Team Fortress 2 Achievements
Well, with the recent Pyro update to TF2, there are now over 90 achievements to get and I have started to notice several things have shifted the dynamics of the game from a well balanced fun team based game, so a more single-player grind-tastic unbalanced experience. Why? The class-specific achievements.
Lets rewind a few months to when the Medic achievement pack was released. I remember playing TF2 before hand and I seemed to be one of the few people who actually liked to play as a medic. I liked supporting my team-mates and winning the game as a result, it was fun, but apparently everybody else just liked to shoot other people only. Once the medic update was released, this all changed, everyone wanted to be a medic now. In fact, so much so that the game completely lost it’s balance.
Think about it, each class has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, something they are good at, something they are bad at. This promoted teamwork and caused diversity to appear on teams, you would always seem to have a good range of classes being played, this is the way TF2 is designed to be played. Now imagine a team where more than half are medics, this suddenly creates a huge weakness in fire-power and if put against a team that used a range of classes, they would usually, 99% of the time lose. All these people playing as medics wanted to get all the achievements, not play the game and make it fun. Everyone lost the attitude of “I’m going to be the class my team needs the most,” to “I’m going to be a medic and grind all the achievements, who cares what my team needs.” These players end up ignoring the team objective and pursue their own personal agenda.
This also prompted the achievement maps and servers. The maps we’re small, crap looking, cramp maps that someone with minimal skill threw together in an hour with the purpose of it to grind achievements. Servers that run these maps are just as bad, there are around 13 servers running with players in it (out of the 200 or so that are in Europe) that are called “achievement servers.” Servers designed to get the Medic and Pyro achievements.
Why has the achievement culture that we gamers live in today tends towards this? Statistically, all the achievements are easy enough to get from just playing the game regularly. Heck, I got 4 of them today with a one hour blitz on Goldrush, without even trying to get them, I was just playing the game and trying to get the cart to the end, as is the objective of the game.
Though perhaps I am being to harsh, the medic update saw a sudden rise in players choosing the medic class, a class that had been so far rather neglected. Same with the pyro, no many play as this class either, but a sudden jump happened when the update was released. However, both times the jump was too much and destroyed the game balance. This problem could easily be solved by releasing all of the additional achievements to each class at the same time.
This still doesn’t solve the problem with achievements servers. However, perhaps I am looking at this the wrong way, as long as the balance is kept in the regular servers for people who actually want to play and enjoy the game, then who cares about the achievement servers. In a few months of so, everyone would have gotten all the achievements through grinding and will then return to playing normally.
I could go into the morality of what is basically cheating the system to get all the achievements, but people only want to get their hands on the new weapons available, which are only unlocked after enough achievements have been achieved. This is a serious flaw that can easily be fixed, just make the new weapons available to all, so there is no need to do all the achievements to get all the new weapons.
All in all, the new achievements are a good idea and I do enjoy how the game keeps getting expanded each update Valve brings, but please, have a solid rethink about the damn achievement mechanic and try to help prevent the game from being ruined by grinders, this isn’t a “MaMORPGa.” Now if you excuse me, I hear there is a need for a Demoman in the next server.
Review – Metal Gear Solid 4
I’m going to go right ahead and get straight to the two things I dislike about this game. The length of the cutscenes and the multiple installs. Firstly the cutscenes, there is nothing wrong with them, in fact they are well scripted and really pull you into the story, however a cut scene is just that, a single scene. Not an hour long episode of “MGS4 player not playing.” A cut scene needs only to be 5-10 minutes long, any longer and the gamer will start to get itching to get back into the game. Yes, there are events that you can trigger in the middle of a cut scene (the alternative views and flashbacks) but they are so spaced out sometimes, you forget all about it. For every minute of gameplay I had, it felt like I had to watch one minute of cut scene. Yawn.
The next major issue, is the install times and worse, the multitude of install times. Thats right, not only do you have to install the game before you can play, you have to install parts of the game multiple times. So as if waiting for the cutscenes to finish is bad enough, sometimes you need to wait for the game to install. Not having to install games is an advantage the console had, it was a case of stick the disk in and play. Now half the games I play require some kind of installation, the curse of the PS3.
Back to MGS4, it is a very very good game, looking past these two flaws it is easy to see how it is picking up very high scores from mainstream game review sites. The gameplay is supurb. The graphics are excellent, the high end of what is expected with modern games. The controls are very simple (well apart from one issue with a boss fight, but I’m willing to chalk it up to my own stupidity in not reading the instruction booklet properly) and the story is compelling.
I love the idea of ‘Drebin points,’ it fits in very well with the story and background of the game. By having to collect weapons to get currency to buy new guns and ammo makes me want to explore more. The idea of gun laundering fits in with the idea of PMC’s and nano-machine control. There is a huge range of weapons to choose from and can be modified with laser sights, silencers etc.
The game is not an FPS, though it can be played as one. I normally like to try and sneak and am usually sucessful, but I do fail sometimes and end up going in guns-a-blazing. Both tactis do work, yet the game is sneaking first and FPS second. The old radar that I liked in MGS2 is replaced with the ‘Solid Eye’ it just shows the relative location of enemies, not which way they are looking. This makes life a little harder, but compensated by the ‘Octocamo,’ which can sometimes make you basically invisible in plain sight.
Taking down enemies are pretty simple, they usually drop fast and are almost stupid when it comes to sneaking around, just make sure you are quiet enough and stay out of sight (easier said than done). Boss fights are well though out and can be very challenging. The Beauty and the Beast units are individual and need different tactics to defeat both. My personal favourite is Crying Wolf, with the award for defeating her being incredibly sweet. Boss battles is where a lot of the action is going to be, which seems a little strange, considering that the idea of the game is sneaking, but the Boss battles are purely on the basis of pumping the other one full of lead. Though they are still just as intense.
I’m going to end the review a little short here, MGS 4 is a big game, there is a lot of content and I could just keep going and going, but I would risk releasing spoilers. There is a lot to do and if you like any previous MGS games, then chances are you have already bought this game. If not, consider it, if you like action interspliced with sneaking around, with a brilliant and origional sense of humour, consdier MGS4.
Review – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
It’s been a while since my last review, so I thought it would be good if I wrote up some of my thoughts about the PS3 exclusive, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Overall, I’m very positive about the game, it gave me a good 7 hours of gameplay and kept my interest all the way through.
The story was compelling throughout, I wanted to keep playing to find out what happens to the protagonists, which is a must for games today. The story did throw me off a bit when the ‘zombies’ started to appear, it did feel like a departure from the logic of the story up to that point. However this seemed necessary to keep the game-play from becoming stale. Killing the same soldiers again and again does take it’s toll and to see two enemies fight each other is always a pleasure to wait it out and steal victory away from one of them.
Game-play is best summed up by a flatmate of mine, the game may as well be called Gears of Tomb Raider. The combat is exactly the same as Gears of War, very heavy on the idea of staying in cover and diving between it. While the sections between combat is essentially Tomb Raider, hanging from percarous ledges and jumping accross chasms.
Environments are as good as you expect to see in modern games on the PS3. The water effects are supurb though, they are the best I have seen in a game I have played so far. Environments are a little repetative though, initially it is just runins and jungle, runins and jungle until we get to the final few levels of the game.
Overall, Uncharted is a pretty decent game and is worth the money if you have a spare 30 quid kicking about and something to play in the summer games drought.
