Leveling the playing field

Above: Capitalism, a love story.

Designing a multiplayer game has got to be tricky. With a single-player game, a player who finds the game too easy or too hard can usually make an in-game adjustment to suit his tastes. In multiplayer, that's not possible, especially in a game like Modern Warfare 2, in which new players are constantly rotating in. The risk is that players who are much better than average will tend to dominate, while players who are much worse than average will have a hard time competing. And that's not fun for anybody.

Developers generally choose from at least one of three approaches to level the playing field:

1. Match players by skill
2. Give help to bad players
3. Give incentives to good players

Matching up players based on their ability or rank always seems like a good idea, but it never seems to pan out in practice. Besides which, how are bad players ever going to improve if they aren't operating outside their comfort zone? The ideal situation, from a training standpoint, would be to constantly be playing against players one tier above you, if such a thing could be calculated. But you won't ever get to win in that case, either, even as you're improving.

Giving help to bad players is a good idea, but it has to be done delicately. Nobody thinks it's fair when the best player loses thanks to heavyhanded intervention by the game gods. How many times have you been cruising to a victory in Mario Kart, only to be undone by a succession of lightning bolts and purple shells? Often in games like that, it seems like being skillful is a detriment. What you want to be is second best, so you can zip past the leader right after Zeus strikes him down.

Incentivizing good play tends to work the best. In Modern Warfare 2, you earn XP for killing an opponent, but you earn more XP for killing him with a headshot. That's a nice touch. You're rewarded for being good, without being punished for not being quite as good. On the other hand, the killstreak rewards can seem like a case of the rich getting richer. It's not easy to get a killstreak long enough to call in the heavy artillery, and when you're still hanging out at the bottom of the learning curve, little is more terrifying than hearing the whine of your opponent's jump jet hovering over the battlefield. 25 kills in a row gives you the ability to deploy a tactical nuke -- if you can kill 25 people in a row without dying, you basically are a tactical nuke.

But the killstreaks are balanced nicely. They don't get out of hand. For one thing, I initially thought that you could only use one reward per killstreak -- i.e., call in your UAV after three kills, and your counter resets to zero -- but it turns out that you can use each killstreak ability as it comes. And the UAV is even persistent, after a brief cooldown. A big killstreak may be hard to come by, but even a mediocre player can occasionally luck into smaller ones, and it's nice to know they will be immediately rewarded.

Infinity Ward's other good idea is the deathstreak, lower-level help given to players who are getting killed over and over with nothing to show for it. Die a few times in a row and you're given the option to steal another player's class. It's a good way to switch it up when things aren't working for you. Die a little more and you might get the "last stand" perk, which lets you keep firing for a moment after dying. It's a smart way to keep bad players in the game without giving them an inordinate amount of help. If Modern Warfare followed the Mario Kart model, then the tactical nuke would come from a deathstreak.

Overall, the multiplayer is very well balanced. The best reap the biggest rewards, but the worst have a strong safety net. And for the rest of us in the middle, we are at least competitive, and who knows? Maybe the next care package will have that nuke in it.

How Killzone makes you earn it

Above: An example of a weapon you cannot use for the longest damn time in Killzone 2's multiplayer.

Killzone 2's multiplayer is uncommonly deep and customizable. Players can choose from one of seven classes of combatant, like the standard rifleman, a medic, or the stealthy scout. But those classes aren't so rigidly defined, thanks to the medals system -- you can actually mix and match abilities, or "medals," to create a custom character type. You can form four-man squads on the fly, and even assemble 16-person clans made up of four squads. Plus, you can earn perks that allow you to do things like call in your own personal aerial drone to help out in combat. With massive, team-based multiplayer maps that support up to 32 players, you'll see something new every time.

At least, that's the idea. The reality is a bit different.

When you start playing Killzone 2 online, you can play only as one character, the infantryman. Your loadout consists of an assault rifle with limited ammo, a pistol, and a single grenade. You have no other abilities. By default, the game will match you with other players of equal rank or similar, so unless you decide you want to be killed instantly upon spawning, you play almost exclusively with other riflemen.

Killing opposing players and completing mission objectives earns points toward increasing your rank. You begin as a Private, and can work your way up to General (read an overview of Killzone 2's rank system). Each promotion earns you a new ability. Corporals can form squads on the fly. Sergeants can form clans, which I believe are persistent. These are not things that seem to mesh well with the chaos of a public game, although the option to respawn with your squad leader, no matter where he is on the map, is a good one.

