Internet Findings: Critical Path

Perusing the interwebs( Once again, thank you StumbleUpon), and found this website. Critical Path, is a website dedicated to exploring the "art, philosophy, politics and psychology" of video games.They achieve this through interviews with various game designers and video game celebrities. Some notable interviews include Bioshock creator Ken Levine discussion on Skill Sets and Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima on the subject of heroes. Critical Path plans to expand it's current interview set and even takes emails from fans on what they want to see asked. Check out Critical Path here and learn a little bit more about the scholarly side of video games.

IM's Seed

For those that don't know, or those that are looking for a new avenue of Esports action, the GSL is one of Korea's primer Starcraft 2 Leagues. Hosting monthly tournaments, players battle through the brackets to be named champion and cut a slice of the hefty prize pool. If you've never watched the GSL before it's separated into to leagues or Codes. Code A, are the up and coming stars. Players that have either been eliminated from Code S or players

SK's MC

that are new to the scene. Code A is fun to watch,as it's an ever changing landscape. Code S are where the primer players reside. Players like Naniwa or Nestea, play their matches in Code S. Code S is the main draw to GSL, and it's finals are usually a big spectacle. This year, the community is excited that the Code S finals will have two Protoss players battling for the crown. The last time a Protoss player was champion, was in 2011 and over ten tournament finals ago. SK Gaming's MC once again has to battle in the Code S finals to show that his gaming skills reign supreme and reclaim his title. MC is most known for amazing Blink Stalker micro. MC defeated fan favorite DRG in the Round of 4, to claim his spot in the finals.His opponent, Incredible Miracle's Seed, before this season was a relatively unknown player. Seed had shown skills in Code A and Team League but never exploded like he did this season. Seed has shown incredible sense of both timing and control of his units, as he made his way through the Code S brackets. Seed defeated another unknown player, Byun,in the Round of 4 with spectacular fashion. Both sets of games from the Round of 4 are up on GOM TV's website and are worth watching. So will the veteran Protoss player bring new tricks stake his claim? Or will IM Seed's spunk and fresh play shatter MC's old playstyle? Find out Thursday night at 10:00 PM. You can stream the games live at GOM TV. They will be casted in English by the wonderful, and hilarious, casting team of Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski and Nick "Tasteless" Plott.

BoxeR holding the  GSTL Trophy

Also happening this weekend on GOM TV is the GSL Team League finals. The Team League pits the Starcraft 2 Teams, such as Incredible Miracle or Evil Geniuses, against each other in a first to 5 match up. The format is exciting because it allows fans to see unknown players shine, as well as, see their favorite players anchor their teams. This year the teams FXO and SlayerS will be battling for the championship. The Team League format is relatively new to the GSL, having two seasons as a running tournament and three "special event" months. Team SlayerS, founded by famed player BoxeR, is a two time champion looking for a third. This is the first time Team FXO has been in a Team League Finals. SlayerS is obviously the favored team, with heavy hitter players like Alicia, CocA and former GSL champion MMA. Yet, if FXO can receive continued stellar performances from TheBest and Oz, then FXO should have no problem sniping SlayerS's top players. The GSTL Finals will be airing Friday at 10:00 PM on GOM TV's website.(Note: I do not own any of these pictures. Most were taken from Liquipedia. MC's was taken from Thisisgame.com)

