Blizzard's Diabloic Plans

GiantBomb has posted a video - here - showing off Diablo 3's newest character - the Monk. With 12 minutes of awesome monster crushing, I really admire Blizzard's marketing strategy. Blizzard is notorious for telling about their games years in advance and releasing them around half a decade later. They even have their own conference to showcase their 3 game lines - Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo. Other developers like Valve don't have something similar.

Strangely, I feel that Diablo 3 might drop by the 4th quarter of next year - 2010. They've already revealed 4 characters, there's just one to go and by the amounts of demo levels they are showing, I think they might have a pre alpha build up by the end of this year. Though when 2010 comes, I'll find out that Diablo won't be out till 2015.

This is Blizzard's Diabloic (diabolic) plan to create minions. They feed us gamers with so much eye candy and news about their games so that we slowly get hypnotized. Once they got us hypnotized, anything they release we will just look blankly and buy it without questioning if it actually good.

Operation 7 - Philippines

I've been playing this other FPS - Operation 7 Philippines and I enjoy it a lot. Operation 7 is in "closed" beta testing now though anyone with an E-games account (very easy to sign up) can join. Your level will be reset once the testing is over.

Operation 7 feels like the poor man's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It runs on the oldest systems and would probably work in a laptop with a decent video card. For most pinoy gamers, almost anyone can play this game over here. The graphics isn't as eye popping as the Call of Duty 4 game (think older like Call of Duty 1) but it certainly holds up for a free game.

As you level up in this game like CoD4, you have access to more types of weapons. The weapons in the game are also customizable where you could choose to have a faster reload for a smaller clip size or place a 4x32 scope on your M16 (not very useful really). I don't know if they are going to add "super powers" like an airstrike or attack dogs like in CoD since this is merely just a beta.

My 2 gripes with this game is that I sometimes my connection gets choppy for a few moments when a bunch of people join in or get out a game. I also don't like the costumes, I can barely tell who's side that person is unless I see a name over that person's head. I wish that each side would always have some arm band or something to signify visually what side they are on.

So I recommend anyone who likes FPS to try this game now and help the beta testing. I don't really know how they'll charge for this game for real. In game, you have to pay gold to get bullets for a certain amount of days (also with your suits/costumes) - hopefully you don't really have to pay real money for bullets.

Some Operation 7 videos of interest:
How to make a gun
Random Game - just to see how it plays

Wolf Team - Philippines

I've tried this "MMOFPS" yesterday though it's really just a FPS with a twist. In this game, you play as a werewolf strike team. You get to shoot normal weapons like M16s, Ak-47s and the like but you also have the ability to shapeshift to a werewolf and ravage your enemies with your claws.

This game reminds me of Alien Versus Predator mixed in with Counter Strike. As a werewolf, one can jump higher and run on walls ala alien. In human form, you get to use guns and grenades ala marine. However this game sort of ends up being shoot at long range and wolf form at close range. Since most maps are filled with walls and buildings, wolf form tends to be quite good.

I personally don't like this type of shooter because of it's game mechanics. It's very easy to kill a human with either a gun or claw. You don't even have any fantasy weapons - everything is a real weapon. Why can't I have a laser rifle that's super effective on wolves and not on humans? It also requires something like a combo where you transform to run up a wall and return back to human form to get a good vantage point to snipe. There is no free for all death match in the game as it's all team based modes. However, I do recommend people to try this game out as it is quite unique.

Check out Mobiusgames site - HERE which offers the Wolf Team Philippines.
Softnyx is the official developer of Wolf Team - check the official site HERE.

Droplitz $1.99

Two dollars for a puzzle game over at Steam? Droplitz is just $1.99 this weekend over there and it tempts me to try it because of it's price. Looks interesting enough to try.

Other notable games worth mentioning this weekend is the Universe at War sale over at GamersGate and the 1701 A.D. sale over at Steam.

