RTS (Real Time Strategy) games were once one of my most favoured genres. I’ve never been close to the top tier of players, and was often quite handily beaten in most LAN events. I still enjoyed the games, but I think more for the city-building and was the sort of player that “turtles” (builds large defensive structures rather than being on the offensive).

I was quite excited to hear that Starcraft 2 is in development and due out later this year, but I can’t help but think I won’t really enjoy it. The last few RTS games I’ve played have been almost exactly the same as the others, with minor changes cosmetic such as character units and setting. The missions are usually quite similar and generic, and the whole thing gets pretty old, pretty fast.

Supreme Commander was the last such game I installed, and although I haven’t played it a great deal, I just can’t find myself getting excited by what seems to be a “been there, done that” experience. The whole strategy in these sorts of games seems to lie in finding the fastest way to crank out as many units as possible. There doesn’t ever seem to be a huge amount of tactics involved.

Sure, you can make two or three groups of units and send them off in different directions to pincer the enemy in multiple fronts, but once the units are together the AI is not particularly intelligent and micromanaging each unit seems more a chore than interesting part of the game.

One game I did play and enjoy a while back is Company of Heroes (I haven’t gotten into the second yet, but plan to) as even though it’s an RTS it was focused on missions with smaller units and less on churning out as many units in as short a time as possible. This is, I think, the direction that the games need to take (even though it is a well-done rehash of the Commandos games).

Starcraft 2, on the other hand, will be a massive, micromanaging clickfest. And it will sell millions. Mostly because I’m not the intended target audience (one, I’m not Korean and two I’m obviously not a hardcore RTS gamer). I’d really like to see more RTS games with no or limited bases with a focus on different style of gaming. What? I’m not sure, anything I could think of has probably been thought up before and already failed. I just think the current style of game needs to evolve. Shooters have; RPGs have. Why not RTS?

Since I don’t post nearly enough on this site, I thought I might discuss my opinions on Assassin’s Creed, which I’ve been playing for the last week or so. The game came out on Xbox 360 and PS3 last year, but just came out for PC.

Being a PC gamer (not primarily but still regularly) I was at first surprised to see no options for resolution (least that I could find); as I’m using a 1920×1200 LCD and the game ran with a slight letterbox at 1920×1080, this isn’t a big deal. The other strange thing is that I was unable to set anti-aliasing options despite my rig being more than capable of handling such options — it was there, just greyed out.  Admittedly I only played the DirectX 10 version so DirectX 9 may support this; I didn’t even think til now to check!

But onto the story: Set during in the first crusade (12th century), and simultaneously in a future but undisclosed time, you play a character who has been “sent” back in time to relive the life of an Assassin using a device called an ‘Animus’, similar to the plug-in chairs in the Matrix series of movies. But that part of the story is wasted on me — though clearly one of a multi-part series, it’s useless in at least the first game. That’s not really important. What’s important in the game’s context is that you’re there to perform nine assassinations on major targets (loosely based on real-life figures at the time).

And now onto the game: Before you perform each assassination, you must gather intelligence on the person’s whereabouts, situation and a likely strike point. The setup is similar to a Need For Speed game: you perform a number of small tasks (in Need For Speed they are race types — drag racing, drifting, point-to-point, etc; in Assassin’s Creed they are obviously different — eavesdropping, pickpocketing, assassinating guards, destroying merchant stalls) and then move on to the major target.

A lot has been spoken of the repetitive nature of the investigations you perform, and I agree: they do become repetitive. Especially the less-interesting ones such as eavesdropping or pickpocketing. Because the game allows you to roam anywhere (except for a daft decision which puts large walls in parts of the city to stop you entering ahead of time) you can make of it what you will. Some of the most enjoyable experiences were when things went wrong.

For example, I was tasked to kill 3 guards without being found out. I killed the first two and as I hunted for the third ran around a corner hastily and bumped into another guard; instantly the guard gave chase. Soon after I had more than a dozen guards chasing me over the town’s rooftops. I stopped on the sloping roof of a church to fight, but was quickly surrounded — the fighting is simple, but can be quite fun (and luckily the guards only attack one at a time); I killed off a few but decided to run. I grabbed a guard, shoved him into a couple which fell off the roof as I bolted in the other direction with only a few left.

It’s the moments like these that really make the game. When it works, it’s as exciting as all hell. When you complete an assassination you still have to escape, but all the guards are on alert. My favourite assassination had me chasing the target through the city streets and when I finally caught up to him I jumped on his back and managed to complete my mission in front of a number of guards (and large crowd of people) who instantly gave chase. Brilliant.

Because it’s an open sandbox, you can tackle things however you wish. I had to escape a city — and when they’re finally unlocked, the cities are big, you can run for ages without hitting the walls; the viewing distance when up high is also amazing, you can see the whole city as well as the massive crowds of people therein — in one of the later missions, but the city entrance was guarded. From a safe point on a roof I assassinated a guard which drew the attention of the other guards. Jumping to a building closer to the exit I then jumped across the beams above the unaware guards before dropping to the ground, stealing a horse and making my escape. If I’d wanted I could have instead joined a group of monks and used them as cover to pass the guards unnoticed.

Sure there are a ton of faults — falling in water is instant death, and there’s a level set in docklands which requires you to jump from ship-to-ship to find a target; the guards are as good as climbing or jumping from roof-to-roof as you; the guards forget what you looked like even though they were chasing you two seconds ago; having to ride a horse between towns is uninteresting and time consuming — but the stuff that’s done right was most certainly enough to keep my interest and to be honest I wish there were to the game (or at least optional sidequests that aren’t “kill templars” or “find flags” — boring) because I wanted to continue playing when the credits rolled.