Team FXO

M13: My Take
After starting college I picked up Magic The Gathering quite heavily. I never played in tournaments or anything professional, but I was king of the table top in my dorm. I like to keep up with the current sets, so I'll pick a pack here and there. Occasionally I see a card like Phyrexian Obliterator or a set like Innistrad, that sparks my interests so much that commit to multiple purchases. Mostly though,. I stick with my beloved Black Vampire deck. I've been a Black player since Middle School. It was easier for me to learn than Blue, but offered all the same basic board control that Blue did. It's been hard for me to switch since then. M13, the new Magic Core Set, might have broken me. A Core Set comes out every summer and consists of all the necessarily cards that Wizards(the creators) feels the current Metagame needs. So Core Sets usually consist of reprints of basic building block cards. Occasionally the Core Set will introduce players to a card ability, like Hexproof, that will be in the upcoming Block Sets. So I disappointed when I saw how scarce Black was in this new set.  Wizard's focus was obviously on the colors of Blue and White, to counteract the last block where Black was a predominant color.  I was, however, very pleased to see reprints of my two favorite cards, Vampire Nighthawk and Vampire Nocturnus. Nighthawk is, in my opinion, a mainstay in almost any functioning vampire deck. The card does so much for three mana, that it's almost crazy not to run four of them. Nocturnus is a card that demands a response from your opponent, as it pumps all your Vampires up. So the two haven't been legal in Standard play in awhile, so it'll be nice to see those two at FNMs, Pro Tours and Grand Prixs. My problem with Black cards that were in M13, was that there wasn't anything amazing. Sure they printed a card called Murder, which is cool, but it's no different than any other black removal card. Even the new Liliana, seemed a shadow of her former Innistrad glory.  Ultimately , if I want amazing black cards I'll be looking back at Innistrad/Dark Ascension. So, if I'm ditching black what color am I switching to? 

His color

Oh yes, you've read that right. Three mana. I never payed attention to Ajani, because he was always a lifegain card. Lifegain was a strategy that never interested me but it wasn't aggresive. This Ajani seems so aggressive. He's two buff spells for three mana. So every turn my Steppe Lynx or whatever card is out, is getting another +1/+1 buff. My army's strength just grows while Ajani is on the table, forcing my opponent to deal with Ajani and not my army or my life points. So he either buys me time by sacrificing himself or baiting a Cancel, or, he sits on the table and buffs my army. Not to mention I can give any of my buffed creatures doublestrike and flying whenever I want. Oh, we haven't get got to his ultimate yet. So my Soul Wardens, that he's buffing all game, will love as I pop his ultimate and get 40 2/2 Cat Tokens. Then I laugh as I win with my Cat Army. I am in love with this card. These are the kinds of cards that excite me to play Magic and create new decks. Congratulations Wizards, for creating another masterpiece and keeping me on for another year. 

It's time for INDIE GAME MONDAY!!!

(Or: How I Forgot to Post on Sunday....)

The game I have for you today is Outsmart! 

Anneite at the University

Outsmart! is an in-browser strategy game. You play as Anneite, a driven girl who happens to be married to an unmotivated man, Robme. After being told by his parents that he needs to raise 50k, it's your job as Robme's girlfriend to motivate him to make that money. Anneite has three skill levels, Charisma, Intelligence, and Lovability, that the player can raise and lower. For example, a making Robme work increase your money total but lowers his love for you. Each  skill opens new activities for her to do and impact Robme's work ethic differently. The game allows for players exploit different options the three skills have to offer, giving each player the ability to tailor their experience to their own liking.The characters are charming and the art style suits the writing perfectly. Typically I'm not a fan of 8 bar soundtracks in games, but with how catchy the pop beat is, I can make an exception. I even found myself bopping my head to the beat more than once. The whole game takes about 20-45 minutes to play, depending on how quick you find your grove.  The game can be found here and was created by "stellarnull" and "hipon".

Raising skills in Outsmart!

CRAZY INDIE GAME SUNDAY!


Apparently I just made a theme up for Sunday...regretting it now. Nonetheless, I have two amazing indie games to share with the world that I've dug up. The first, is a little game called Today I Die. 

Today I Die

Today I Die, is sort of a word puzzle game but that takes the backseat as it's all about player experience. It sucks the player into the emotions of the words on screen by captivating them with witty gameplay and a fantastic soundtrack. The game was created by wizard Daniel Benmergui and can be found here. Let me know how you like it and donate to Daniel if you do.

