Friday afternoon tidbits

Links! Getcha hot links here!

-News that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick regrets buying Red Octane instead of Harmonix is no suprise. What is a surprise is how little he seems to have thought about it at the time. Stephen Totilo quotes Kotick as saying, "We really didn't even think, 'Hey we should go to Boston, and meet these Harmonix guys and see what they're up to.'" I don't think it's with the benefit of hindsight to point out how stupid that was.

On the other hand, nobody in the music-game business is exactly flush with cash at the moment. This week, the Boston Globe reported that Harmonix may have to pay back some of the $150 million bonus they received from Viacom in 2007. The sad part about all this is that it was so obvious what was happening as it happened. There's still a strong future for music games, but the market got oversaturated, and we won't lament the loss of these excess SKUs.

-Great essay at Ta-Nehisi Coates' Atlantic blog about the politics of Bioshock and BioShock 2. Looks like somebody named "A. Serwer" wrote the post, rather than TNC himself, which I say in order to give due credit. Some of the greatest praise you can give to the BioShock games is that a post like this doesn't seem like it's overreaching to find relevance in them. I don't even have anything to add to it.

-The upcoming Game Developer magazine has a port-mortem of my favorite game of 2009, Borderlands, and GameSetWatch has kindly excerpted some of it. It sounds like Borderlands had a tumultous development, even more so than most games, so it's all the more amazing that they ended up with such a great final product. You wonder what they'll be able to do with the sequel, having laid down such a solid foundation.

-Another great Hardcasual piece this week, "StarCraft II Beta Puts South Korea in Economic Freefall." How do you know it worked? I shared it in Google Reader and somebody said he thought it was a real headline for a minute.

-Steve Wiebe has reached the mountaintop once more, setting a new world record for Donkey Kong Jr. You may remember Wiebe as the good guy in the incredible documentary King of Kong. I know a lot of people have accused the movie of playing a little fast and loose with the facts in order to tell a more compelling story, but it's a terrific film all the same.

All mod confabs

Another year, another Brainy Gamer confab. This year, I joined the host Michael Abbott and guests Manveer Heir, of Raven Software, and Tom Bissell, author of the New Yorker profile of CliffyB, to talk about our favorite games of 2009.

Listening to it, I thought it came out pretty well, though as usually happens with these things it's a little long. Additionally, I'm rocking some pretty heavy sibilance, which I wish somebody had mentioned at the time so we could have tried to fix it. Even so, the discussion is pretty good, and covers all of our favorites, which were Borderlands, Uncharted 2, and Demon's Souls. Check it out!

This episode, by the way, is part 3 of 4. The last part is yet to be posted, but you can listen to part 1 with Chris Dahlen, Steve Gaynor, and L.B. Jeffries, and part 2 with Leigh Alexander, Nels Anderson, and Corvus Elrod.

Additionally, I've appeared on the Brainy Gamer podcast three times before:

• The confab of confabs
• Confabulous
• Insult Swordfighting visits the Brainy Gamer

Obviously I am running out of "confab" puns.

Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot

Above: Ra ra riot.

I named Borderlands my game of the year for 2009 for many reasons, but when it comes down to it, the most important thing is that the game lets you screw around with your friends, and doesn't do anything to get in the way of that. Something like Left 4 Dead 2 may be great, but its appeal comes from its difficulty -- and that means there are setbacks. With Borderlands, dying comes with minimal cost, and completed mission objectives are retained even if you get distracted and start doing something else. No matter what happens, you never have a sense that you're doing anything but progressing, if just barely.

I didn't play the first Borderlands DLC, "The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned," but I did play the newer one, "Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot." It's an interesting case because clamps down on the consequence-free feeling of the main game. It also takes a cue from the Horde Mode school of game design and throws waves of enemies at you, to the exclusion of any other objectives. You get three long and relatively difficult arena battles with enough inspired twists worthy of Borderlands, but which also lacks the feeling of upward movement that marks the main game.

The premise: Mad Moxxi is looking for her fourth husband, and intends to find him by running possible suitors through the gauntlet of the Underdome. Each battle, in one of the three arenas, consists of five rounds, with five distinct waves in each round. The format is a little like a game show: enemies get stronger at the start of each round, each wave has a different theme, and wild cards keep things unpredictable. So it's a relatively easy thing to beat a wave of weakened normal enemies with a wild card that increases one of your elemental powers, but it's difficult to beat a wave of strengthened badass enemies that are moving at twice the speed.

