New Games

Going to take a break from my usual psymi-psychotic rantings about people who won't RTFM, and pose a sorta-rhetorical question.

David's continued comments to my last post have got me thinking about gaming on a wider scale than I have been recently, and I'm beginning to wonder:

What happened to video games?

Oh, they're pretty now, sure... but where are the engaging titles? We on the PC only seem to get two or three game types.

1) the MMO. There are three of these that seem to keep coming up. One is exactly like WoW except for some minor detail. Two is the exact opposite of WoW, and goes out of its way to be hard on you and discourage casual players and mindless kiddies - WAR comes to mind here. Three uses the tried and true formula of "Look, dateless losers: Our MMO has TITS! You know you want to play when we have our NPCs show you their boobs!"

2) COMBAT SO REAL YOU'LL THINK YOU FUCKED UP AND JOINED THE MARINE CORPS DURING A DRUNKEN BENDER! Except for the minor detail that their damage models are invariably based on how cool they think a weapon is, and not the cartridge it actually chambers. CoD4:MW and MW2 are the worst offenders here, but in days gone by, Battlefield was a classic example of "playability" passed off as realism.

3) Generic horror-themed game #616A, with the plot stolen from several Sci-Fi channel 3am movies. This is stuff like FEAR; Resident Evil 17: The zombies are still coming, damn it; and Dead Space.

I've gotta say, FEAR was one of the biggest gaming let downs for me, ever. Bought it a few days after release, dropped fifty bucks, and it was crap. Unscary, unrealistic weapons, done-to-death characters, and that bullet-time thing wasn't interesting when Max Payne did it in 2001. The entire scariness of the game consisted of scary-little-devil-girl appearing out of nowhere to give knee-jerk "scary" moments. Also: the ending? Total shit.

Now, System Shock 2, that was a creepy goddamned game. Even had the RPG aspects to make your character somewhat unique.

At least #2 has moved on to the modern battlefield. I don't know if I could play Omaha Beach again.

You know what we need? Another Mechwarrior game. I know a lot of people didn't like the 4 series, because Microsoft toned down the sim aspect, and made it more action-y, but I liked it.

There's little as satisfying as loading up 100 ton robot and laying waste to everything in sight with particle accelerators and rail guns.

What I've been saying for years is that we need a Mechwarrior MMO.

Dig this: open up the entire inner sphere as playable territory. You start as a mercenary with a lone dropship and one or two mechs (or C-Bill equivalent thereof), and you travel from world to world, taking contracts. Planetary defense, raids, auxiliary forces for a major house, whatever. Be sorta like MW4: Mercs, except that all the other mechs would be piloted by real people, too.

You run it as a persistent galaxy, where players' winning or losing battles shifts who controls the world.

You could have the ranks filled in with computer-driven mechs, but obviously live people would be preferred to fill out your unit.

Could eventually even work up to a standing contract with one of the house militaries for garrison duty or the like.

Bonus points for opening up the Solaris VII arena. Make the Grand Championship way more interesting, I'd wager. Even go so far as to allow broadcasting a stream of the weekly (or even daily) matches; get a real announcer to comment...

The technology has advanced far enough to allow all kinds of interesting options to turn it into a virtual, persistent galaxy.

Maybe even have computer driven Clan incursions that player units have to defend against.

It would be so cool.

I always wanted a realistic FPS like that. Something like ARMA, except persistent. Where players would assault and defend territory, that would stay took or lost until players did something about it.

Planetside's original model was supposed to be a sci-fi version of this, but for some reason it flopped. Didn't have enough half-naked blue elf chicks or something, I guess.

Even Joint Ops would have been decent, had they polished it a bit more.

I'd also like to see weapon selection realism instituted in an online game. I don't care how laid-back your CO is, people in the US Army do not traditionally get to carry AKM's, let alone RPG-7's, and I really can't see any other country carrying the M25.

This is another area CoD4 really pissed me off in. They had USMC able to carry the SVD, AKM, G36C, and RPG-fucking-7.

This was sheer laziness. Really, how much longer would it have taken to run up an M72 LAW model for the US forces?

We won't even talk about the Desert Eagle and StGW44.

I dunno. I was never extraordinarily good at online FPS games - save Starsiege: Tribes, where my innate ability to think in three dimensions let me rule the fucking battlefield while the Quake and UT refugees stood on the ground bitching - but I still miss getting to play. Joint Ops was especially interesting, as it had not only realistic weapons (with fire mode selectors, no less) but also had Co-op mode.

Moving along in a traveling overwatch with six other players, putting concentrated fire on insurgents that tried to ambush from the jungle... all very fun and exciting. Of course, that was a game that rewarded stealth and aiming, and didn't even give you the provision of bunny-hopping.