Blog Posts from "LimitlessUnits" - Gameriot.com

Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Artâ€¦Yet

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:53:07 -0500

Some of you may have heard about Roger Ebert's disparaging comments about video games. If not, I will sum it up for you here.

"The nature of the medium [video games] prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship [however elegant or sophisticated] to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. For most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic." - Roger Ebert

Later, Ebert updated his opinions that games are art, just not high art.

"A year or so ago, I rashly wrote that video games could not be art. That inspired a firestorm among gamers, who wrote me countless messages explaining why I was wrong, and urging me to play their favorite games. Of course, I was asking for it. Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell's soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art..." - Roger Ebert

This may sound blasphemous, but in a way, I agree with Roger Ebert's assessment of our industry. Video games are currently not high art and they are an inferior medium to film and literature. I am not saying that video games can never be "high art," it is that games have not yet reached that point. Video games have many challenges that other mediums do not have. Video games are a relatively young art form, are difficult to create, have to be "fun" and mass-market games have spiraling budgets, which cause a reluctance to experiment. If we are able to move past the video game industry's self-imposed limitations, games have the potential to be the most powerful and important art form we have. In this article I will define what I believe "high art" is and discuss the challenges that the gaming industry faces to attain this important recognition.

Read the rest of this article here.

What are your guys' thoughts on games as high art?

Top 5 Greatest Moments in Competitive Gaming (eSports)

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:19:55 -0500

Here are the top 5 greatest moments in tournament gaming. To qualify these moments had to occur in a tournament witnessed by others and of course it had to be recorded. Enjoy!

5. Condition Zero: 3D Dave "Moto" Geffon versus 4 SK-Gaming at WCG 2004 Finals

4. Quake III: Fatal1ty is down 0-8 in this match against AIM at QuakeCon 2002
What will he do? Pay attention to the ridiculous rail shot at 1:36.

3. Halo: Combat Evolved: Saiyan takes down the The Dream Team (TDT) at AGP 4
Pay attention to the top-left quarter of the 4-way split screen. "Oh my god! Someone stop him!"

2. StarCraft: SlayerS_'BoxeR' SCV Rush
The most famous rush in StarCraft history occurred when Boxer brings his Space Construction Vehicles in an all or nothing early rush against [NC] Yellow in this Korean tournament finals match.

1. Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Daigo Umehara versus Justin Wong at EVO 2004
This is a famous video, but damn is it still amazing and the crowd reaction is the best.

More Random Game Videos for Your Entertainment

Ridiculous Halo 3 grenade stick

Ikaruga skills.

See my other related articles:
Become a Video Game Designer: Everything You Need to Know Part 1
Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PVP
Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 1
10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1
8 of the Most Underrated or Overlooked Video Games of All Time
Best MMA Fights & Genki Sudo: Real Life Video Game Character

Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in WoW PVP

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:06:05 -0500

The World of Warcraft design philosophy of catering to the casual player is supported by the global cooldown and built in luck element of PVP combat. These pillars of the design keep the game popular and accessible to a wider audience and mask many of the balance issues in the game. Luck also has the effect of spicing up the game and increasing the skill cap as players and teammates must adjust to failed attacks. Lastly, if you are a hardcore player that does not like luck in your games, the World of Warcraft has already changed in your favor and over time will continue to move in this direction.

See my other related articles also:
Become a Video Game Designer: Everything You Need to Know Part 1
10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1
10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 2
Dead Space Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
Call of Duty: World at War Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 1
Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 2
8 of the Most Underrated or Overlooked Video Games of All Time
Pimps at Sea err I mean Age of Booty & Gen 13 Cosplay
My Student Films 2: EverQuest Documentary and Guilty Gear Isuka Trailer
Best MMA Fights & Genki Sudo: Real Life Video Game Character

Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 2

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:18:01 -0500

These are the video games that have defined their genre. They are the standard by which all other games in their category are judged. This is part 2 of this list.

Click here to go back to Part 1 of this list.

Best RTS of All Time
StarCraft (199
Platform: PC
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Starcraft has withstood the test of time like no other game before or after it. It is a game that is easy to pick up, but is so deep that even after a decade, millions of players are still developing new strategies and continue to evolve the gameplay. The ability for players to easily save and share replays of games was instrumental in elevating the techniques and strategies being used. The replay feature allowed players to be able to study games and learn from their mistakes and even watch their opponent's strategies and adopt or adapt to them.

