One of steam's biannual, wallet eviscerating sales is going on right now and I'm trying desperately not to get sucked too far in. So far I've only bought Dragon Age Origins and NBA 2K13. I'm only a couple of hours into each game but I'm having a lot of trouble with both of them. It's not trouble related to game design as they're both excellent games, no the trouble i'm having is that I suck at both of them.
I used to have Dragon Age Origins for Xbox 360. Or a roommate did, or I rented it or borrowed it one time. The point is, that I once played about 60 percent of the way through the game before giving up. Funny how much I've obviously forgotten since then.
The first character I created since purchasing the game on Steam was a human noble warrior. I chose this because after staring at the character creation screen for several minutes, I decided that this was the least likely option I would've chosen last time around. Choosing him this time would ensure that my game play experience would be as different as possible.
It took me almost 20 minutes before I realized that the first time I played Dragon Age Origins I had also apparently chosen a human noble warrior. Oops.
I started over again, this time with a Dalish Elf rogue. This time I didn't recognize any of the introduction. I was happy until about an hour in when I started dieing repeatedly. An hour or so later and I'm still dying constantly, though now i'm pretty sure i've hit a wall. I couldn't open a single chest in the entire dungeon due to not having enough lock picking skills and the boss simply shrugs off all of my best efforts to kill him. I can't even get him down to a third life.
I know Dragon Age Origins is a good game, but it sure feels dated. Autosaves are a bit too few and far between, the camera doesn't quite work out the way i'd like it to and gameplay is a strange hybrid of "modern RPG/MMO" style controls and Baldurs Gate style "pause based strategy." None of this is awful or crippling, it just makes me realize how much our expectations have moved on in just a few years. I expected the graphics to be what bothered me most, but instead i'm annoyed at almost everything besides the graphics. Strange.
This brings me to NBA 2K13. I actually own NBA 2K11 and 2K12 as well. I'm a pretty big basketball fan and the NBA 2K games are always really highly rated. There's just one problem i have with them. Despite 40 plus hours of time spent trying to learn them, I am still AWFUL at both games.
I'm not exactly sure what it is, perhaps a lifetime of playing NBA Jam and NBA street as a kid, but I can't for the life of me perform even the most basic of moves in a serious basketball simulation, or any sports simulation for that matter.
The players almost never do what I want, beyond move a particular direction and shoot when I tell them to. In modern basketball games, much more is required if you ever want to make a shot. A big part of the problem is simply remembering the controls. There are a myriad of basketball moves that can all be performed with various button presses. Unfortunately most of the moves are modified by a somewhat imprecise (to my fingers at least) analog stick as well as by actual court position. The chances of me figuring out what to do and then actually remembering how to do it are extremely low. I'm often left wanting my basketball player to do something but not actually remembering how to do it for a few seconds. In a game that's based mostly on timing this is a crippling problem.
I think sports simulations need to take a page from the Gran Turismos and Forzas of the world and figure out some sort of "driver assistance" for people who didn't grow up playing them. Traction control and stability control were implemented into Gran Turismo 3 and Forza came up with the idea of a racing line that reacts to how fast the player is going. These are both incredibly good functions that make hard core simulation games accessible to people who otherwise wouldn't want to play a racing simulation, or perhaps who are just bad at video games.
The best thing about driving assists are that they can be turned on and off independently of AI intelligence. This is crucial as it provides a much better level of customization for players who understand the fundamentals but simply can't make their fingers do the right things.
Hopefully there will be some sort of assist in the future when I inevitably get NBA 2K14, because right now playing basketball games makes me feel like a child trying to learn to ride a bicycle without any training wheels.
No comments:
Post a Comment