Screenshot from Passage

The other game I have for you guys is a game called Passage. I don't want to ruin the game. but as the creator notes "if you don't get it at first keep playing". It's incredibly short, so if you run through it and miss the message you can play through it again a second/third time without much gripe. Please please please, if you enjoy the game at all, and have extra cash flow, donate something to Mr. Jason Rohrer. The man needs to support his family. Check it out here and let me, and Jason, know how you feel about it. (I do not own any of these games, and am posting this to spread these two geniuses work around.)

So rarely is a day that I'm pleased with the internet as much as I am today. Perusing through the interwebs(Thank you StumbleUpon) and found this little gem.

That just happened. Admit it, you loved every catchy second of it too.

Hardly is there a game that I get "fanboy"excited about. Sure, I'm excited to play the new "Call of Battlefield"  but I always, in the back of my mind, find some new way to equate it another terrible game. The experience is always lost by week two, as I find plot holes or similarities between games. As you can tell, I like to ruin things for myself. Finally, though, there is a game I'm genuinely excited for. The Last of Us, is the new blockbuster game to come down the pipes from developer Naughty Dog. 

Ellie and Joel

If you remember Naughty Dog made their money with a little franchise called Uncharted. So these guys know how to craft a video game. I first got excited a couple months back at the release trailer. It depicted a grim, post apocalyptic world, where our two protagonists are trying to survive. Pretty cut and dry stuff, right? I thought so too. Then I got the rest of the storyline. It's set 20 years after a fungal infection wiped out civilization. The game takes place in a Boston quarantine zone and follows Joel( the player character), a seasoned black market dealer, and Ellie, a 14 year old girl. The story starts with Joel making a promise to a friend to get Ellie out of the city. The game follows their lives together as they cross the infected United States. The story allows for plenty of character growth. A point to that being that Ellie was born after the infection had started, whereas Joel wasn't. So Ellie, could be very accepting and hardened by her situation. Joel, would probably have very few emotional strings left, after having to kill other people to survive for so many years. Their interactions, as well as their interactions with others, allows for pervasive storytelling that I crave with games. Then at E3, I saw the gameplay and was sold. Everything looked and felt real. Gunshots have ramifications, which is a strange concept if you've ever played Halo.  They alert enemies, waste ammunition, and actually put holes in their targets.(Here's looking at you Armor Lock).  It also harks back to the days of the original Resident Evil, where you'd be strapped for ammo and almost debating if you wanted to fight the zombies. This game looks like it gives players the ability for immersion into the realm of survival. Everything looks like has a consequence. Even killing an enemy, looks and felt like the player was shooting a real person. So it allows players who enjoy games built around moral ambiguity to play that out. The developers  also put in something called "dynamic stealth". Meaning that players can act with numerous responses to a given situation and the enemies will react  based on player input. So the game also allows for player ingenuity which is a big point I love with games. 

In game shot of Boston

I always have a hard time caring about my NPC partners. For instance, in Infamous I did not care at all for Cole's girlfriend. It's not MY girlfriend and the game did very little besides telling me I should care about her, to make me care for her. So I let her die.In The Last of Us, it looks like the bond between Ellie and Joel is central to the game. The player plays as Joel, but Ellie has just as much personality and weight on the game  as the player-character. In the E3 demo, Ellie actually bails the player out of otherwise fatal situation. A functional NPC, coupled with superb writing, could breed a relationship that extends to the player. Meaning, the player wants to save Ellie and feels responsible for her. A problem I have with NPC partners in games, is that they can't die. So letting my partner run into a battle and get riddled with bullets, actually does nothing more than distract my enemies. Hopefully, there is a system, like death, that incentivizes me to care about keeping Ellie alive. I doubt that they'll have to try that hard because the character building between Ellie and Joel, will give them enough depth for players to have a strong basis for caring. Check out the new Comic Con trailer here. It builds character for both Ellie and Joel and sets the tone for the game. The Last of Us comes out sometime in 2013 on the Playstation 3. Note: I do not own any of these pictures and found them through Google Search.