Despite Starcraft's three completely unique races, it is the most balanced RTS ever created. All three races had completely unique units and equally skilled opponents would have very even chances of winning and could even employ numerous different strategies to do so. Countless tournaments in the decade since the game's release have proven the its balanced gameplay. Blizzard has the best track record of any developer to continue to support a game well after release and Starcraft is no exception. Blizzard continues to release occasional patches and balance tweaks that keep the game fresh. This has been necessary as players continually push the gameplay balance with the discovery of new strategies. Despite the evolving gameplay in Starcraft, the game continues to be remarkable in how balanced the three races are as new strategies for one race are countered by new strategies created for their opposing factions. Here is a site dedicated to Starcraft replays.

No entry about Starcraft can go without the mention of the South Korean attachment to the game. Starcraft is a televised national sport in South Korea. The game has corporate endorsed teams of professional players. The players are big personalities and celebrities who are recognized and worshiped by their huge following of adoring fans. Starcraft tournaments are nationally televised events with slick production values and play-by-play announcers or "shoutcasters" as they are called. Here are some of the GOMTV tournaments translated into English. They are very interesting to watch even if you only know the rudiments of the game.

Can millions of South Koreans be wrong? My answer to that question is an emphatic no. Starcraft, in spite of its age, is the most relevant and popular RTS today. There can be no doubt that it is the greatest game of its genre.

Best Action-RPG of All Time
Diablo 2 (2000)
Platform: PC
Developer: Blizzard North
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 2: the Mouse Killer. Diablo 2 and its predecessor Diablo have likely destroyed more mice than any other game in existence. I owned an expensive gaming mouse and when Diablo's million click gameplay destroyed it, I ran out to the store and quickly replaced it with a steady succession of $2 mice and kept my replacement expensive mouse well away from the game.

Diablo and its successor single-handedly invented the action-RPG genre. Dozens of "Diablo" clones continue to be produced, but to this day none can match up to Diablo 2. The randomly generated dungeons, loot, and monsters in Diablo 2 keep the game fresh even after dozens of play-throughs. Diablo 2 remains popular on Blizzards free online service Battle.net because of its addictive easy to pickup gameplay, randomly generated content and Blizzard's patented brand of long-lasting support and updates to the title.

In many ways Diablo 2 laid down the groundwork for World of Warcraft. From the branching tiered tree of talents, the UI, to the randomly generated set of colored loot, World of Warcraft owes much of its success to Diablo 2.

Best 3D Fighter of All Time
SoulCalibur (1999)
Platform: DreamCast
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

There was some internal debate between this game and Virtual Fighter 2, but in the end I have to give it to SoulCalibur for the following reasons.

SoulCalibur introduced three revolutionary gameplay mechanics.
1. Eight-Way-Run
The introduction of the eight-way-run gave very intuitive control over the player characters. It is a feature that truly opened up the 3D fighter to the third dimension. Whereas previous games functioned for the most part in 2D, with the only lateral movement coming from a short sidestep, SoulCalibur allowed the player to circle, or continuously move in any of the eight directions. The game controlled how you would expect and was incredibly intuitive.

2. Increased Move buffer
The move buffer is the window of timing that a player had while executing a move before the next controller input was accepted and executed. In both Virtual Fighter and Tekken, while a character is performing a move the player needed to wait until a move had finished before inputting another move, otherwise the command input would not be accepted. This forced players to be very exact with the timing and execution of moves. SoulCalibur's increased move buffer allowed players to input and string their attacks without waiting for a move to finish. The command would be accepted and after a move completes the next inputted player command would be executed. The move buffer coupled with the eight-way-run gave new players responsive controls and maneuvers that were simple to execute and impressive to behold. The mechanics of SoulCalibur opened a traditionally hardcore genre to a much wider audience.

3. Guard Impact
SoulCalibur is a part of a rare collection of games that opened the genre up to a less hardcore audience, while still maintaining all of the deep gameplay that a hardcore player expects. Each of SoulCalibur's characters had deep move sets, air juggles and combos that allowed the expert player to easily set them apart from the novice player. The inclusion of the Guard Impact counter put SoulCalibur well out of the reach of its competition. The Guard Impact is performed either high or low and deflects incoming attacks. If the opponent performs a high attack at the same time that you perform a high Guard Impact it would deflect the attack while at the same time stunning the attacker and not allowing them to perform any other moves besides a counter guard impact for a short time. This would allow for really ridiculous strings of Guard Impacts as the attacker would try to mix up their angles of attacks and add delays before executing an attack in an effort to breach the defender's Guard Impact defenses.

