Welcome

By Blackclaw

Welcome to Blackclaw's Game Review. I hope you are finding some interesting reading.

This is the rant section. Here I hope a collection of angry outpouring essays will grow. The best rants are written in a moment of blind incoherent rage. In a calmer light, perhaps the topic wasn't really worth getting worked up about, or perhaps the rant was just the result of a misunderstanding or impatience. And blind incoherent rage does tend to bring about some rather incoherent writings, but they sure are fun to read.

Do take everything written in this section with a grain of salt. Perhaps the writer was just having a bad day. Feel free to email your affirmations or disagreements to me at blackclaw@blackclawgames.com.

The Importance of Multi-Player AI

By Blackclaw

Games have been placing a larger and larger emphasis on multi-player game play for a while now and for the most part I welcome this trend. Certainly human verse human play offers a set of unique challanges. Humans have the potential to be far more unpredictable in a game. They also have the potential to provide a far greater challange as an adversary because they can adopt new tactics and strategies that the AI cannot. But I believe it is foolish for developers to rely only on head to head play for the following reasons:

Intimidation. You want fear? Logging on to Tribes the first time is no fun at all. The promo should read "After going through totally inadequate training, you will face veteran players online who will kill you instantly than laugh at you." After much frustration and practice the true greatness of Tribes is revealed, but many new players quit before they ever really learn the game. Cooperative play against the AI offers a great training opportunity.

Team Tactics Training. For those who belong to a regular team or clan, it can be difficult to develop team tactics because the only way to practice them is during regular games against other human beings. Cooperative play against AI would offer time to practice the timing and team cooperation necessary to pull off solid team tactics without having to worry about losing to other humans while trying to get the moves down right.

Pure Fun. Sometimes going after humans can be fun. After all they have the potential to come up with ways of defeating you that AI could never pull off. But potential isn't always reached. Some humans suck. Killing them gets boring. What's more boring is if you're the one that sucks at that particular game. Die, respawn, die, respawn, die again. Yippee! Cooperative play against AI gives players a chance to work with other humans who can show them the ins and outs of a game. It can give not so great players a chance to actually enjoy the game. And even for great players, there's nothing more fun than when you and your friends band together and womp the computer.

Lag. The world is not yet made up of gamers with nothing but T1, ISDN, and high speed cable lines to the internet. Many of us still plod along with these things called modems. There are few things less fun than trying to compete against a warping LPB (low ping bastard). You know thier game is smooth as silk while you're getting 6 frames per second at a ping of 500. Maybe if you hold down the fire key, they'll accidently run in front of you. This is why my friends and I have LAN parties. Sure it's great when you get a solid internet connection, but the speed of a LAN always blows the internet away. But the internet makes up for it's lack of speed by providing hundreds of potential players. Our LAN parties have at best eight, sometimes only two. Two players don't exactly produce an epic battle. But multiplayer AI can add the numbers we need.

For us gamers the points I make above our self-evident. Our favorite games are the ones that know the future of gaming includes multiplayer AI. Total Annihilation, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Homeworld... these are the games that rule our LAN parties. These are the games we practice endlessly on our own in preparation for the next big battle. What's painful for us are the games that could have been great, but don't get played because they lack multiplayer AI. Combat Flight Simulator, Mechwarrior 3, Battlezone 2... it's painful just thinking about how fun it would be to team up against the computer in these games. Instead all they offer is head to head crap that grows duller by the moment. Let's hope that the next generation of games, games like Team Fortress 2, offer us what we want. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some AI to kill.

Rushing

By Blackclaw

Anyone who has ever played a real time strategy game has probably heard the term "rushing." Those who use this term usually use it to describe an early attack with a large number of cheap but effective units. I've heard other players use it to describe any massive attack on their base. Less skilled players seem to use it to describe any attack directed against them.

Not everyone who uses the term seems to think that "rushing" is a bad thing, but there does seem to be a significant number of players out there that consider it a cheap tactic. Well, those folks are a bunch of whiners.

In World War II the Germans developed advanced tanks. One Tiger or Panther tank was equal to ten US Sherman tanks. How did the US deal with such a mis-match? We rushed the hell out em'. The Sherman was a reliable, cheap tank and the US built thousands of them. So what if it took ten Shermans to destroy a Tiger? We outnumbered them ten to one easily. Rushing an enemy can be an effective strategy for winning a war.

But some players whine that it isn't fair. They want to be left alone for the first half of the game so they can build all the advanced weapons thier side can possess or build the perfect layered defense. This just isn't the way war works. You have to be flexible. You have to be willing to change your tactics to reflect what your enemy is doing. If your enemy is giving you time, sure use it. But if the enemy strikes quickly you must be able to respond quickly.

I guess I just don't understand the "anti-rush" crowds' point of view. All sides get the same time to build. If your base is suddenly over-run by a dozen light tanks and you have nothing to respond with, what the hell were you doing while your enemy was building those tanks? You could have had a dozen light tanks as well or at least some type of base defense.

Many advanced players will send out an early probing attack. This armed recon group gathers information on what their enemy is up to and it also determines whether or not their opponent is worthy of an extended game. If you can't wipe out their early probe, you're not worth their time.

Yet game companies listen to the cries of the defeated as well as some legitimate concerns that often the battle is over too soon. And what happens when a company comes out with a game that defeats the early rush strategy such as Homeworld? It gets labeled boring. I don't think it is possible to please gamers. I commend companies like Relic that try, but they will never please everyone. It just isn't possible.