It took me several hours of play to reach my current rank, Sergeant First Class. That's 200 points. My reward? A choice of shotgun or SMG. It'll take another 150 points before I can play as a medic. In fact, I've yet to even encounter a medic on the battlefield, thanks to the default matchmaking. Reaching the top rank, General, requires 2800 points. I can't even imagine how long that'll take.

Let's talk about those medals. You earn them by accumulating ribbons, which are rewards for certain achievements in a single match. For example, if you score at least 20 points in a match and don't kill yourself or a teammate, that's a "Good Conduct" ribbon. Eight Good Conduct ribbons will earn you the "Example Soldier" medal, which increases your starting ammo. That's pretty important, because grunts start with 64 rounds. It's easy to run out, and always, it seems, when you round a corner and come face-to-face with an enemy.

The Good Conduct ribbon is easy to earn. Some aren't so easy. One of the game modes is called "Assassination." In it, a player on one team is randomly designated the target. His teammates must protect him. The opposing team must kill him. If you are the target, and you survive, then you earn a ribbon. Five "Assassination Defend Specialist" ribbons will earn you a medal, which boosts your point total for subsequent successful attempts.

Here's the rub: On a full server, under standard settings, Assassination will be only 1 round of 6. When it starts, you have a 1 in 16 chance of being designated the target. You'll rarely have a chance to be the target, and it's not easy to survive. How long will it take to earn 5 ribbons, and the accompanying medal? Beats me. I've got 1 ribbon so far, thanks to my good friend Lady Luck. (Read an overview of Killzone 2 ribbons and medals.)

My complaint isn't the gameplay difficulty. (It shouldn't be easy to survive as the target.) The problem is the exorbitant commitment Killzone requires to play the multiplayer as advertised. You're promised deep customization and endless gameplay options, and that's not what you get. This isn't the same thing as Rock Band's lockbox. They're different types of games, with different objectives. I'm glad that Killzone's multiplayer gives you something to strive for. Still, there comes a point at which the game's attempt to provide incentives becomes a case of withholding content from the player.

Why aren't a couple of classes available at the outset? Why not a few different weapons? Why is everything that makes Killzone's multiplayer unique padlocked behind one door after another, like the entryway to CONTROL headquarters?

None of this is meant as a verdict on the quality of the multiplayer as I've encountered it so far. The network has been rock-solid, and even without the more advanced features, play has been satisfying and addictive. I can see myself sticking with it even after filing the review. But I have to wonder if people touting these features are speaking from experience or extrapolation. It's probably awesome to be a General, to customize your characters, and to participate in a coordinated clan battle. But I couldn't say for sure. I don't know who could.

Crack horde

Above: Not Horde mode, but OMG look at that

Since yesterday's post was about an area in which Gears of War 2 came up short, in the interest of balance I may as well mention an area in which it, er, comes up long. (Parallelism!) I'm talking, of course, about Horde.

Horde is really, truly fantastic, worth the price of admission, a non-stop roller-coaster ride of chills, thrills and spills, and so on. I've talked often about my general distaste for online multiplayer gaming, which has its roots in a few distinct places. Specifically:

• I am shy
• People are jerks
• I suck at video games
• Generally, I'd prefer a storyline to pure competition
• Seriously, have you heard these d-bags on Xbox Live

Horde helps to do away with the Xbox Live troglodyte problem simply because it's fully cooperative. There's not an incentive to talk trash to your own teammates, and even my worst nightmare of a Gears player isn't so dumb as to hurl invective at the computer-controlled Locust. Even in public games, most of the chatter I've heard has been focused on the game, whether helpful ("Locust hiding under the bridge") or beseeching ("I'm bleeding out!"). It's a nice change from the usual pumped-up deathmatch banter.

More to the point, when I play Horde I feel like this is the game I remember. I haven't even made it to wave 10 out of 50 yet. The enemy advantage in both numbers and firepower becomes ludicrous by about the third wave, which is exactly how it ought to be. Flanking maneuvers with the help of your teammates become more important and useful than they ever are in the single-player game. Peeking out of cover for even a second too long can be fatal. There are numerous opportunities to feel like a hero for reviving your downed teammates, and your teammates in turn are much more willing to help you out than AI Dom ever seemed to be.

The fact that Horde doesn't follow a narrative arc isn't important, either, because with the benefit of two campaigns to serve as a backdrop, it's easy to picture it as a massive single battle in the context of the larger war. And it solves the problem I thought I had with the campaign: In Horde, the player is entirely on the defensive. There's no storming forward, no "lightmass bomb" to detonate. It's just head-in-the-dirt shooting, and the fear that comes with it. When I first heard about Horde, it almost sounded dumb to me. Instead, it's Gears of War stripped to its most elemental. It's genius.

(Now if we could just do something about that matchmaking system...)