No other fighter encompasses the ebb and flow of combat like SoulCalibur. No words can fully describe the feeling of a long string of guard impact reversals between two good players. While SoulCalibur did not invent the 3D fighter, its mechanics made it truly 3D and introduced the genre to many new players. SoulCalibur was so far ahead of its time that in four iterations and nearly ten years the gameplay has remained nearly identical to the original with only a few minor tweaks.

Best RPG of All Time
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
Platform: PC
Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Black Isle Studios, Interplay

Baldur's Gate II is an epic, timeless masterpiece that marks the last of the truly great RPGs. It sort of makes me sad going back and revisiting this game, because this game book ended a great style of games that developers today will likely never return to. They really do not makes games like this anymore.

Baldur's Gate II is the last title to use the AD&D second edition rule set and was so accurate that I found the AD&D Player's Handbook indispensable and constantly open and on my lap as I pored over it to find the best way of min/max my characters.

The story and writing for the game really shines. There is a great deal of text in the game, however it is really well written and the story plays out as if you are reading a great novel. The storyline is so good that even this game's epic side quests easily outclass most other full RPGs' main story lines.

The decisions players made in Baldur's Gate II carried real weight and affected the outcome of future events. Many modern day RPGs distill choice down to good or evil. The player in Baldur's Gate II had to make decisions that were often gray. The complex characters would support your decisions, offer their advice and even discuss events amongst themselves. With the numerous combinations of characters that the player could select to be apart of their party, this attention to detail was amazing. The player could choose to start up romantic relationships with members of the opposite sex with many of the characters in their party. The writing for these segments were very well done and often memorable. Baldur's Gate II is one of those few titles that kept you up and playing until 4AM because you had to find out what happened next.

Baldur's Gate II's countless optional side quests, different combinations of characters and meaningful decision-making created almost unlimited replay value.

This is the definitive role-playing experience.

Click here to go back to Part 1 of this list.

See my other related articles also:
Become a Video Game Designer: Everything You Need to Know Part 1
8 of the Most Underrated or Overlooked Video Games of All Time
10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1
Dead Space Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
Call of Duty: World at War Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
Best MMA Fights & Genki Sudo: Real Life Video Game Character

Student Film: EverQuest Addiction Documentary

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 13:19:32 -0500

This EverQuest documentary was created about a friend of mine a number of years ago. This video was originally shot right after the release of the first expansion for EverQuest, Ruins of Kunark, which places it around September of 2000. He is a charismatic and very intelligent guy (these qualities come across on the screen), who dropped out of high school due to his addiction to the MMORPG Everquest. Please forgive the awful camera work. This was one of my first videos that I had ever shot. I learned a lot in its creation.

Land of EverQuest - Student Film MMORPG documentary

If you are interested in seeing some more of my student films you can visit here.

10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:52:54 -0500

These are the ten heroes of video game design. They have been responsible for games that have forever changed the medium and consequently the video game industry as a whole is indebted to them. Also included in this list is a career highlight list for each designer, a bit about how they personally influenced me as a designer and some fun trivia about them. This is part 1 of this list.

10.Â Â Â Tim Schaffer

The consummate storyteller.Â Tim Schaffer's talk titled: Adventures in Character Design detailed his method of research in creating characters was a big inspiration to me.

Here are some of the notes I took while listening to the podcast so you don't have to:

Characters should be wish fulfillment. This doesn't mean they can't be goofy, or nerdy, or losers. There are lots of ways to make characters that are fun to play. Guybrush might not be a badass, but he always has a comeback.

Create supporting NPCs as you would the ideal road trip buddies. Making them annoying, offputting, needlessly stupid or generally hateful and then sticking the player with them through the whole game is just sadistic.

Write the player character as you would a character in a movie, a character that a good actor would jump at playing.

Backstory. Making up pasts for every single one of your characters, big ones or not, makes it insanely easy to imbue them with neat little traits by pulling from the past you've created.

Steal stuff, but steal it right. Steal stuff from life, especially. From your own life, from your friends', from crazy things hobos tell you on the street. And steal stuff from other fiction, but don't steal the surface junk. Steal what makes good things good. So if you're stealing from GTA, stealing the hookers and mobsters and violence is missing the point. Steal the fun, the open-ended gameplay, the facetious attitudes.