I'm a big fan of the pure gameplay of Borderlands, so overall I'm happy to be thrown into drawn-out battles such as the ones in "Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot." And there are some good ideas in there, too, such as the penalty box. When one person in your party dies, he's sent to a cage overlooking the arena, from which he can still shoot but can't otherwise interact with his teammates. We found that it was actually pretty helpful if our medic went down, because he could still heal us from the penalty box with his sniper rifle. And considering that the soldier's turret still works from up there, too, it's a nice way to keep downed players involved, and to allow for last-gasp victories when things look dire.

Even so, the biggest problem is simply that your team will fail to beat a round, often, and when that happens you have to start the round over again. This is not in itself a terrible thing. But it's something Borderlands avoided so deftly in the main game. The older I get, the less patience I have for games that tell me that the last 20 minutes of my life weren't worth anything. Besides which, you don't earn XP for killing enemies in this DLC, which is insane. Due to a hilarious mixup, I spent my time in the Underdome about halfway between levels 49 and 50, and despite killing hundreds of enemies, never reached 50 in that playthrough. It was a goddamn tragedy.

One more thing which is a bummer: the loot is severely restricted. You get supply drops of health and ammo between waves, but the only time you get loot is at the end of each round, when it spawns in the middle of the map for only ten seconds. You don't need to spend much time analyzing the guns, because also new in the DLC is the ability to store guns at a bank, which is a much-needed addition. Unfortunately, ten seconds sometimes isn't even enough time to get to where the guns are, especially when you keep forgetting that they're going to be there. The game never informs you that the loot has spawned, and it's hard to get in the habit of looking for it when you're used to chasing supply drops instead.

I'm glad Gearbox tried something a little different with "Mad Moxxi's," and I like the core gameplay well enough that I imagine I will go back and try to finish it off. But I do wish it felt more like a part of the main game, and less like what it is: an add-on.

Year in review: The best games of 2009

Above: I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Ain't no rest for the wicked awesome.

We're wrapping up our recap of the year that was. Today: the best games of 2009.

At last we come to it. You can click through to the feature on thephoenix.com to read the blurbs for each game, but for easy reference, and with all the usual caveats, here's my top 10 of 2009:

1. Borderlands
2. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
3. Batman: Arkham Asylum
4. Shadow Complex
5. Flower
6. Left 4 Dead 2
7. Red Faction: Guerrilla
8. Dead Space: Extraction
9. Street Fighter IV
10. Prototype

That concludes our coverage of 2009. We're not turning the lights out for the holidays here at Insult Swordfighting, but posting is likely to be light until the new year. As always, thank you for reading. Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year!

Year in review: The best of the blog

Above: Actually the best of Insult Swordfighting.

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. First up: the best of Insult Swordfighting, 2009.

Another year has come and gone, and with it have gone a crapload of blog posts. I continue to be amazed that anybody reads these posts at all, never mind commenting and linking to them. But you do. This year, Insult Swordfighting surpassed 1,000 subscribers, which is a thousand more than I ever would have expected. As of this writing, the count is over 1,100. I'm honored. Thank you for reading.

In the interest of not having to produce any original content, here's a look back at Insult Swordfighting's highlights from the past year.

January: Achievement points are awesome. Fallout 3 is also awesome, as evidenced by posts here, here, here, here, and here.

February: A plea for reader questions from readers results in the multi-part Request Hour series, which I should probably do again sometime. Plus, the argument about Guitar Hero that I never want to hear again, parts one and two.

March: Screw modesty. I think the best post I've done might be "Using the sniper rifle in Killzone 2: A photo tutorial." I'm surprised how well the photographs of my television came out. In March, I also attempted to explain why Resident Evil 5 isn't scary, a post I'm pretty sure Tycho responded to in a Penny Arcade newspost without linking it or mentioning me by name. Not that I am bitter.

April: The problem with casual games isn't that they aren't about shooting people and blowing stuff up, it's that the people who make them don't give a toss about user experience.

May: Have you ever wondered how to make your company's awesome new video game stand out from the competition? Here's a handy guide to writing a killer press release.