Sticking to the Trend

Why is it here in the Philippines, multiplayer pc games always follow just a few core games? Bakit nila linalaro ang uso? Why do they play what's in the trend? Like back in 1998, I was at high school and there was a start in the Internet / LAN gaming areas because of games like Starcraft and Red Alert. A group of us would go in the shop and play an hour's game of Starcraft after school in a nearby mall. We would play in either one of two LAN gaming areas where one had 20 computers and the other had 16 though there were lots of arcade areas in the mall. After a half a year of Starcraft and Broodwar, we moved on to Alien versus Predator then jumped to Quake and finally Rainbow Six. Everyone else at this time was still playing Starcraft at the shop except us. Soon Rainbow Six was the best thing. We'd play it the following year consistently until this game mod - Counter Strike came out.

I guess we played Counter Strike a good full year before it became the in thing. It was just Beta 4.0 and I enjoyed the fact you could join in anytime unlike the slow and fixed starting of Rainbow Six. When Counter Strike evolved to Beta 6.0, the LAN gaming boom erupted. What used to be 2 gaming areas doubled to 4 and reached up to 8 (where 4 of them were using really old pcs). Counter Strike was all the rage during my third year in high school but I was already longing to get back to Rainbow Six. At this point, CS now had wall hacks, invisible skins and aim bots rampant which annoyed me. I didn't like those cheats or even know how to do them yet I was still one of the best in my class. CS beta 7 and version 1 was already boring me and my friends so we jumped to AvP 2 and Serious Sam while others was still playing the hacked CS.

Moving to college, Counter Strike was still the most played game. The game that succeeded the Counter Strike generation was DotA. I did play some Warcraft 3 skirmishes and definitely my favorite maps were survival and hero arena types. DotA became the only game people played at LAN gaming stores besides the one or two MMORPG players. Even at my last years of college, DotA was still huge though a few MMOs have gotten big. During college, Dawn of War was my game. Dawn of War for me and my friends was a superior alternative to Starcraft and DotA.

So what made those games all popular? Why is it that when asked what game they want to play; it's Starcraft 2. Why is it that Red Alert 3 got so much hype here and not Dawn of War 2 or Company of Heroes or Supreme Commander? Is it because our LAN gaming areas earn more with low end PCs as MMOs don't have a huge system requirements? Most pc gamers here don't even know the difference between a 1024 MB 7300gt video card to a 512 MB 9800 gt video card. They still think that big video memory is better and ignore the GPU (graphics processor). What's the next big multiplayer shooter game here? It's certainly not Call of Duty or Left 4 Dead which are played mostly online at home and only with the truly hardcore.

Is LAN gaming dying here in the country? Will it soon be replaced by those Korean MMOs or are we stuck with DotA and CS forever? I'll be trying several new games over the weekend.

Disputed Company of Heroes Game

NooO!!! I "lost" a my first Brit game in Company of Heroes. This game was filled with tommies rushing to sniper and machine gun death. Snipers killed about several squads worth of infantry...too bad my opponent didn't press on. A tiger ace (veterancy 3) shocked the battlefield and even my piat and panzershrecked infantry (yup picked up one) couldn't even dent a near dead tiger. It took around 300+ munitions worth of artillery, a howitzer shot and 2 badly microed fireflies to take the beast down. I think his biggest mistake was the tiger... he could have flooded the field with vet 3 stormtroopers instead. Even commandos couldn't handle those.

Anyway, I lost cause my opponent dropped with around 20+ victory points left and me controlling over 90% of the map. Apparently, when someone drops in Company of Heroes due to some issue and Relic is forced to award a disputed win, the one with the better "trust ranking" wins. Well it's annoying since I don't have as much matches as my opponent does so I'm probably not trusted so I lost.

The same thing goes to games I don't really think the outcome is decided and one of the player drops. There should be a "undecided win" over at rankings based on the score or something and not affect the real win / loss ratio. Anyway...who cares, I'm not a Brit player anyway. I hope I can keep my Wehrmacht ranking dispute free.