Career Highlights
1. The Secret of Monkey Island
2. Day of the Tentacle
3. Grim Fandango
4. Psychonauts

9. Ken Levine

Ken Levine speaks to the nerd in all of us.

Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 1

Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 2

Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 3

Here is a really good write up of Levine's 2008 GDC talk.
Empowering Players to Care About Your Stupid Story

What we realized at some point doing the narrator is not a cutscene, it's not live digital characters, it's not lip-synching... it's the world. What is the thing we render best in video games? The world, all the benefits of graphics... this incredibly detailed world. What is your player honestly engaged in most of the time? Think about most games -- the warehouses, the sewers, the office buildings... think about the missed opportunities there, in the primary experience, to give the player narrative.

Career Highlights
1. Thief: The Dark Project
2. System Shock 2
3. BioShock

8. Yu Suzuki

Suzuki was the Miyamoto of Sega.Â The first fighting game in 3D was no clumsy effort like you would expect from developers trying to cope with an extra dimension, it was polished, complex and beautiful.Â Yu Suzuki is the man to thank for the Virtual Fighter series. Â

The man had the clout and vision to really swing for the fences.Â Shenmue cost an astounding 70 million USD to make and is the second most expensive game ever created (only recently surpassed by GTAIV's 100 million USD).Â Shenmue was a martial-art action RPG game that Suzuki dubbed "FREE" (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment).Â It featured "Free Questing" the ability to explore the city of Yokosuka speaking with the populace to obtain clues and further the narrative or the player can simply roam around the city and not advance the narrative and engage in a number of mini-game-like activities.Â These included Space Harrier, Hang On, darts and snooker.Â You could also complete a number of side quests and take on jobs to earn money.Â The game also featured a fully-fleshed out "Free Battle" system.Â This was a game similar to the side-scrolling Golden Axe only with the complex move set brought over from Virtual Fighter.Â Not only that the player could learn additional new moves as the game progressed.

Shenmue was the most visually stunning game at its time of release and featured a full day/night cycle with dynamically changing weather.Â The Passport feature took advantage of the Dreamcast's internet connection and allowed players to upload their high scores in the variety of mini-games to online leaderboards.

Plus, goddamn I loved my Dreamcast.

Career Highlights
1. Hang On
2. Space Harrier
3. After Burner
4. Virtual Racing
5. Virtual Fighter
6 Shenmue

7. Hironobu Sakaguchi

Hironobu Sakaguchi saved Square Soft.Â During 1987 Square Soft was close to bankruptcy.Â The game was titled "Final" Fantasy because if the title failed it would be the end of Square Soft.Â Needless to say, Final Fantasy was released and Square is still around. Â

The first time I played Final Fantasy I thought finally, somebody made the first real D&D game.Â Final Fantasy VI (III in America) is the only game I can remember that made me really care about 2D sprites. Â

Hironobu Sakaguchi's team up with Akira Toriyama led to Chrono Trigger, which remains one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Â

Career Highlights
1. Final Fantasy - Final Fantasy X-2
2. Final Fantasy Tactics
3. Chrono Trigger

6. Richard "Lord British" Garriot

Richard Garriot is the creator of the Ultima Series and the founder of Origin Systems.Â He would have a hand in every Ultima game through Ultima Online, which being one of the first graphical MUDs ushered in the new era of MMORPGs.

Ultima 4 was the first game that had a sense of morality.Â The player had to obtain various virtues in order to beat the game.Â While the player could commit any evil act they chose to (murder, theft, boasting, etc...) they were punished through a morality system that would prevent the player from obtaining virtues, which were necessary to beating the game.Â This concept of good versus evil and morality versus immorality was a new concept in gaming that would heavily influence future games.

In Ultima 6, did anybody else collect every cannon in the world and stuff them all into one castle like I did?Â It is a tragedy that Ultima has faded away.Â If there is one game series I would like to have a revival it would be Ultima.

At NCSoft, Garriot gave us, City of Heroes, City of Villains before the commercially unsuccessful Tabula Rasa.

This is a video interview where Garriot describes the innovations in his games better than I can.

Career Highlights
1. Ultima 1 - Ultima Online

Click here to see Part 2 of this list.

Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 1

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:19:00 -0500

These are the video games that have defined their genre.Â They are the standard by which all other games in their category are judged.

