On the Champions Online forums, I have had a debate with some of the posters about free-form vs. level-based gaming. They keep saying that free-form game design cannot be made workable in an MMORPG, and I of course, think it can be. Here is a post from that thread that I thought I’d save here, because one never knows how long a forum post is going to be kept up.

The objection to a point-based, free-form system is that it is free-form. The basic argument, as I see it, is that with a free-form system it is possible to gimp yourself — to create a toon that can’t do enough damage to an enemy to actually defeat him. We can imagine a character who can only generate 5 damage per second, but his enemy regens at 6 per second, meaning you can’t win the fight.

One answer to this objection is simply, “So what?” Yes, it is an acknowledged weakness of free-form systems that you can severely gimp yourself. People like myself who prefer, and even advocate for, such systems, believe that the benefits (allowing one to have precisely the character that one wishes) outweigh this cost. Such a belief is a matter of opnion. You don’ t have to hold that opinion, but arguing against it based on some sort of supposed “facts” is not viable, precisely because it is an opinion. You object, Mr. O, that a free-form point-based game “cannot work”, but your definition of it NOT working equals my definition of it working! A game that is free-form enough that I can completely gimp myself is just what I want — because it means that, gimped or not, my character is MINE, 100%, and not just someone else’s. Because, in the end, that is what a level-based system like WOW or Vanguard or EQ is. The designers decide what skills a Paladin, say, will get, and at what level, and by leveling and “buying” the level-appropriate skills, what I am doing amounts to little more than checking off the boxes of a pre-generated sheet. That may do it for you, but it doesn’t make it even halfway up the flagpole for me to salute.

Let’s remember after all, that class/level systems are not without weaknesses. It is an acknowledged weakness of those systems that the player is locked into pre-defined design templates and has less freedom to create his own character setup. Some people, like you, consider the easy balance that results from such rigidity to be a benefit that outweighs the cost of the system being rigid. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I do not share it.

Another answer to this objection, however, is that one can easily mitigate against the possible gimpage by providing a wide array of “pre-generated” characters that are set up specifically NOT to be gimped. So, you could easily allow a player to pick a “Ninja” type character, and have all the stats and powers pre-allocated for him, and allow him to just “accept recommended” powers at every single level. But you can also allow a person to say “let me customize” and let him pick EVERY power. Now no one can complain, because people who are (a) unsure of the system, or (b) too lazy to figure it out, or (c) concerned about being gimped, can just take the recommended builds and be completely assured of a character and an advancement scheme that is tailor made to be workable within the system. So, all potential gimpage is curbed by providing pre-made character templates for people to use, and even slightly tweak.

But there is an even better answer to your objection, Mr. O, because you are resting the entire argument on the assumption that spawns and mission generation are going to remain the same in CO as they always have been. This assumption may not be far off the truth, but I hope that it is, because the way missions are generated right now in games like COH is very coarse. You might have a bit of a point if spawns are generated the old way, because they are taking a pre-set NPC based on level, with HP and stats based on level, and just spawning it for you.

But, imagine a more dynamic situation. Imagine, instead, if when you enter a mission, as it loads you into the instance, the computer scans your character and figures out just what stats you have, and dynamically generates a set of enemies who have stats tailor made to give you a challenge. So, if you have chosen to have only 3D6 of attack, that’s no big deal — it can generate enemies with 3 PD/ED to compensate. If you happen to have put all your points into attack and have 20D6, you won’t wipe the floor with enemies… they will have some damage reduction and higher PD/ED to compensate. In fact in Champions, the PnP game, it is actually very easy (I have done it) to create some simple algorithms that can generate very balanced, properly challenging NPCs for any given hero or set of heroes. You can just do things like, “NPCs have 1D6 of normal damage per every 3 PD/ED of the hero entering the zone.” If you do this for attack damage, OCV/DCV/ECV, defenses, special powers (e.g., flash defense) and so on, you can easily balance bunch of enemies for an entire group.

As I say, this is not mere speculation — I have done it. I have created “random NPC generation tables” for Champions (in my youth, when I thought Champions needed such things — I do not, now, at least in PnP). It really didn’t take me very long — a few weeks over the summer one year provided me with just the tables and charts I needed to generate whole groups of agents appropriately challenging for any mix of superheroes you might care to present me with. I did this because the players were changing a lot during the summer and we had no fixed groups. As with an MMORPG, I could not predict ahead of time who would show up. So, people would arrive, and I would use my tables and algorithms to, by hand, generate some agents appropriate to the battles (obviously, mega-villains were made ahead of time). For people who might remember Champions II, the basic idea here was the Turtle Armor agents, but I took it to the next level.

Now, it strikes me that if a high school student on summer vacation can come up with a workable “dynamic power, skill, and stat generation system” for NPCs using pencils, paper, and dice, and some rudimentary math skills, a team of highly paid professional computer programmers ought to be able to create such a system in a computer in the year 2008+.

Your whole argument rests on the basic premise that I can “gimp” myself because the game expects something like 10D6, and makes up villains with PD/ED based on 10D6, so if I have 5D6, I am hosed. But if the game is designed right, then if I only have 5D6, the enemies should have the right PD/ED to compensate, and the battle will still be a challenge, but not impossible. They could (and should!) also make a difficulty slider that lets players play with the generation, giving more XP to people who buff the difficulty level and less to those who lower it.