So as I was on my long hiatus, I manged to check out EVO 2012 as it's in my own backyard of Las Vegas. For those folks that don't know, the Evolution Tournament Series is the largest fighting game tournament in North America. It's the culmination of hundreds of tournaments stretched across the country, as well as the globe, and can be equated to the Super Bowl of fighting games. So every year I pack my backpack full of sandwiches and water, and prepare myself for a long day of excitement. This year I was particually excited about watching the Marvel vs Capcom 3 brackets. Yet, as I watched I noticed something that bothered me as well as the rest of the crowd. There was a player, who will remain nameless, that used a team that seemed...cheap. Spamming fireballs and assists, the player just forced his opponent to navigate a maze for 90 seconds. So his opponents were either killed by the fireballs trying to look for openings to escape, or chipped out by blocking all the fireballs. The crowd, like myself, expressed their displeasure at this by booing the player when he won. Yet, I couldn't help but think, "Why am I booing this guy?" I mean the idea of a competitive video game is to win, right? So if he's winning, then why am I upset?  Could this be the video game buzz word "cheap" that I'm experiencing with all it's glorious ambiguity?

Now, I've always heard the word cheap be used in a singular all encompassing fashion in regards to video games:  To express displeasure at a frustrating situation. The game presents the player with an enemy that is unbeatable and the players obviously have a negative reaction to this. Yet in the world of competitive gaming the idea of cheap changes with the game. For instance, fighting gamers embrace long stylized combos and cheer when somebody is caught in one of these loops. Yet it's the same idea as the unbeatable enemy; a situation that you can't escape from. Yet, fighting gamers would argue that the strategy of the game comes from avoiding setups that lead to these combos. So is it the transferral of responsibility to the player to avoid the situation entirely, or counter it with action of their own, that makes these combos not cheap? Then why was I booing the player at EVO? Surely his opponent had the ability to stop his fireball spamming barrage? Let's look at another game then, say Starcraft 2. In the Starcraft community they have a word for "cheap" moves: "cheese". These cheese strategies usually involves rushing your opponent early on in the game and attempting to catch them unprepared. So without proper scouting of your enemy, or the wrong starting build, a "cheese" proves lethal. Sounds like a unwinnable, and very cheap, situation to me. Yet, 3 time GSL Code S winner NesTea uses "cheese" builds all the time. It's like the Starcraft community views cheap like this: "If my opponent, who I'm assuming is at the top of his game, loses to this then he deserved to lose." So the Starcraft community has fully embraced the idea of winning by any means, and cheers the players that successfully win with these rushes. Yet, I wasn't cheering when EVO spambot won his matches.

Maybe, I was booing because of player ethics. In  pro level Starcraft 2, a player will utilize a rush to deviate from his normal play and catch his opponent off guard. Sounds strategic. I think, that's where my qualm sat with that player. There was clear strategy in the engineering of his team. Yet, the strategy involved the player not playing the game but running away from his opponent.  This, to me, is the same as the all famous "campers". "Campers" are players that in first person shooters, such as Call of Duty or Counterstrike, sit in one place to amass kills. There is a clear divide between a player that is strategically playing as a sniper or a "camper". Most FPSs offer players sniper perches or nests, to allow players who want to show off their digital sharpshooting, the opportunity to. On the flipside "campers", find dark corners and overlooked areas to sit and catch opponents that are running by. Again, like with the EVO player, there is strategy behind the idea but, they aren't playing the game. The strategies circumvent gameplay for wins.  That to me is the definition of "cheap" in video games: A strategy or idea, that allows players free wins, exp, kills, while not performing the natural and necessary tasks of the game. Yet, this is probably all relevant to who is playing, as some players feel that "If the game allows me to do it, it's not my fault." So, I will continue to tredge through games on Insane difficulties, knowing that I'm utilizing every thing the game has to offer to complete my experience. And still get pissed when fourteen year old, who is 40 levels higher than me, shoots me in the ass in Call of Duty. Cheap.