Best Flight Combat Game of All Time

Wing Commander 3 (1994)

Platform: PC
Developer: Origin Systems
Publisher: Origin Systems

Â

The popular vote here is of course Tie Fighter.Â While great, Tie Fighter did not measure up to Wing Commander 3.Â Keep reading because I am going to convince you why.

Wing Commander 3's impact on games is still felt very clearly even today.Â Wing Commander 3 is what I like to call the Star Wars of video games.Â This goes a lot further than just having Mark Hamill star as the protagonist.Â Like Star Wars did for movies, Wing Commander 3 literally invented the big-budget blockbluster style of games.Â Costing a then unheard of 4 million dollars to create and packed into 4 CD-ROMs (when CD-ROMs had just come out), Wing Commander was unabashedly pushing the envelope and spared no expense in doing so.Â Marketed as the world's first interactive movie, Wing Commander 3 broke new ground by using an enormous amount of full motion videos to tell a branching story through and included the use of CGI backgrounds and greenscreens.Â This was technology that was not even broadly in use for films at the time.Â

Behind the ground-breaking wrapper of Wing Commander 3 there was an amazing core game.Â Wing Commander 3 brought the Wing Commander series into polygonal 3D for the first time.Â The game was among the first to use full motion video to not only tell the story, but in-game as well.Â Right out the gate, Wing Commander 3 melted minds its technology by having your wingman communicate and respond to orders through full video on the bottom of your HUD.Â During the game the other crewmembers' disposition towards you and the mission selection were influenced by conversation trees as well as how well you performed on previous missions.Â

To sum up Wing Commander 3, it married great mission design, the ability to select your fighter, select your armaments, select your wingman, branching missions and a branching storyline told through hours of full motion video into one of the most insanely fun packages ever put onto a disc.Â This game from top to bottom was every gamer's wet dream.Â

Best Turn Based Tactical Game of All Time

X-COM: UFO Defense (1993)

Platform: PC
Developer: Mythos Games
Publisher: Microprose

Â

Incredibly deep, X-COM has still never been matched as a strategy role-playing game.Â X-COM's two distinct gameplay phases placed you in charge of Earth's defense against an alien invasion.Â

The first phase was the world map.Â This is where the player first chooses a spot for their base and where the player would manage their funding to recruit, research technology and equip their soldiers.Â Financial resources came through successfully repelling aliens and earning the approval of a ten-nation league.Â If the player is not active or effective in combating the alien threat funding would dry up and even result in some of the nations signing treaties with the invaders and completely yanking any financial support for the player.
Â
Each member of your squad could be named, leveled up and equipped like an RPG and this really helped you grow attached to them.Â Interceptor planes could be placed on patrol to defend the skies and shoot down alien craft.Â Alien ships could also land and it was up to you to send out small squads of soldiers to kill the aliens at these sites and bring back their artifacts and bodies for the research.Â Research of these alien artifacts unlocked new equipment and weapons to give you an edge on your next encounter. Once the player landed their squad at the crash or landing sites the game would shift to the second phase.Â Â

The second phase consisted of turn-based tactical squad gameplay.Â This gameplay phase was incredibly well executed and introduced such tactical staples as line-of-sight and opportunity attacks.Â Even the time of day would be taken into account and affect your soldiers' vision.Â One of the greatest moments in gaming history was moving your solider around a corner and having an alien pop into view right in front of you and not having the action points to respond.Â

X-COM is a game with so such depth and when taken as a whole is so much more than a sum of its parts.Â It is the title that invented the modern turn-based tactical game and has yet to be equaled since.

Best MMO of All Time

World of Warcraft (2004)

Platform: PC, Mac
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

When the topic of MMOs comes up, what game immediately pops up?Â

World of Warcraft was created from the ground up using what Blizzard calls the "donut design."Â This is where outside of the donut consists of the casual players while the center is where the hardcore players reside.Â WoW is a game built for casual players with enough depth to draw in the hardcore players.Â This philosophy is easier said than done.Â Through expert design choices and more layers of polish than the MMO space had ever seen before, WoW revolutionized the MMO genre.Â The more than 10 million active players speaks to the successful execution of Blizzard's donut design.Â

As with most MMO's they continue to evolve and World of Warcraft is no exception.Â Not content with the donut, Blizzard has created a new category of user, dubbed the casual-hardcore.Â With the introduction of the arena system and invention of separate branches of gear optimized specifically for Player-Versus-Player (PVP) as well as for Player-Versus-Environment (PVE), Blizzard has separated their users and allowed the creation a new audience entirely in the casual-hardcore player.Â This is a player who only wishes to only play PVP and not be hamstrung by the need for gear obtainable only through PVE raiding.Â The PVP gear is entirely optimized for PVP while the PVE gear is optimized for PVE.Â For the PVP specialist (myself counted in their number), who can climb the arena ratings ladder, they have the ability to maintain the best (or near best) PVP gear in the game by only devoting a few hours a week to WoW.Â

Blizzard has been so successful; many believe (including myself) that it is stifling the entire genre as newer titles in this category continue to fail to break through World of Warcraft's stranglehold on this market.Â Can a game be too successful?