The key here is dynamically generated content rather than, as we have seen before, statically generated content that was made presuming a set of builds on the part of the player. Let’s see them stop assuming my character will have power A, skill B, and stat C, and start generating a proper challenge for the powers, skills, and stats, that I *do* have.

For years, I have lived with a small, mediocre television set. In the first year of graduate school my mother was nice enough to spend $220 or so (which was unheared of in my family for a birthday present) to buy me a 19″ Zenith TV. That TV lasted me from 1993 to 2005, and was a very good, solid television. In 2005 when that TV finally died after surviving trips from NJ to SC and from SC to WA, I knew I would be moving, so I decided not to buy a high-end TV, even though by then I did have the money for it. I purchased a Toshiba 20″ regular def TV, and decided that the next TV, eventually, would be high definition. I knew that the “HD switch” was going to be in 2009, but that seemed really far away in 2005.

Also, at the time and even since, I have had certain issues with HD televisions. Besides the outrageous price, the two main types, LCD and Plasma, both held concerns for me. The plasmas look great but are both very expensive and also gigantic. Living in a medium to slightly small apartment (which I have always done and still do), a giant 48″ or something screen is just not reasonable. But they don’t make plasmas at smaller sizes (I think the absolute smallest I’ve seen is 42″), so anything in my size (and price) range is going to be an LCD. And to be honest, up until a year or two ago, the LCD TV technology was just not there… I could always see some level of smearing on fast motion in the stores, and always noticed pixelation. Now, it may be that the stores had (foolishly) hooked these TVs up to standard definition (SD) sources, but you can’t always tell in the store. All I knew was that plasmas looked good but were too big and expensive, and LCDs were the right size but looked either no better than SD, or looked worse. And I am not one to spend a thousand bucks on something that looks worse than my 20″ SD TV.

However, finally in the last year or so, when looking through the LCD TV offerings in places like Wal-Mart, they are sending true HD to the TVs it seems, and the TVs are getting better. Response times have greatly improved, making it possible for the televisions to “hold” the motion of the image without fracturing or “pixelating.” On top of that, thanks to my move, I got over a $2,000 tax refund this year. I decided that it was finally time to take the plunge, and to get an LCD HDTV with some of that money.

After doing some thinking, taping sheets of paper together to test sizes in my apartment and so forth, I finally decided to go with a 32″ television… I think anything larger is too big for my small living room. Also, there are two varieties of HD televisions — those that can produce 720 scan lines per frame (720p), and those that can produce 1080 per frame (1080p). Now, clearlly the latter have better resolution (more lines = smaller pixels and thus better resolution). However, you mainly need that many lines if you go into the larger sets. Smaller sets look fine with the smaller # of lines… because a small set with fewer lines has pixels equal in size to a larger set with larger lines. You can see this by imagining a set 10″ high with 720 lines of resolution, which has 72 pixels per inch, and thus each pixel is 1/72 inches high… vs. a set that is 20″ high with 720 lines of resolution, giving only 36 pixels per inch. Each pixel would be twice as large on the larger set, giving you a more “blocky” image. As a result, you want 1080p if your set goes to 42″ and over, but you don’t need it on 32″ and below, because a 720p set at 32″ will have pixels of roughly the same size as a 42″ set with 1080p (smaller screen, less pixels… equal-sized pixels). The 37″ size is an oddity — it’s a bit large for 720p, and thus 720p won’t look quite as good on such a set, but it’s a bit small for 1080p. Up until the last year or so, nobody made 37″ TVs at 1080p, but now they do, and if you get one of those the resolution will be super sharp. However, you pay more for 1080p than for 720p, in any given size class of TV (and by more, you’re talking nearly doubling the price).

And so, I decided to stick with 32″ because at that size 720p is a perfectly good resolution, which saves me some money and retains the resolution. A few friends expressed the thought that 32″ might be “too small” for an HD TV, but we have to remember I am used to a 20″ standard def… so 32″ high def is a huge upgrade for me.

The next step of course, was to decide the brand to use. After doing some research, I crossed off the list all of the “bargain” sets, as those sets have questionable reviews. I thus refused to consider brands like Vizio, Olevia, Westinghouse, and so forth. I have heard too many horror stories about these low-end, bargain priced sets of the type you get at a place like Target. Yes, they save you money, but you get what you pay for. With a nice fat tax refund in my pocket, and a good salary coming at the moment, I have no need to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

My research indicated that four main brands were the solid performers on the market. The top end brands seem to be Sony or Sharp, followed close behind by Samsung, and then followed in fourth place by Toshiba. The Toshibas in the reviews seem to perform as well, but they are less expensive and less popular than the other three. As the Sonys are always way more expensive for equivalent specs to the other three, and as I have had problems with Sharp over the years in other products, and as I have had nothing but good experiences with Toshiba electronics, and as the Toshibas were the most cost effective, I decided to get a Toshiba Regza 32HL67. I still wish I had been able to find that set. Unfortunately, however, by the time I went shopping, Toshiba had stopped making that model (just within the last couple of months) and replaced it with a new model — and this new model is not in any stores yet. Literally there is not a single Toshiba in the 32″ and higher range at my local Best Buy, Circuit City, or Wal-Mart. Even online, most places had it listed as “out of stock.”