You can grab the replay here - gamereplays.org (v2.6)

College of Video Gaming: Zen Mastery

Have you watched some Hong Kong / Chinese martial arts action flick where the hero is surrounded by a horde of thugs? The hero would then proceed to calm himself down and in that state of peace be the most bad-ass Kung Fu master in the world. In order to master your opponent you first have to master yourself. Thus here in the college of gaming, I will talk about a few tips to put yourself ahead in battle.

Being angry and emotional in a game and in real life can lead to very serious consequences. If you lose your cool with a game or say your significant other, you might end up saying or doing something unwanted. What if in anger you charged guns blazing in a non arcade shooter like Rainbow Six or SOCOM? You'd be dead before you even pull the trigger. If you get in a heated argument with someone and say something nasty and below the belt, that person may never speak to you again because of your fault.

The best way to counter this is to control your emotions. The trick is to become casual and nonchalant with things. If you are losing in a game, think that it's just a game and your mind will be cleared of worries thus allowing you to counter attack (or at least have fun with the final moments). Same thing goes with a school or work project, when the deadlines approach, everyone has to keep calm and believe that they can overcome any problem. The Buddhist concept of Zen can be applied here where one can attain enlightenment through mediation.

For a Zen exercise try this: start up a very competitive game with the AI or a few close friends. Make sure the odds are stacked against you in the game be it having a 2 on 1 in Starcraft or playing solo in the hardest difficulty in Left 4 Dead. As the game progresses, you will lose unless you are extremely good but that's OK. The purpose of this exercise is for you to feel pressured and lose. By losing in a non-ranked practice match, you get to understand you emotions better. Ask yourself when feeling pressured: when and why are you feeling this way? Is it because the odds are stacked against you? Is there a bug or an exploit someone is using on you? By knowing why you are feeling pressured then you can counteract on it. When the situation arises, you can calm yourself. Now - you can think - how can I reduce the disadvantage or even turn this situation to an advantage. Now if you lost the disadvantaged fight, think and analyze where you could have done better? What were your weak points and strengths? It would be beneficial to write these things down after the game.

How can this be then related to a real life situation? People think that life is full of one shots that can't be predicted but this is certainly not true. If say you always feel pressured in tests - think of a decisive end game battle in an RTS as the test. In an RTS, you have to prepare your defenses and your army in advance just as in real life you have to study or work early in order to pass. You can only get away with so much in cramming or microing your best in the battle. The battle has to be won before it has begun. Your army must already know when and where the battle will take place - where to flank, where to throw a grenade perhaps as in real life you should already know the answers to questions in a test through your studies.

What if you did prepare thoroughly for that test / interview / project but in the end you still failed? Life doesn't end as you lose a game or fail your test. You pick yourself up - learn why you failed or lost the match and proceed to do better in future exams or games. Every failure teaches as much or even more than every success. Just be calm and relax. You may be have just one life and no continues in life yet life can be won in a multitude of ways.

Learn to Fly

Flight has always fascinated man. The freedom of soaring in the air is exhilarating. The College of Gaming now offers flight school and aerospace physics with it's flight sim course offerings. No longer will you fear the skies as you strap yourself in a cockpit of an F-18 Hornet. Look for this course soon over at the College of Gaming!

Flight sims are probably the game I want to play the most yet I am so frustrated in trying to learn everything. I remember trying out the Top Gun game over at the NES when I was a kid. It wasn't much of a game as it felt like a cutscene. My plane would fly though I had control over it. My plane would get shot in around a minute of playtime. I would repeat this scene for about 10 more times before I just popped in Mario instead.