Best Mech Game of All Time

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995)

Platform: PC
Developer: Activision
Publisher: Activision

MechWarrior 2 is one of, if not my favorite game of all time and going back to play it today reinforces why.Â It is a great game that holds up incredibly well.Â Being of the first CD-ROM games ever made, MechWarrior changed what I thought games were capable of.Â It featured two full campaigns as either Clan Wolf or Clan Jade Falcon, which followed along faithfully an epic storyline written by Michael A. Stackpole.Â
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The game was deep and complex.Â The controls promoted fast reflexes and the ability to pay attention to a lot of things happening simultaneously.Â MechWarrior 2 had dozens of mechs to choose from and they could be completely customized from their armaments, engine, armor and ammo.Â Location based damage rewarded skill and even influenced the player to allocated weapons and ammo on hard to hit areas on the mech's chassis to prevent damage to them.Â
Â
Activision nailed what it is to be a mech pilot.Â MechWarrior 2 realized what every BattleTech tabletop player ever dreamed piloting a mech could be.Â The BattleMechs had real weight to them.Â The audio was perfect.Â The necessity to juggle different weapons to manage heat was the exact mechanic described in all of the novelizations of the series.Â

MechWarrior 2 was also one of the first games to ever have a CD audio soundtrack.Â The soundtrack featured Jeehun Hwang's electronic music, which is so good I still occasionally listen to it.Â

There are few things more fun than marching your fully-customized mech around to an amazing soundtrack.Â I just had this grin from ear to ear plastered across my face the entire time I played this game.

Â Â

Best FPS of All Time

Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Platform: Xbox
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft

If I let my game designer in me write this section, I would have given the honor to the brilliant Half-Life 2.Â The only problem is that when I analyze this category from a personal-had-fun-playing-the-game standpoint, Halo wins out over Half-Life 2, no contest.Â

Say what you will about Halo, but when this game came out it changed the FPS genre forever.Â It popularized the "Halo" control scheme, invented the 2 weapon limit, recharging shield, split screen co-op, vehicles, a dedicated button for grenades, had insanely good multiplayer and was blessed with AI that was smart, but more importantly made the player feel smarter for outwitting them.Â Halo came along at a time when I had forgotten what the magic of games could do.Â Halo came together and was just fun.Â Simple as that.Â Luke Smith said that Halo was his Mario.Â That line to me summed up Halo.Â It is that, when you are kid on Christmas day feeling.Â The Gregorian chanting when the game boots up still sends chills down my spine.Â That's how good this game is.Â

Without this title it is my belief that the Xbox would not have been able to survive, Xbox Live would never come to be and the Xbox 360 would never have been created.Â Microsoft would not even be in the console game space anymore.Â The gaming landscape has been changed forever because of Halo: Combat Evolved.Â

I hope you enjoyed part 1 of this list.Â Look out for part 2 coming very soon.Â It will cover such categories as:

Best RTS of All Time
Best Action-adventure of All Time
Best 3D Fighter of All Time
Best RPG of All Time
Best Racer of All Time
Â

See my other article also:Â

8 of the Most Underrated or Overlooked Games of All Time

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:11:36 -0500

Body Harvest (N64) 1998

Many people credit GTAIII as the first free-roaming sandbox game, but in reality Body Harvest owns that title. Body Harvest was developed by DMA Design who later developed GTAIII and was bought by Take-Two games and renamed Rockstar North. You played as Adam Drake, a human in power armor, thwarting an alien invasion of Earth.

Body Harvestâ€™s world is populated by numerous civilians whom you were supposed to save, but could just as easily kill. Civilians react realistically and throw their arms up and try to flee when shot at. With over 60 drivable vehicles, including, cars, tanks, planes, boats and planes and 1000 virtual square miles Body Harvest was huge. Random mission objectives would pop up as you traveled around the world.