This sent me back to the drawing board, and I noticed a few good reviews of the Samsungs. A friend of mine recommended Samsung as a good brand. But they, too, have just recently changed their “model year” and the new models, the Series 4, 5, and 6 models, are only sparsely reviewed (I found a total of maybe 8 customer reviews on them…. vs. over 200 nearly all positive on the Toshiba Regza HL67). The reviews were mostly positive, though one person mentioned intolerable “ghosting”, which concerned me. I took a triip back to the stores and watched, and decided based on what I saw there, and the fact that the Samsungs seem to be the best quality for the price (based on specs), I would try the Samsung Series 4 (specifically, the 32″ LN32A450). What follows will be my review of this set’s ability to respond to motion, produce color, tolerate an SD signal, and so forth.

Setup - 10/10
I had heard nightmare stories about people trying to get their HD TV set up to the way they like it and it taking hours, or days — many have complained that their TV has to be “messed with” and thousands of options set before it’s even remotely watchable. This is not the case with the Samsung Series 4. It took me about 20 minutes to physically set up the TV onto its base, and much of that was me having to disconnect and move the old one, and so forth. Once it was in place, the wiring connections were obvious and explained clearly in the manual. Within moments of connecting all the wiring, I had the TV on, and cable box, VCR, and DVD player were detected as sources and projected images. I did not have to fiddle with any of the controls to get acceptable sound, color, contrast, etc. It’s one touch of a button to swap between the obvious “modes” (boosted vs. default sound, 4:3 vs. 16:9 aspect ratio, etc). The remote control is labeled in a (mostly) obvious way. In short, setup was a snap. I brought the TV physically into my apartment around 6 PM. At 7:15 PM, I was watching an upconverted episode of Seinfeld off of my DVD on the new TV while eating a quick dinner.

HD image quality - 10/10
The image on High Def cable channels is simply unbelievable on this set. I got my HD cable box just yesterday (swapped the boxe at the cable company myself and installed it myself — took 5 minutes). I started out just “exploring” the HD channels and ended up spending four hours practically mesmerized by the TV, watching shows like Vegas and stuff on the HD travel channel that I would not normally watch. But I just couldn’t believe how crisp, sharp, and downright gorgeous the images look on this TV. If you have HD sources giving you true 720p images ont his set, you will be simply blown away. It’s gorgeous. I could not take my eyes off of it… I had plans to do all sorts of things yesterday and got none of them done because I was staring at this set watching it as if I had never seen television before. I can only imagine that this must be what it was like when people used to black and white for decades finally got a color TV set. The HD images on this set are simply outstanding.

SD image quality - 7/10
Standard Deifnition quality is an issue for most HD TVs, especially LCDs, because LCDs have trouble projecting images that are not at the native factory set resolution. I have seen this with my computer’s LCD monitor, which has a native resolution of 1280×1024. Some older games can’t project that resolution and they look much worse on it than they did on my older CRT minitor. CRT is much better at projecting non-max resolution than LCD is, and that’s just an unfortunate but true reality. This set is good, but it can’t quite overcome this issue when you get a lower res (<720p) source. I can’t fault it too much, because, after all, the source is low resolution, but you will notice some blurring or “pixelization” of the images on regular SD sources. The good news if your source is a DVD, simply getting an HDMI cable and an upconverting DVD player will do ya. I have DVDs of Seinfeld and the Simpsons, and they look pretty darn lousy on my computer’s LCD monitor unless played in a tiny window. I was afraid that would happen on my TV, but it doesn’t. Seinfeld looks perfectly fine using the HDMI upconvert function and upconverting to 720p. There is no ghosting, no pixelization, no fracturing of the image. It looks exactly like it would on a normal 26″ regular TV, and maybe slightly crisper and better. Since the source is SD, I don’t think you can really ask for more than this. You do have to be smart enough to set the DVD to “widescreen TV mode” and then set your TV to 4:3 mode to get the right image. If you do anything else, your image will look stretched, squeezed, or pixelated. But as doing it the way I recommend both works and is the correct way to do it, getting bad results using other methods is not a surprise.

Standard definition received over your cable box on an SD channel is another story. This seems to vary from network to network, and within a network even from show to show. The news stations, especially CNN and Fox News, are the wost of all… for some reason their SD images on my HDTV look somewhat blurred and pixelated. In particular people’s faces look like they smear out as the talking heads move their head up, down, and side to side while they talk. I do not get this kind of blurry response on other stations, so watching Animal Planet or A&E gave me very good even SD performance. Because it seems to vary from station to station, I can only conclude that the problem is with the broadcaster, NOT with the television. After all, if it were the television, no stations would look good. That Animal Planet’s SD channel can look almost HD crisp, and then I flip stations to Fox and Bill O’Reilly’s face looks smeared, seems to me to mean there is something up with Fox News, not the TV. It’s also not just something about faces, because re-runs of Friends and Seinfeld on SD broadcasts did not have this effect to any great degree.

You will, of course, notice some issues with video tapes. Playing a good recorded tape like a movie will look all right, but not incredible… you will see some blurry motion if it’s an action film and some pixelation even if not, but it is not too bad. However, if you have old tapes recorded on extended or super long play, which does sacrifice resolution for slower tape speeds, you will definitely see poor image quality. Unfortunately I don’t think eve the best Plasma or LCD TV on the market could help you with this. The problem is that your tape is of poor quality and you just have to live with that. My solution has been to move the 20″ CRT TV into the bedroom and hook the VCR up to it, and I’ll watch my video tapes (if I ever do) in there. Slowly over time, anything that is important, I will get on DVD or even blu-ray (like my old Disney movies such as Mulan), and stuff that’s not important will end up being tossed one day, when that old SD TV dies.