Fast forward to when I got a little older...around 5th grade. We now had a PC and I think we had a this game, Fleet Defender - another flight sim where you pilot a F-14 Tomcat. Though I'll admit I'm not so sure if this was the game as I just checked the screenshots now and it looked somewhat like what I played more than a decade ago. The thing about this plane is that there are 2 pilots, so you could always hit the autopilot and let your co-pilot do the annoying stuff of take off and landings while you maneuvered the plane and shoot missiles. I never really learned how to land the plane though I did manage to lean how to do a takeoff. The first few missions are a tutorial and if you fail the tutorial you won't even go to the real combat missions. Talk about realistic...

Enter 2009 when I got IL-2 Sturmovik. This is an old game but it did come with a weekend sale pack on Steam several months ago. So the first problem is again I have no manual and the tutorial is not only boring it is complicated as hell. My first experience is strapping in my plane and feeling dizzy with all the dials, counters, meters and flashing lights. My first problem was to start the damn plane. So I managed to find the start switch which made the propellers turn. However it then took me several minutes to learn that I had to actually increase the power of the propellers to actually have it move forward. So I made the rotors go 100% my plane speeding on the runway. I pull the stick back to let my plane fly only to find out I pulled to hard and my tail hits the ground causing my plane to flip and crash killing me even before I actually left the ground. I tried several times to at least learn to take off which just ended in terrible takeoff "accidents". If I were in the Red Army and managed to survive my initial crash, I bet some Commissar would shoot my head just as an example for other pilots. The moral lesson to this story is to always read manuals for really complicated games.

I managed to grab the manual over at replacementdocs.com and my jaw dropped when I looked inside. It was like a pilots manual about how to fly the plane and how a plane aerodynamically moves. The manual looks just as complex as my Organic Chemistry class in college.

Why are flight sims so damn difficult? Couldn't they have placed some sort of good tutorial to learn the damn basics? No wonder there are almost no flight sims out nowadays.

Inglorious Plumbers

Now this is one movie based on a game which I want to see... "Let'sa Go!"

Inglorious Plumbers over at Gamervision is a spoof of the trailer of an upcomming Tarantino film which I want to watch - Inglorious Bastards. I wish there were actually good films from games... lets look at the growing list of bad movies - Super Mario, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Doom, Alien Versus Predator, Tomb Raider, Max Payne, Silent Hill and the list continues...

College of Gaming: Business Administration

Learn business strategy, accounting and finance concepts in the College of Business Administration. Relate strategy gaming with real life business administration concepts like risk management, asset allocation, depreciation and time value of money.

Learn about resrouce management and asset allocation. Consider an RTS, say Starcraft, where the main goal is to destroy your opponent before he does the same to you. In it's core, the game is a resource war. Who has the most money - minerals and vespene gas, will definitely have a great advantage over the enemy. However, having a load of resources doesn't mean victory like in real life - having millions doesn't mean being successful. What if you spent your resources on firebats when your opponent has a dozen carriers upgraded and loaded to the max with interceptors? Utilizing resources correctly is another important thing in the game and one intangible resource is time. If someone can out maneuver you in a short amount of time then that person would have a slight advantage. The time value of money concept where money is worth more now than later can certainly be translated into games.

Risk management and strategies are the next thing one learns after resource management. It's easier to explain risk management in a strategy game where one would have to think whether to risk rushing your opponent as soon as possible or teching up so one gets the ultimate weapon faster. Rushing would definitely win you the game fast if your opponent is unprepared, but what if the other player takes the same choice and rushes you? Strategic thinking comes into play in the heat of battle where you have to decide to abandon your strategy for a better one if the rush fails. The same is true in real life where one has to think to try and take a post graduate degree for a higher potential of earning later on or starting work immediately after college to gain funds. In say a MMORPG or a single player one, the player also has to think long term of what his character's skills and stats and build his character accordingly if he wishes to be competitive.

Team coordination and leadership are the keys to multiplayer games. One can be the best and be in the team of the best yet if there is no teamwork, the chances of victory are slim. In real life, a business has a finance department, sales department, human resources, etc. Individually, these departments are the best at what they do but if they do not work in concert, a business will be spending and wasting resources for no real goal. In say an MMO instance where a large team has to take down a boss monster, each character has their own role to play. Tanks must suck up damage, healers must heal the team and damage dealers must bash down the mighty enemy. Without coordination from say a clan leader or team leader, the players will be defeated as in real life where a CEO and officers oversee the work of the entire company.

