kind of odd timing, with rumours that Vimeo is planning to institute a pay service in the very near future. Why would you prune out your most active users before asking people to pay? Good business sense, guys.

Most disappointing was the number of users who were in favour of the new rules, simply because they didn't target their particular form of video. I wonder if they'll be as complacent if new rules come out that declare their hobby isn't "artistic" enough for Vimeo. This month it was video game vids - if next month is clips of children or cats playing, is that still OK?

One responder put it this way, paraphrasing a famous quote:

First they came for the gamers, and I did not speak up because I was not a gamer.
Then they came for the screencasters, and I did not speak up because I was not a screencaster.
Then they came for the lipdubbers, and I did not speak up because I was not a lipdubber.
Then they came for the video bloggers, and I did not speak up because I was not a video blogger.

Then they came for me, and there was nobody left to speak up for me.

So I've been looking for a new host for high-def video, something that's easier said than done. There are a couple requirements, though. The site has to allow video game vids, of course. They have to allow high-def video, as well as allowing it to be embedded as cleanly as possible - no bloated players, please! I'd prefer they also allow the original video to be downloaded, though that one's less important.

I'm trying Exposure Room right now, though I'm also checking out Wipido. Exposure Room has a nice embed player, though with a bit of hackery I can embed Wipido videos without their player...not sure what they'd think of that, however.

If you know of any good hosts, feel free to drop me a line or pimp it in the comments. Seems like they've died down in recent days. Maybe all the fanboys killed themselves after the FF XIII announcement. Yeah...like we could be so lucky.

Until next week, I'm out.