Overall, I’d say that this set works all right in Standard Definition, but you’re clearly not seeing its most impressive performance in SD. Nor should you, really. I’d be careful if you have a large VHS collection and want to totally replace a TV (say, a broken one) with this set. Especially if you have old home movies converted to VHS, like my mother has, this set will not make those look good. I don’t think most other LCD sets could either, though.

Speaker/sound system - 8/10
Sound on this set is good, though not incredible. One issue that the salesman in the store warned me about, and he was certainly not wrong, is that the new Samsungs for some reason try to “hide” the speakers behind the set, rather than having them on the sides or bottom like the old ones (and the current Sony Bravias). The Series 4 has speakers behind the screen, facing down toward the floor. This seems an odd choice, as one should want to project the sound toward the audience, not toward the spiders crawling beneath the floorboards. The speakers are certainly acceptable and give you decent sound, but don’t expect to be blown away by home-theater style sound coming out of these speakers. If you want that, you’ll probably have to spring for an external speaker set. The SRS sound feature does seem to help, improving the bass and reducing the “tinny” quality, and Cinema mode seems to do something similar to the sound to improve it. I recommend using SRS or Cinema mode to watch this TV, and the sound will be reasonable in quality. Again if you are a huge sound freak you will want to buy your own speakers. But then, if you’re a sound freak, you probably already have them.

Contrast - 10/10
Another issue with LCD TVs besides dealing with non-native resolution is the contrast ratio. LCDs are notorious for either being able to project a good “bright” but then having too bright of a black, or producing a good deep black, but then having the brights be too “dim”. In other words, you could have either a good white or a good black on the screen but not both at the same time, at least wiht older sets. This is not a problem with most of the newer sets and the Samsung Series 4 is no exception. Right out of the box it gave me good deep blacks and nice bright whites. In fact, the first thing that I saw on this set was an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (I was still fiddling with the set so I just had it “on” and tuned to TBS as a test of SD performance) where the main characters were at a wedding. The first scene I saw was the three main male characters, all dressed in black tuxes with whte shirts. This random scene was a great test, and it showed what the set was capable of even in SD — the blacks were deep and dark. The white looked bright and crisp. There was no feeling that any part of the scene was over or under exposed. I have not touched the contrast setting on this set once int he 4 days I have had it so far… and contrast always looks great.

Color fidelity - 9/10
Color is, for the most part, outstanding on this set. People often complain about flesh tones looking too “red” or “pink”, but usually I have not seen that on this set. Colors seem generally good and faithful to how they should look. Flesh tones look appropriate. Greens, reds, blues, oranges, pinks, purples, all look fine on the set. In standard def only (not HD or upconverted DVD) certain colors do have a slightly higher chance to “pixelate”, notably reds and oranges. This may be why certain channels show more pixelation, especially with faces… flesh tones are in the range of colors that seem most likely to smear, blur, or fracture in SD. I’m not sure why that is, but I never see such smearing with, say, blues. And it’s not just due to brightness, because whites and yellows don’t seem to pixelate either. It may be that you need a medium amount of brightness to see the smearing, and that whites are too bright to notice it, and blues too dark… But in any case, this problem only exists in SD. In HD or upconverted DVD, I have never seen any smearing with any colors, and the color has been excellent.

Motion response - 10/10
My #1 issue with LCDs up until recently has been their inability to “hold” fast motion. By “holding” the motion, I mean that the image stays clean, crisp, and sharp in the face of fast objects moving across the screen. LCD TVs have had a habit of “fracturing” or blurring the image when objects move really fast. The edges tend to “break” into pixels, and the back-side of the image will even “smear” across the screen. The result of this is you will see streaks trailing behind the moving object, and the leading edge of the object will look like it is shattering. I watch enough action movies that this is simply not acceptable. If Luke’s lightsaber is going to look like it’s breaking into a thousand pixels during the fight with Darth Vader, I’m not going to be happy.

I’m pleased to report that the response time of Samsung Series 4, which I’ve seen reported as both 8 and 6 ms, is more than sufficient to “hold” motion, even very fast motion. When I finally had it set up and had some dinner in me, I tested it with the battle sequence from Narnia, as well as the last 30 minutes or so of Star Wars Episode 1 (the lightsaber battles and the gungan and space battles) and it looked excellent. I noticed no smearing or fracturing of the image, and everything looked great — it looked like I was watching film projected onto a movie screen. The colors were sharp, crisp, clear, and smooth.

In the store, I was able to compare a Sony Bravia, a Sharp Aquos, and this Samsung Series 4, all side by side on the same images. The three TVs were in the same price class (all around $900). In this price class, the Series 4 was the only TV that held the motion correctly. I saw smearing on both the Sony and the Sharp — the Sony was the worst. Now, the higher-end Sonys and Sharps will hold the motion, but they’re going to cost you more. In other words, this Samsung, at least in the 32″ range, was the best at holding fast motion together and not smearing or fracturing.