College of Gaming: Behavioral Science

Do you get angry if someone gives you a headshot? Are you frustrated whenever you have a great game only to be disconnected from the connection? Are you scared when playing horror video games but not when watching scary movies? Learn all these things in the College of Behavioral Sciences.

These are certainly things you will get to learn in the school of behavioral science. By playing games and watching how other players react to certain game situations, you will get to understand basic human psychology and mannerisms. Learning human behavior not only benefits you in gaming – allowing you to play mind games and subconsciously control your opponent but also benefits you in real life. Learn to understand how people react and read them so that you will be able to get along with others better.

Learn also how to control your own emotions by playing frantic games like Counter Strike, Call of Duty 4, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2. Work calmly in these stressful situations and bring your team to victory.

Learn about environmental stimuli and how work conditions affect the person in their everyday activities.

College of Gaming: Physical Education

All courses in the college of gaming include some amount of physical education. A strong body leads to a strong mind and vice versa.

Old platformers - Mario, Sonic and their numerous clones would help hand eye coordination during the late 80s to early 90s. Complex fighting games pushed hand eye coordination to the limit, where one would time his button presses and count the number of frames on screen. First person shooters and RTS wargames also improved this coordination, testing one's reflexes against someone else's.

Newer games for the Wii also include more physical based activities like Wii Fit and EA Sports Active. However these are not supposed to be a real replacement to purely physical workouts. They can help in the physical condition of most couch gamers who spend most of their time sitting or lying around.

All twitch based games - shooters, real time strategy games, platformers, racing and sport games are good sources of hand eye coordination improvement. Hand eye coordination carries over to real life sports such as table tennis.

Half Life - 66% off on steam

It's 66% off everything Half Life! Too bad they didn't throw in everything... the complete pack is only 10% off and since I already got Half Life there wouldn't be any point...

I wonder when episode 3 is coming now that would definitely be the real Half Life complete pack.

Other notable stuff on sale this weekend:
Gamersgate - Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl
Impulse - The Witcher

College of Video Gaming

Are you the type of person who loves to play video games so that it eats up your work and study time? Do you feel that you are so hard working and meticulous when it comes to these games but you get bored and stressed with real life subjects? There is a solution to those problems. The College of Video Gaming will be the best thing for you.

Now at the 21st century, a lot of the older generation still consider gaming as an utter waste of time but there is a lot of useful things one can learn from gaming. Certainly there are educational type games, say the ones teaching math, science or English. Take the old Carmen Sandiego games which teach you about geography. There is certainly more learning one can get not only from the educational games of old but one can learn a thing or two from the so called non-educational games - shooters, MMORPGS, RTS and other game genres. This is a primer for a Bachelor degree in gaming.

Planning a college of gaming

I was planning to make an article or even a full blown site about schooling with using games. I was thinking more on how to use games for education or relate real life schooling with games. Think about it. There are a lot of educational games in the market not to mention games can be used as teaching tools.

Some ideas are like puzzle games being used to teach logic and creative thinking. How about RTS being used to teach risk management, resource allocation and strategic thinking? Maybe MMORPGs used to teach teamwork, leadership and communication. How about teaching momentum in physics with first person shooters? The possibilities are endless.

I have something in the works now...let me see if I can post it up soon.

CoH: AI

Is it just me or is the Company of Heroes Tales of Valor 2.600 skirmish AI far better? I remember a year back playing just the normal CoH and I could take on up to hard with no real difficulty. Expert proved to be a decent challenge but the AI would usually make stupid moves which allowed me to win in the end.