June: Morality in games is a great idea, and more and more titles are giving you a chance to decide what kind of hero you'll be. So how come it hardly ever works?

July: My friends got together to play a bunch of old video games. I detailed the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of a nostalgia binge.

August: I ensure that Game Informer will never offer me a job. I meant what I said, and I'm glad I said it. (They did a nice job with the redesign, though.) Also in August, a heartfelt defense of the traditional gamepad.

September: Only seven posts in September. What the hell was I doing all month? Oh, that's right: closing in on the end of an epic fantasy baseball season.

October: The second annual "Year in swooning" quiz is hilarious once again, and it doesn't even include a Modern Warfare 2 blurb! Plus, Borderlands is a blast, even when you're the most useless person on the team.

November: Re: Dragon Age, I throw myself on the mercy of much smarter gamers. Also, praise for level progression in Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2.

December: The games of the decade series just refuses to end.

Tomorrow: Year-end superlatives.

Games of the decade: Borderlands

Part of a series of subjective looks at my favorite games of the decade.

Borderlands
(2009, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC)

On the long list of reasons why I don't play World of Warcraft, near the top are these two:

• The gameplay does not look interesting
• I am afraid it would consume my life

Borderlands takes the WoW formula and couches it in a more comfortable first-person shooting framework, and, yes, it has consumed my life. Gearbox's FPS bona fides are in order. Borderlands plays much like Halo, with the same floaty jumping physics, a rechargeable shield like Master Chief's, and even a Warthog-like vehicle. But it's also an uncommonly accessible RPG, with character progression that doesn't require a Ph.D to figure out, yet is robust enough to allow for an endless variety of builds.

It's worth mentioning the importance of cooperative play. This is obviously a personal preference, but competition for competition's sake isn't enough to keep me interested in a game. I'd rather have a tangible goal beyond winning, and I'd rather be playing with friends than sparring with douchebags. Borderlands is terrific for this kind of play. It's very long, there's tons of loot to find, and the different ways in which character classes can interact is always surprising. With the right class mods, you can have a party whose health and ammo are constantly regenerating, whose action skills cool down almost immediately, and who rain destruction on Pandora like the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

I'd almost always rather have a game with a good story, but in this case I think it would just get in the way. In fact, I barely knew Borderlands had a story until the very end, when I realized I'd been handing pieces of a key to somebody. I knew I was trying to open a vault, but the actual objectives had gotten lost amid all the grinding and looting. That's just right for a game like this. Stories have to end. Borderlands doesn't.

More on Borderlands:

• No rest for the wicked awesome
• Your level best
• Aquaman, you go... talk to some fish!

No rest for the wicked awesome

My review of Borderlands is up now at thephoenix.com. As you've ascertained by now, I really liked this game. I can't seem to stop playing it. I have vague memories of grumbling my way through the first few hours, making mental notes of everything to complain about. Not that there's nothing to complain about -- is that ever the case? But this game gives so much and asks so little in return that it'd feel tacky to run down a list of problems.

Actually, here's one major complaint: I haven't reached level 50 yet. Damn you, Gearbox!

Your level best

Above: Friends forever / Always we'll be friends

It's amazing what a powerful motivator leveling up can be. In any game with roleplaying elements, the promise of dinging the next level is what keeps you grinding through repetitive and, let's be honest, often un-fun gameplay. You know your hard work now will pay off later. (Sometimes much later.)

Borderlands does a better job than most of keeping you focused on this goal. Your XP progress bar is always shown on your HUD, right in the center of the screen. When it's nearly full, you'll do almost anything to push it over the top. When it's nearly empty, it's so shameful that you need to redeem yourself by taking on as many missions as you can.

But Borderlands also discourages grinding in the traditional sense. The difference in XP awarded is enormous, depending on whether you're killing garden-variety enemies or completing missions. My soldier character is at level 34 now, and I'd guess that I've only leveled up in the ordinary run of play once or twice. Every other time, it's either been upon killing a boss, or turning in missions.

The way the missions are stacked is pretty clever. They're not clever quests on their own -- almost all of the "go here and get this" variety. You can accept several missions at a time, though, and you don't earn your XP at the moment you've completed the objective. You have to turn in, which usually means returning to the place where you picked up the assignment. This is often very far away. As a result, it's easier to complete multiple mission objectives at the same time, and have several quests in your mission log marked as ready to turn in. Then you'll turn them all in at once for 40 or 50 thousand XP.