Final remarks
I have had the Samsung Series 4 TV for about 4 days now, and watched about 15 hours of TV on it. I’ve watched it in broadcast SD, broadcast HD, and upconverted DVD. I really have no complaints and only good things to say about it so far. Snce I just bought it 4 days ago, I certainly can’t speak to the longevity of the set. I did read one comment where the person complained that the set started making a “whistling” noise after a couple of weeks, he broght it back, got a second set, and it started making the same noise. Again, if that’s going to happen, I can’t predict, because I haven’t owned it for that long yet. But so far, it is an outstanding set and on the basis of my first few days owning it, I can highly recommend it. Of course, if anything were to change, I would post it here and revise my score.

Overall score: 9.1/10 (average of the 7 scores above)

When MMORPGs first came out, games like Everquest (EQ) and Ultima Onilne were played in mostly static worlds, where everything was accessible simultaneously to all players on the server (also called, “Shard”). If you entered the “Mines of Moria” dungeon, and I came along 5 minutes later, I would be able to enter it, meet you, and perhaps interact with you inside the dungeon. This is, of course, the most “realistic” way to present the world of an MMORPG. However, it has a few drawbacks. The main one is that it enables people who want to annoy or otherwise ruin the game play of others (called “griefing” in the industry), to do so pretty much at will. Two typical griefing methods were (and still are) “training” — where you get a bunch of monsters angry at you, have them follow you as if you’re the engine and they are the train cars, and pull them into the area of other, usually lower level, characters, resulting in massive carnage — and “kill stealing” — where you grab a monster I am working on fighting, in an effort to steal the experience points from me and take them for yourself.

Additionally, many quests asked you to kill some “boss” monster (the ruler or boss of the dungeon, as it were), who might be on a 24 hour (or longer) “re-spawn” timer — meaning that when he is killed by player group A, he will not reappear (re-spawn) for that period of time, making him unavailable to all other player groups trying to do this quest. This led to “spawn camping,” where people would find the place where the boss usually appears (his “spawn point”) and sit there and hang out for hours at a time waiting for him to reappear (”camping his spawn point”).

Because both the “training” and “killstealing” (KSing) forms of griefing were annoying, and because spawn camping was horrifyingly boring to most players, and because there was no good way to police this in an “open world” game such as EQ, designers began to try coming up with new ways to give players an experience that allowed them to avoid trains, KSers, and spawn camping. One of the better ideas was the “instance.” An “instance” is a private or semi-private copy of some chunk of the game world. For example, in City of Heroes, your contacts will assign a mission to you. This mission will lead you to a random door somewhere in the city. When you click on that door, you see a “loading screen” and your character is moved to a “mission instance.” Only you, and any other people on your team, can get to this instance using that door, and inside it, you can have a “private” adventure. City of Heroes also introduced the concept of “instance scaling” — they scaled the level of the instance to the level of the players, and the number of enemies per spawn point to the number of players on the team. So if I have the mission to fight Dr. Vahzilok, and I am alone at level 18, I will fight 3 level 18 “Vahzilok” minions at a time in the mission instance, and fight a level 18 version of Dr. V that is scaled to a single player (an “Elite Boss” version of him). If I go in at level 20 with 5 companions, I will fight probably about 9 level 20 “Vahzilok” minions at a time, and when I get to Dr. V, he will be level 20 or 21, and he will be an “arch-villain” (AV) , which is much tougher than an Elite Boss.

The enormous advantage of instancing missions or quests or dungeons like this should be readily apparent. In the first place, the mission is almost always the “right” strength for you, making it generally a decent but not insurmountable challenge. This is not true with “open world” dungeons, because they are fixed, designed for a specific level and group size. If you go in at the wrong level or with the wrong number of players they will be too hard or too easy. This means that in City of Heroes, your content is always “scaled” about right, which is not true in other games. Additionally, since the instances are private, there is no chance any other players will come along and “KS” you, or “train” enemies onto you, and there is absolutely no need to “camp” spawns. If there’s a boss you have to defeat, he will be there in your instance, just for you.

Now, at first it seems like instancing is all pros and no cons. And indeed, I thought so at first, but there are some costs. One of the main ones is that it makes the world seem a lot less populated. In City of Heroes, players can spend 90% or more of their time inside mission instances — and players inside mission instances are not in the “open world” part of the game. This makes the game seem like a ghost town even when the servers are densely populated. Guild Wars took this a step further, with cities being the only “open” section, and the whole world being an instance. So one of the main drawbacks of instancing whole quests, dungeons, or even zones, is to make the world seem nearly empty.

I still think instancing is a great idea. But I think that Guild Wars definitely goes too far with it, and even City of Heroes might use it a little too much. I like being able to avoid the griefers, but if the world seems to empty, that isn’t what I am looking for in an MMORPG either. Somehow, designers need to strike some sort of a balance between keeping players safe from the jerks, avoiding spawn camping, and yet providing enough “open world” content that the world seems large, populated, and alive.

It may be that improving computer power will help us solve this problem. The reason a lot of worlds with heavy instancing seem empty is because each individual server can only hold a certain number of people. As a result, the population is spread all over the place. As server power increases, however, more and more players should be able to play on the same server, and this just might enable us to have enough players in the world that, even with instances, it seems crowded and alive, rather than empty. We will have to wait and see what happens.

In the mean time, I think I still prefer the COH system. Having my own private copy of every quest, that I can do either alone or with my friends, is perfect for me. It allows me to do all the content without having to worry about “what level you have to be” to do a given mission… because you are always the “right” level, since missions are scaled to you. And it lets me avoid the griefers and just have fun in the game as it was meant to be played. So, until something better comes along, I’m going to keep preferring the private instances scaled to the level of my character and size of my party.