Body Harvest received mediocre reviews at release mostly because of poor graphics when compared to its more linear contemporaries. This is not surprising considering even modern open-world games have to sacrifice graphical fidelity to fit a huge world in memory. Body Harvest was an overlooked title that todayâ€™s open-world games owe much to.

System Shock (PC) 1994
System Shock is one of those titles that was overlooked simply because it came out at the wrong time. It attempted to go head-to-head against Doom II and obviously lost. Looking at the two games side-by-side System Shock seemed to come out way ahead. System Shock was way ahead of its time. Unlike Doom II, System Shock had a true 3D environment that allowed the player to look up, down, climb, duck, jump and lean to the side. Its story about a murderous sentient AI was deep and engrossing, it had interactive environments with actual physics, first-person action and RPG elements all in one title. The player could even enter into a gravity-free wire frame 3D Cyberspace through computer terminals littered throughout the game to open doors.

System Shock holds up even going back and playing it today. If you are interested in playing this game, the DOS emulator DosBox is a good way to do it.

I am glad that the remnants of the team at 2K Boston that created System Shock finally got their hit in the spiritual successor to System Shock, BioShock.

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core (PS2/Wii) 2007
The most balanced 2D fighter in existence. Nearly every character can be played at a tournament level and has a chance of winning.

Let's run through this game's new and creative mechanics that developer Arc System Works has introduced. The gameplay is incredibly fast. Most of the characters can, double jump, dash in the air or run along the ground. Low air dash attacking is a common strategy. This makes for lots of action and a frantic pace.

Custom Combos: An endless variety of custom combos can be created by a mechanic called the Roman Cancel, which ends the animation frame of an attack as soon as you press the button, allowing you to chain any move you wish.

A Tension Gauge limits the use of Roman Cancels. This bar fills up as you move towards the enemy, inflict damage or receive damage. A Roman Cancel would take 50% of the Tension bar and an exactly timed False Roman Cancels on specific attacks take 25% of the tension bar.

Fortress Defense: An impenetrable defense that uses up the Tension Gauge to block both high and low attacks and nullifies special move blocking damage.
Burst Gauge: This bar fills up as you receive or inflict damage and serves two uses. If being attacked, it can be used to break out of any combo or it can be used offensively to refill the Tension Gauge.

Guard Gauge: Another common problem with fighting games is the turtle (ultra-defensive) strategy, which leads to boredom and little action. Guilty Gear has largely alleviated this issue and keeps the game's frantic pace by introducing a penalty for employing this strategy in the form of the Guard Gauge. The Guard Gauge begins a fight half-filled. As the player blocks, the Guard Gauge increases and as you takes damage the gauge empties. If the player neither blocks nor takes damage, the gauge returns to the middle. The emptier the gauge is, the less damage you take. Therefore, if you continue to turtle you will take more damage when you do get hit. Also if the player refuses to attack, they are warned and then hit with a complete reduction of their tension gauge, a 20 percent fill-rate of tension for 10 seconds and suffer an increased likelihood of becoming dizzy when hit.

Since the number of hits received drains your Guard Gauge, attacks had a built in diminishing damage return. So the subsequent hits in a combo do less damage than the previous hit. This forces combo creators to frontload the heaviest damaging attacks at the beginning of the combo string for maximum efficiency.

When you look at all the innovative fighting systems in place coupled with really crazy character design and finely balanced characters, Guilty Gear is the pinnacle of all 2D fighting.

Syndicate (PC/Amiga) 1993
Syndicate came out in 1993 and blew my mind. It is by far my favorite Peter Molyneux game. The Blade Runner inspired game put you in control of four juiced up and upgradable Syndicate agents from an isometric camera view. The cities you played in were teeming with civilians, cops, vehicles and enemy agents. The buildings can be entered and most of the environment, from skyscrapers to vehicles could be destroyed.

You could also steal and take command of vehicles like cars, trucks, APCs, fire and trash trucks and use them as transportation. Not only that, you could use the vehicles to run over people and watch them splatter.

The items in the game were one of the highlights. While using a flamethrower to set cars on fire had its own charm, the best item in the game by far was the Persuadertron. The Persuadertron let the player take over the minds of the civilians, cops and eventually enemy agents. You could go around the city and gather up a force of dozens of civilians that would throw their bodies in front of enemy fire to protect your agents. If you happened to kill a cop or an enemy agent they would drop their weapons and your new loyal civilian shields would run up and pick the weapon up to defend you.