Missions are categorized by difficulty, according to level. If you're at level 25, a level 25 mission will be designated as "normal" difficulty, while a level 27 mission will be "difficult" and level 23 will be "trivial." These are often correct, and it's astounding what a difference a level makes. When the League of Extraordinarily Gentle Men first broached Old Haven, one of the best designed "dungeons" in Borderlands, we were ripped to shreds. Our first encounter ended with several deaths, a couple of revivals, and a hasty retreat. Two levels later, a couple of us went back in, and although it was still challenging, we accomplished our objective without ever risking failure.

Gearbox dangles one more carrot in front of you during the course of play. It's not uncommon to find weapons that can't be used until you've reached a certain level. Your inventory is pretty small in this game, even as it can be expanded over the course of play, yet it's impossible not to allocate one crucial spot to the bitchin-est sniper rifle you've ever seen, which sets dudes on fire and never needs to be reloaded, knowing that it will all have been worth it in eight hours or so when you've finally leveled up enough to use it.

With each level boost, your character grows appreciably stronger. Your bullets do more damage. Enemy attacks hurt less. The action points that you assign become exponentially more useful. My ammo-regenerating turret still isn't very useful for supplying my teammates, but no longer is it a wimpy sidekick. It fires in five-shot bursts, with my choice of elemental power. And with a much reduced cooldown, I can toss it onto the field numerous times per battle. I finally agree with Roland when he exclaims, "I love this damn thing!"

A few times before, I've mentioned that games are often more like work than they are like play, and Borderlands is a great example. Much of it is about putting your head down and taking care of business. Gearbox did such a good job of spacing out the rewards, and making sure that one is always visible around the corner, that it rarely falls into the trap of feeling like a simple grind. Sure, it's like work, but payday is every day.

Aquaman, you go... talk to some fish!

Above: Borderlands characters arranged in ascending order of usefulness to the team (l-r).

Every heroic alliance has a weak link. The Justice League has Aquaman. The Avengers had Ant-Man. And the League of Extraordinarily Gentle Men has me.

Oh, you don't know that last one? That's the name we've given to our trio of Borderlands players. Except for a short single-player session the first day I had the game, I've played almost exclusively with the LXGM. Without going too deeply into detail, since I've still got a review to write, it's clear that Borderlands is an entirely different beast when you're playing with others. By yourself, it's a grind whose occasional rewards are overshadowed by lots of problems. With a group, not only do those problems go away, but character building starts to matter much more. Your skills affect those of your teammates, both in combat and character development. You may equip a class mod that boosts everybody's EXP by 20%, or grants everybody ammo regeneration.

Your skill trees also become more important. Each class can develop along three different tracks, so you can mix and match a few abilities, or specialize. Because the LXGM had two Soldiers, me and Bob, we decided to spend our action points developing unique tracks. Bob has been upgrading his medic skills; I've been going the support route. We're around level 30 now, and the stuff Bob can do is impressive. His turret casts a healing aura that quickly regenerates teammates' health. It has a chance to instantly revive downed players.

The best thing Bob can do is shoot healing bullets. He simply blasts away at teammates, and their health increases with the damage his gun deals. The ability doesn't require specific weapons or rare ammo. He can damage enemies and heal teammates in the same burst. It's helpful during firefights and after -- when the medic is playing, you don't even need to carry around medkits. This might be the most useful skill I've ever seen in a game of this type.

As the support gunner, I've felt a little bit less indispensable. My turret regenerates team ammo instead of health. Here's a little secret about Borderlands: you will never run out of ammo. Enemies drop it in spades. It's the most common thing you find in chests. It's cheap to buy at stores. And some teammates don't even need it.

The third member of the LXGM, Greg, has been doing yeoman's work as two different characters. At first he mostly used the Berserker, whose special skill is not using guns. His fists can pummel enemies into goo. It wasn't uncommon to follow Greg into an area and see his character standing there, screaming, on top of a pile of crushed corpses. All that without firing a single shot. Then he started playing as a Hunter, who probably would need ammo if he hadn't found a legendary revolver that drops most enemies in one shot, and, oh yeah, regenerates bullets.