One of my favorite single-player game types is the Real Time Strategy, or RTS, game. In an RTS game, the basic idea is that you control a country, civilization, etc, and you build units in that civilization, and use them to ultimately control the map and take out the other side(s) to win the game. The first RTS that I ever played was Microsoft’s Age of Empires.  This game is pretty much a classic, and, along with the original Command and Conquer, is one of the defining works in this genre.

RTS games vary in their scale, both in space and in time. In Age of Empires, you went from the stone age to the iron age. In the sequel, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, you were playing through the ages of feudal Europe and Asia.  In Empire Earth II, you start out in the stone age but advance through about 15 ages, ending in a futuristic age with robot tanks and energy weapons.

Ordinarily, I like the “larger scale” games, both in terms of time and in terms of space. Conquering the world from the stone age to the space age is appealing for some reason. The smaller-scale games that don’t span as much space/time, ordinarily do not appeal to me.

Given this, it may be a bit of a surprise to learn that I have really enjoyed playing the game Company of Heroes.

This game, which is an RTS game set in post-D-Day Europe, only spans a very short time (the last year or two of the war) and space — usually just a small town or village in France or Germany. There is very little in the way of technology advances here, and the number of units is rather limited. But the “feel” of being involved in World War II is quite good, and the tactical and strategic elements of the game are outstanding. As a result, I have found myself really enjoying Company of Heroes, and I have played it for quite a few hours over the last several months. I’ve gotten about 2/3rds of the way through the campaign, and played it (solo) on skirmish mode a few times. There is a lot to like about this game, and so I will give it a thorough review and break it down into its “component parts” for easy reference.

Visuals - 10/10

The graphics and visuals in the game are simply first-rate.  In a lot of RTS games, when you zoom the camera in tight, everything looks good, but when you zoom the camera out, the units start to look just plain awful. In COH, however, this is not the case — the units and static objects look good no matter what the zoom, from all the way in tight, to all the way out at the widest angle. Explosions, rifle fire, and other special visual effects look fantastic. I can’t say enough about how the game looks — it really does a nice job of capturing the look and feel of WW II in Europe.

Sound - 10/10

The sound effects are, likewise, top-notch. The gunfire, tank tread noises, explosion sounds, and the like are excellent. There is some good music, particularly in the cut-scenes. And what I really like is that the unit leaders actually talk to you and give you useful information as the game progresses. Since Age of Empires, it’s been the case that units will say something when clicked on in most games. For example, I remember axemen in AoE saying something like “Pabadackus” or “Puervus” when clicked on (at least, that’s what it sounded like). In most games these are either nonsense sounds (as in the AOE line of games) or they are generic sentences that may sound good, but don’t convey any information about the battle conditions. For example, in Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II, you get lines spoken by the actors from the Lord of the Rings movies, which is pretty cool, but they just say the same cool one-liners all the time.

COH certainly does do this — when you click on a rifleman squad they’ll say something like “Rifelmen at the ready!” But they also, even when off-screen, will radio warnings to you. For example, let’s you’ve set your tank to move up a road and just “attack anything that moves”, and switch to another part of the map.  As the tank rolls forward, it encounters an Anti-tank (AT) weapon. Now, believe it or not, in a one-on-one fight the AT weapon usually will win against most tanks, because its ammo is designed to kill the tank, and the tank’s really isn’t designed to kill an AT gun. At the very least you will have a very wounded tank after they slug it out, if you just let the AI control things. But you get a warning, and not just an “alarm bell” sound as in most games. You will hear your tanker radio, “Sherman taking heavy AT fire!” At this point you can immediately scroll or map-hop back to the Sherman and deal with the situation (I usually have him back off, and call in a sniper, mortar team, or rifelman squad).  If, while you are doing that, the Axis sneaks a tank into your base, you’ll hear someone shout, “We’re being hit by enemy armor!” and you know to look for that as well. You will get warnings of being flanked, base being hit, and so on.

Now, in most other games, all of these events would  trigger an alarm of some sort. For example, in Age of Empires you’d have gotten an”alarm bell” sound and a flashing dot would appear on the map. But I find that the audio cues being more specific is very helpful. Some alarms simply don’t need to be dealt with immediately, and others are more critical. “Sherman taking AT fire,” for example, is not one I would ignore. However, depending on who is where, “We’re being hit by enemy armor” is probably lower on the priority list of things to take care of.

In any case, the array of audio cues combined with the great sound effects makes me give this game the highest possible rating on sound.

Gameplay/Strategy - 8/10

COH strategy is somewhat different from most RTS games. Usually in an RTS game, you have “farmers” or “miners” or some other “resource gatherers.” Their job is to go out, and farm resources, and carry them back to your base (food, water, gold, whatever). Part of the strategy becomes, how do you protect these (usually unarmed and vulnerable) units from enemy attacks and keep the supply lines open as you build your civilization.

COH does have resources like other games — specifically, manpower, ammo, and fuel — but there really are no “gatherer” units. Instead, you send your units out to capture “control points” on the map, and once you capture them, they automatically feed a certain amount of the resource into your economy every minute. These resource points are fixed, static, and permanent, so this forces you to defend them if you want to take over the map (and thus win). Solo games also have a “victory point” system, where each minute the control of certain special points on the map is evaluated and scored, and whoever gets to zero first loses. This adds another layer to the strategy.