Simply, one of my favorite games of all time.

See the rest of the list at .

Game Designer: How to become one Part 1

no.spam@gameriot.com (Natcho) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:33:32 -0400

Introduction

I have been asked the question of "how do you become a video game designer" countless times.Â Instead of answering each and every time (like I had been doing), I decided to write this article.Â Hope this is helpful to you.

What is a game designer?

More so than any other discipline in the video game industry, the game designer is the most outwardly glamorous position.Â You are the linchpin that holds animation, art, and programming together.Â There are a great number of rewards for being a game designer, you get to see your ideas and creations take shape and come to life on the screen, your work gets seen by a lot of people, there is no dress code and work hours are usually very flexible.Â Since I love games and presumably you do too, you get to work in an industry that creates things that you love and is your favorite hobby.Â

Being a successful game designer is not without sacrifices.Â Despite the EA spouse letter, the industry as a whole is still terrible at work-life balance.Â You can expect to put in a staggering number of hours.Â Also, since most full-time workers are on salary, you will not be paid for overtime.Â I am not complaining about this, only that this is information that you should have before you commit to a career in game design.Â As a game designer I usually put in 50-hour weeks and this ramps up dramatically before monthly milestone deadlines and the inevitable crunch period that occurs before a game ships.Â The crunch period starts up to six months out from a game shipping.Â During this time you can expect to be putting in 12+ hour days 6 or 7 days a week up until the game ships.Â I have been in some really bad crunches where I was averaging over a hundred hours every week for months at a time without a break.

If the above warnings have not deterred you and you have decided you still want to be a game designer, your next question is probably "how do you become a game designer".

Work ethic

You will need drive and determination.Â Game design positions are extremely competitive.Â Getting in requires an unquenchable desire, dedication and the ability to keep going despite setbacks.Â Only those of you willing to claw, kick and scream will make it.Â In order to get the drive necessary to succeed you should first answer for yourself the question of "why you want to become a game designer".Â Your answer to this question should be something so strong that you can cling on to it in your bleakest hours and it will keep you hungry to succeed.Â Once you have the answer to this question, you will have the reason for all the hard work you are about to put in to be able to overcome any obstacles in your way.

Now that you have the proper mindset and work ethic required, we can start talking about how to best direct your work with the goal of obtaining a job as a video game designer.

Find a company to apply to

The next question you should ask yourself is what genre of game would you like to make?Â Select a genre or genres of games that you are drawn to, are knowledgeable about and enjoy playing and then find out and list all the companies that make these types of games.Â

The gaming industry as a whole is heavily situated in a few areas in the United States.Â If you are not currently residing in one of these areas, you must be willing to relocate to get the jobs.Â Some of the places in the United States with the most densely populated game studios are Southern California, Seattle Washington, Austin Texas and San Francisco California.Â Again, you will want to focus on the companies that specialize in the genre of game that you want to work in.Â Do not apply to a studio that makes first-person shooters hoping to work on a real-time-strategy game.

Once you have a list of studios, learn about their previous titles, history of their company, the names of the founders, how their stock is doing, etc...

Education

Although you do not technically need a degree, I have found a rounded education to be very valuable.Â To be a successful game designer you will need a broad education.Â In fact, I became a game designer because it is one of the few professions that allowed me to apply my diverse interests in writing, history, movies and games in one job.Â If you are self-motivated to constantly learn about a broad range of topics and expose yourself to new things, you will be able to get by without a degree.Â

Needless to say you will need to play games.Â A lot of games.Â As a video game designer you should have an encyclopedic knowledge of games from all genres.Â Do not only play games that recently came out that received high marks, but go back and play older and lower reviewed games.Â As you play these games, write about why they are fun, what they did to promote replayability, what was not fun, what would you do differently to make a better game, what mechanics influenced the level design, how did the enemy and weapon placement affect the way you played the game, study the weapon balance, controls, interface, pacing, audio, etc.

Communication

Learn how to communicate effectively both written and orally.Â A major part of a game designer's job is to communicate the design vision to their team.Â To do this effectively you will need to have good social and communication skills.Â These are skills that you will want to place an emphasis on to practice and develop if you do not already possess them.

Read books

Read everything that you can get your hands on about storytelling, game design and the process of game development.Â In subsequent articles I will be covering specific books in my book review section, but here is a list to get you started.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/50-books-for-everyone-in-game-industry