I usually hate stealth games (or stealth sections in games) with a passion, mostly because they are “instant fail”. That is, if you get found out you have to start again. Assassin’s Creed however, works because you can stuff up and it lets you get out of it. That said, trying some missions over and over is a bit silly. As is the fact that to perform most of the assassinations you have to be out in the open in front of dozens of people or guards. So, even though I despise stealth games I found myself wanting more stealth options in this one.

There are almost as many faults in the game as there are great moments that it’s easy to see why people were divided on it’s initial release. There’s an incredible, amazing, enjoyable, exciting game in there and it’s let down by some dumb or lazy decisions. I’ll certainly be interested to see when the second one is released.

I know this was long, and many of you don’t care, but that’s what blogs are for, right?

No time for today’s photo, too busy playing Super Mario Galaxy. Note: I’m so hardcore I’m not even using the wrist strap.

Side note: Happy birthday Tim!

Right, well it’s been three weeks since I’ve last blogged. Looking at this month it appears that I haven’t posted for longer, but rest assured, it’s only three weeks.

So, over the past three weeks I have:

• Had two new IT staff start at work.
• Had ten days off from work (including weekends).
• Played an awful lot of Neverwinter Nights 2.
• Eaten at the Box Hill Kimchi Grandma with Trav and Ange.
• Eaten at Coyote Cafe with Trav and Ange.
• Gone on a day trip with Justine to Healesville Sanctuary (some photos are on Flickr).
• Spent an afternoon with Dad and Cheryl where we ate roast chicken and cake (not at the same time).
• and probably more that I forget.

I hope this satisfies everyone’s need to know what I have been doing in this apparent time of idleness. Should you wish to know more about any topic in depth, please click the “Comment on…” link and ask.

Yesterday, Justine and I decided to pay a visit to see Dad and Cheryl (it’s also close to USA Foods, which is no coincidence). Seeing another opportunity to evangelise the Wii to yet more unsuspecting people, I packed my Wii into it’s bag (that I got “free” for pre-ordering, but didn’t think I’d ever use) and took it along.

Sadly, Cheryl has done a bit of damage to her back, which makes playing games like Wii Sports a bit of a stretch, so she sat this one out, but we gave her a great show looking like complete fools.

Dad loved playing Wii Sports and was able to compete with me on a pretty level playing field. That’s probably one of the best things about the Wii (or at least a well-developed game on the Wii), it removes the difficulty for non-gamers of having to co-ordinate moving a joystick while pressing a button which has no bearing on what’s happening on screen.

We must have played for 3 or 4 hours and it only took a few short minutes in each of the the Wii Sports or Wii Play games for Dad to get the hang of it, though most of the Monkey Ball mini games are dreadful and not worth mentioning.

Everyone who’s played the Wii thus far (admittedly not a huge amount of people) has expressed interest in owning their own in the future; it seems to be hitting it’s mark as far as demographic is concerned. Wii Sports alone seems like it could be a massive system seller, and it’s a pack-in game (then again, Super Mario Bros was too)!

Well, the new Nintendo Wii launched on Thursday and since I have never done it before, I decided it might be fun to attend and purchase my Wii at a midnight launch Wednesday night.

Justine and I both went down to our local shopping center, had dinner, made our way to our local EB and grabbed a ticket; number #14.

We went back home for a couple of hours and when we returned to the store at about 11:45, I was surprised to see that there were around 60-70 people milling around the store. Not all the people were there to buy, there were quite a few people there for … something to do, I guess.

As the clock struck midnight, the store let two people in at a time to buy their consoles. After around fifteen minutes I walked closer to the front of the crowd to see what number was being called as it was difficult to hear from where we were sitting. Just as I approached and was about to open my mouth to ask, number #14 was called. Convenient.

I picked up all the stuff I’d ordered (except for the component cables, which weren’t in stock yet, what a pain) and we hurried home — OK, I hurried home and Justine sat next to me yawning.

We quickly setup the shiny new system and played a few games of Wii Sports before Justine went to bed and I attempted to get the wireless setup to work. A quick change of wireless channel and I was away… to bed… at 3am.

I’m not sure how I did it, but over the course of Thursday-Sunday (I had Thursday and Friday off), I managed to sink 25 hours into Zelda (and I didn’t play much Thursday), and I’m not even half way through the main quest, let alone all the side quests and bits and pieces you can do.

The Wii is a pretty cool system, but my hopes of it being great for FPS games were a bit dashed because the infrared pointer is a little bit laggy, so not quite accurate enough. Games that use the accelerometers though (twisting, turning, tilting the remote) are great and it’s extremely responsive.

The actual user interface of the system seems rushed and not quite finished; touted features such as web browsing, news, weather are not yet available, and the interface is inconsistent with regards to navigation — things that work in one aspect of the system don’t work in another.

I’d also really love an option to have it start up a game directly rather than having to wait for the system to boot up, then recognise the game, then have me click on it, click Start and then wait for the game to load. The DS has the option, why not the Wii?

It took me a bit longer to finish than Full Throttle, but tonight I finished Day of the Tentacle. As with Full Throttle, there were a number of puzzles I remembered and way, way more I didn’t.

The control in Day of the Tentacle is a lot more painful than Full Throttle, in that you still need to use the old “Look/Use/Talk” type buttons which Full Throttle did a great job of streamlining (though that interface was only used on one other game), but it does the job.

The humour and inventive was one of the best parts of Day of the Tentacle, as was the time-traveling aspect which pitched you in three time periods in the same location — a number of puzzles in one time period were affected by occurrences in other time periods.

Next up will be Sam & Max Hit the Road, most likely, since I’ve already played the amazing Grim Fandango and Monkey Island games this year. The off-beat humour in Sam & Max is great, but some of the puzzles are a little out there which makes is a bit more difficult.