COH generally lends itself to offensive gameplay, more than defensive, and to an extent this makes sense. The lesson of World War II was, after all, “go on the offensive and be mobile.” The Germans conquered almost all of Europe using that technique in 1940-42, and the Allies took it back after D-day with a similar strategy. Attempts to “sit back and wait for the enemy to advance” generally fail in this game.

Personally, I like defensive-offensive game. By this I mean, I like to establish my base and make it strong against attacks, and only then do I start to push forward. You can do this in the old RTS games, but the new ones play much faster, and in COH you really can’t do this, which is mildly frustrating. There are ways on skirmish mode to sort of “set it” not to attack you too fast, but this always feels like cheating to me.

Enemy AI is always an issue in RTS games, as the computer is generally not too smart. Historically it can only beat a remotely experienced human by cheating (I remember in one of the games, on “hard” mode, discovering via a replay that the computer just granted itself a magic 10,000 of every resource every so many minutes).  COH is a bit different in this regard as well. The AI is quite smart, and on skirmish mod, I have a very hard time beating it. There are basically 2 or 3 good “defensive maps” that I can manage to survive with, sometimes able to eke out a win. But on most of the maps, the computer totally out-plays me, to the point where I don’t even get into the game much at all before I give up and surrender.

Campaigns are not as brutal, and the campaign missions are mostly set up to allow you to survive and win (eventually) at least. The campaign is also interesting and serves as a good tutorial for game-play, so it is worth playing.  Overall, then, the gameplay is good, although I would prefer if it were a little easier to play a defensive sort of game.
Controls/UI - 7/10

There is nothing really spectacular here.  If you have played any RTS games the controls are mostly the same. You do have to worry about “cover” and the UI for that is quite nice — it shows you when you have a unit selected and hover over an area, whether moving that unit to the area will put them in good, light, or no cover. (Leaving units “exposed” is a bad idea, by the way). The interface is mostly intuitive and easy to use, so I have no complaints, but there’s also not anything really innovative here either. It’s about average.

Campaign -  8/10

If you have any interest in World War II the campaign is a great way to feel like you are in the action of it. Each mission is very different, and they not only challenge you but they teach you how to play the game by making you focus on one thing or another, such as building defenses, going on the offensive, coordinating multi-unit attacks, and the like. Quite well done.

Fun - 9/10

COH is one of the best RTS games I have played — up there with the original AoE, and Empire Earth II, which are my other loves. AoE is of course dated at this point, and I haven’t played it in probably 5 years. EE II is still good and not really dated much yet (although a sequel has come out recently) . These are the best RTS games I have played and COH is right up there. The combination of good sound and visuals, decent gameplay, and a good campaign, make for a very fun and interesting game.

Overall - 8.7/10

Overall, the game is fun, interesting, and enjoyable. If you like RTS games and enjoy the World War II theme, this game is a must-have. Even if you are not that into World War II, I think there is something enjoyable here for anyone who plays RTS games.

I’ve been looking around for a new game for some time now. A few weeks ago I saw one that looked potentially interesting, supposedly a hybrid action/RPG type game, sort of like “Doom meets Jade Empire”, called “Hellgate:London.” This game was made by some of the people who made Diablo and Diablo 2. I never played D2, and thought Diablo was OK, but not great. However, the game looked interesting.

The premise, briefly stated, is that it’s London of 2038 or so, and a gate from hell has opened up and poured demons into the world. Most of the world is now in ruins and it’s crawling with undead and evil spirits, and such. A few warriors, called the Templars after the ancient Knights Templar, are out there trying to even things up, and you are, of course, one of these warriors. Hellgate can be played solo like KOTOR or Half-life, on your computer, all by yourself. Or, it can be played in a pseudo-MMO setting, where you log into one of a small number of “servers” and run the campaign adventure with groups of people. I don’t know much more than this about the multiplayer variant because I have not tried it.

Before buying this game, I checked into the reviews. By and large, they have been lukewarm. The primary criticism seems to be that people were expecting “Diablo 3″ and got something that did not quite live up to it. One of the biggest knocks against the game is that it has a low replayability — D2 people apparently played the same exact levels over and over again for hundreds of hours in the course of days and weeks and (somehow, which I will never understand) did not get bored, but after playing the game a few times with Hellgate: London (HGL) people get bored.

Personally I find this to be a bit of a silly complaint. If I get a decent # of hours out of going through the pre-made campaign once, I think that makes the game worth my while. Replays beyond the first are just gravy. And even my absolute favorite games like KOTOR or Jade Empire, I never played through more than 2 or perhaps 3 times total. I’d rather do something new than re-play the same old game again. However if that is what you are looking for in HGL, it may not be worth your while.

One of the other big criticism of the game is the lack of a decent “atmosphere,” and here I have to agree to some extent. It’s Hellgate “London”, but there is really very little other than a few names of things to indicate where on earth you are. It’s all a generic post-apocalyptic wreckage. If they’d called it simply “Hellgate” and put it in Anywhere, USA, or heck Anywhere, China, you’d not be able to tell the difference. However, this wasn’t a huge deal for me and certainly has not decreased my enjoyment of the game. At any rate, here is how I rate the game:

Visuals - 9/10
The graphics and visuals are excellent. Animations are good, character models are well done, and the 3D world is realistic and believable. However, doing this is one thing but making it so the game is smooth in terms of performance is something else, and they have delivered here as well. I notice very little hitching with the game nearly topped out on my now 3-year-old system.