Now, hard difficulty is giving me problems. I don't whether it's just me, the map I use or it's really an AI improvement. Well I do notice some AI improvements like the AI now actually picks up weapon drops and recrews anti tank guns yet sometimes it's a bit stupid since he sometimes lets his troops go into a suicide capture. Well I've searched around and Relic did improve the AI no wonder I'm getting frustrated with skirmish mode. Well I have been doing crazy strategies lately, like trying to do a rush to tier 4 after tier 1 but I could do that before at expert with no problem.

Funny how I wanted better AI and now the damn AI is kicking my ass. Maybe it's just Angoville...I seem to lose at this map at hard and expert levels yet I can take on hard on some other maps. Does skirmish rank improve the AI? I haven't seen any forum posts and news reports on that. It would definitely be interesting that your skirmish rank determines the AI difficulty.

Oh yeah, planetCoH has an interview with Relic and Relic did state that Tales of Valor was actually DLC but they had problems in distributing it so they packed it up in a expansion. So I wonder if they are planning a real expansion for Company of Heroes. Also, I'd love to try the multiplayer modes in single player but Relic didn't put in a AI for those modes(well the campaign is sort of the single player version of it).

My Dreams of World Domination

I noticed that all my blog posts have been for strategy games. I've wrote about Starcraft, Company of Heroes and Dawn of War which are the games I've played in the past few months. There's also this flash game over at Kongregate that I tried out, Pandemic: American Swine which is another strategy game. I love strategy and war games whether they be real time or turn based. This desire stems from my long unfulfilled dream to take over the world.

Well I have been playing other non-strategy games like Braid, Audiosurf, Battlefield Heroes and random flash games over at Kongregate. However, I never really seem to write about them. There's a weird feeling of power when you command your little people in the screen to go fight the enemy, whether they are carrying MP40 machine guns or psi blades. You don't get the same feeling say in a shooter whether Left 4 Dead or Battlefield Heroes. It does feel good to see that you are racking up headshots yet it's nicer to see a group of you doing headshots with a huge tiger tank backing you up.

What would be more fun than being a global dictator? Starting at the ancient times in Civilization and reaching technological superiority over your opponents. Having tanks while your opponent is still playing around with swords and slamming your keyboard in disappointment as your tank gets beaten up by a lone Pikeman defending a city (an age old problem in Civ games :/ ).

Having no free time to experience grand strategy games or even play more of the games I like is definitely my greatest frustration now. I don't have the time to try and learn Hearts of Iron or maybe Supreme Ruler. I want to try those games as they seem to be a better simulation and feed my hunger for global domination. Well, I guess that's the biggest limitation of someone wanting to take over the world, time. Dictators don't live forever.

There is only war

I've tried Dawn of War 2 last weekend as it was on sale over at Steam. I was contemplating whether it would be worth it as I've seen in videos and read in reviews that it wasn't like the first DoW and even less than Company of Heroes. In skirmish / multiplayer mode, the game is like the old skirmish modes with no buildings. It's more of a tactical capture the flag game than a real time strategy game.

In the campaign mode, I've read that it would be repetitive and I guess they're right. You have a set amount of units and usually at the end of the map, you get a boss battle. The items dropped are somewhat random and it's your choice on how to upgrade your squads. Even though it is repetitive, I find it addicting making your squad stronger and getting better weapons and armor. With no base building, I can get why they can't vary the missions much.

This game has got me hooked with it's awesome visual style. I like CoH but the world of Warhammer is far more interesting to me. I like to see my Force Commander cutting up orcs while my Tactical Marines blast away with their bolters. I like seeing the Ork bosses charge in with his hammer. The ork boss swings and hits the commander which sends the commander flying.

Yet if one looks at the meat of the game, it's pretty lean. CoH is still the game which keeps me full. If I wanted to play a simpler sort of skirmish, the Tales of Valor expansion has several missions called operations which are basically simpler fights as you just control units and build them.

I now just plan to wait and see any future expansions Relic plans for DoW2. I hope they do add a bit more variation in both the single player and the multiplayer skirmish mode.