Borderlands does let you respec, for a fee. You can buy back all your action points and redistribute them as you see fit. We certainly don't need a second medic. I could pump up my guy's firearm abilities on the infantry track, if I wanted to. But I think I'll keep him the way he is. There's dignity in making your choices and sticking to them. My Roland is a support gunner. He was born to provide ammo to people who don't need it. Damn it, that's what he's going to do.

Besides, every team of great heroes needs its useless character. That's one thing I know I can excel at.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Busy weekend ahead, highlighted by a (hopefully) long Borderlands session. The jump in fun factor between single-player and co-op is enormous with this game. Single player has its rewards, but they're tough to appreciate amid some problems. In multiplayer, the joy rains down from the heavens, and there is no shelter. Excellent game. And not the kind of thing I'd have expected to like so much.

To the links!

-Clink Hocking's Click Nothing Tour hits the road this Sunday. He'll be in my neck of the woods on Wednesday at MIT. Sadly, it's at 4 in the afternoon, which makes it difficult if not impossible for me to attend. I will try.

-Brandon Sheffield intervewed Suda 51 for Gamasutra. Suda is a fascinating guy whose games are always singular creations, and he has some interesting things to say here. Still, I don't know if it's the language barrier or what, but he's also a little curt. You get exchanges like this.

Honestly, I think that that's kind of what art is about, when you just create something and other people put their own meaning into it. I can see that as a critique of voyeurism, while to you, it's just something you made.

GS: Art? Mmm...

Thanks for showing up, Suda.

-Via Game|Life, tickets are now available for PAX East! It'll be held in Boston from March 26-28, 2010. I've never been to an expo like this before, but I suppose there's no way I can duck one taking place in my backyard. I'm still hoping there's some way I can get in for free, maybe by sneaking in through the vents.

-Two interesting takes on the evolution of difficulty in games. Michael Abbott compares the Wii remake of A Boy and His Blob to the original, while C.T. Hutt revisits Earthworm Jim and finds it more challenging than he remembers. User experience is a big reason why games are easier nowadays, but I think there's an even more prosaic explanation.

In the past, games were so short that they had to be incredibly difficult in order to be worth playing. Once you know how to beat a game like Contra, you can blow through it in about 20 minutes. If you could do that on your first or second playthrough, it wouldn't seem like much of a game at all. Even though we often complain about the length of 8-10 hour games today, most of them are significantly longer than comparable titles of 20 years ago. Even a game like Super Metroid, whose gameworld seemed massive at the time, today takes about 4 hours to beat. That's nothing.

(One more example: It took me 12 years to beat Super Mario Bros. We got the Nintendo when I was 6, and I finally beat it when I was 18. Shortly thereafter, I played through the first three Super Mario Bros. games in about an hour.)

-Not related to video games, but I need to thank Kyle Orland for linking the "Eye On Springfield" tumblog in his Twitter feed. This site has improved my life in ways I cannot possibly quantify.

All right, screw this "reading" thing. Pandora awaits!

Fall games preview

Above: A game whose promotion you are already sick of.

It's September, so it must be time for my fall video games preview in the Phoenix. Given that you use the Internet, I imagine there is not much news in this piece for you. It's a snapshot of the biggest games coming out this fall, at least as I interpret them from looking at Gamespot's "new releases" section. That means it's tilted more toward big-budgeted titles whose art will look good in the paper. I'm not passing any kind of value judgment here; I'm just telling you what it is.

The fun for me is finding out which game gets delayed immediately after the preview goes to press. One year it was Bully, and one year it was Super Paper Mario. It's also enjoyable to see what game I overlook that ends up knocking my socks off. In 2007, I failed to mention Call of Duty 4; last year, I couldn't spare the column inches for Far Cry 2.

There's no doubt that this year is lighter on big names than some past years, but I've been doing these previews since... 2005, I think, and only in 2007 was I genuinely enthused about the selections. (With good cause, as it turned out.) I still think it's a blessing in disguise that so many games have been delayed, giving us more time with the games that do come out this fall. There's plenty to be excited about, too. I'm always up for first-party Sony titles, Valve has never stepped wrong, and it's an Infinity Ward Call of Duty. I mean, come on.

Still, I look forward to the real work, which will be playing and reviewing these games. That'll be much more fun.