Sound - 6/10
Sound is a mixed bag in this game. The sounds for combat and spell effects and the like are excellent. However, there is very little “background noise.” Twice now I have journeyed into hell itself to close down a portal or destroy an altar or something, and after killing the monsters in the area, hell is silent. Where are the screams of the eternally damned? Or the deep whispering voices of demons? Or something to make it creepy and make my skin crawl. There is just nothing like this. Perhaps they were afraid that the rating would be “over the top” if they added this, as the visuals are pretty creepy in themselves, but I heard creepier sounds in NWN back in 2001 than we have in this game. Also there is very little “ambience” music or sound anywhere, not just in hell. They could’ve worked on this a lot more.

Character development - 8/10
I don’t really love level/class systems, but of course in most RPGs we have to live with them, and HGL is no exception. What I do like is that with each level you gain, you get some stat points and also a single skill point. This point can buy a new skill or improve an existing one. You won’t get enough skill points to buy and level up every skill, so there are different types of builds you can make with the same character class. There are about 4 “skill lines” (sequences of improving skills) for each class, and you have to choose to either be a generalist (sampling “buffet style” from each line a little) or a “specialist” (going full-bore on one skill line and maxing that one out). According to the forums either style is playable, but I have only gotten to 11th level so far, so I can’t say for sure. At the very least, it’s interesting. Additionally, there is an interesting loot system where you can, of course, find better items, but you can also find “upgrades” for old items and buy improvements to them, so you can keep that favorite sword instead of having to turn it in for the new item… as long as you keep upgrading it.

Controls/UI - 5/10
One of the downfalls of the game, at least for me, is that you have all these skills but they make it really difficult to smoothly or easily use them. The controls are “sort of” set up like an MMO’s controls, with WASD movement and a hotbar. However, you cannot mouse-click the hotbar buttons — you absolutely have no choice but to press the number keys. For someone like me who has always preferred mouse-clicking, this was almost enough to make me uninstall the game the first day. However, I have gotten (a little) over it, and it is mitigated by the fact that the right and left mouse buttons can be bound to skills… so your two favorites can be mouse-bound. I’d still much rather be able to click if I choose to, rather than HAVE to hit numbers. I just in the middle of battle can’t always remember what button is for what skill, and I have a much more visual memory, so it’s easier for me to click on the icon (I can remember what the icon means easily) rather than remembering what button to press. I’m also much less likely to mis-click the mouse than typo the wrong button. Also, the inventory UI is pretty lousy. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that they don’t give you anywhere near enough inventory space… I am not usually a loot glutton but you have to carry around a HUGE number of scrap items to be able to modify a weapon, and it’s never really clear which ones you might or might not need.

Finally, the game’s absolute worst feature is the lack of a save command. That’s right, there’s no way to make a “save point” in the game. It saves continuously like an MMO. So there is no way to do the typical gamer trick of “OK this is a dangerous area so I will save here so I can re-load if things go south.” There’s not really a “death penalty” in the game (there is some minor XP debt), so I don’t care about that for saves. BUT, when I am picking a new skill I know nothing about, it’d be nice to be able to save the freaking game first so if I find out after trying it that I hate the skill, I can re-load and pick a different one. Not giving solo players the ability to do this is absolutely unjustifiable.

Story/Ambience - 6/10
The story and game atmosphere is mediocre. It doesn’t “suck”, of course… but it could be a lot better. The idea has so much potential — demons swarming all over London being battled by modern-day Knights Templar. Sadly it doesn’t really “come out” in the game because things are too generic or simply not done. The quests are just a few sentences of silent text in a window — no voice acting, no cutscenes, none of that. And for a solo game, the campaign has an awful lot of “kill 10 demons in this zone” types of quests — which I usually associate with an MMORPG (and even then, with bad ones). I would have liked to see more here. However, the quest simplicity is not shocking since this is an “action/RPG” hybrid, not a pure RPG. I could forgive that if the zones didn’t all look like they were basically the same. Part of this is of course due to their level engine, which generates each level at random for you, making it different each time you play. This should in theory add to replayability, but since the chunks they work with have very little variety, I’m not sure I’d even be able to remember if a given zone was any different the next time through. Hell I can’t tell one zone from another the FIRST time through. More than once I have gone to an incorrect zone with a similar name to the one I’m supposed to be in, and gotten stuck looking for a boss monster and not finding him, and been utterly bewildered until I realized this was not the right zone — because they all pretty much look the same. They needed a much greater variety to the zones here.

Fun - 8/10
Surprisingly, despite all of these technical flaws (or technical mediocrity), the game is rather fun to play. My Blademaster, who is a dual-wielding sword fighter, is pretty darn awesome in combat. The effects are cool, and there is nothing more fun than mowing down a street full of demons and undead. If you’re in the mood to just turn off your brain and go kill something, HGL is a great way to do it. However, don’t go looking for sophistication or depth, because there isn’t much. It’s sort of like a solo demon-killing version of COH. Great action, no real depth — and probably not much replayability.

Overall - 7/10 (straight average of the 6 scores)

If you are looking for an action game with some character level and stat development, this is your game. If you are looking for a straight FPS or a solid RPG, though, I’d look elsewhere. I’m happy with it because at night after work I often want to just shut off my brain and kill things, and although COH lets me do that, this gives me some variety. But it’s not a great game… merely average.