Tag Archives: Gamecube

Opinion

Online Multiplayer takes investment.

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Here’s the thing.  I’m an online multiplayer dabbler.  I like to mess around with it some, but I’ve never gone full in on a game.  Unfortunately, it seems like the current online space requires more and more in the way of serious dedication to have a good time online.

There was a time when almost all multiplay was local.  When I was in middle school and high school, I would have friends over and we would play Super Smash Bros, FIFA, and Need for Speed long into the night.  Some of my fondest memories are of playing double elimination tournaments in Need for Speed: Underground 2.  We’d spend hours taking turns customizing our cars for the big showdown and organize our own brackets since only two people could race at once.  Or we’d take turns wrecking havoc in GTA: San Andreas.  And of course there was always the one kid who wouldn’t do anything dangerous so that his turn would go forever.  We hated that kid.  Anyway, I digress.  My issue is that people don’t seem to play video games in the same room with each other anymore.  And I have a specific problem with the new brand.

At the end of the day, my issue is this: online game are like sports.  Now I love sports, but sports require practice, teamwork, and they aren’t any fun if you always lose.  When I finish the single player in a Call of Duty game, or Uncharted, or even Mario Kart, I think, “won’t it be fun to take my skills and mess around in multiplayer for a bit.”  I always somehow think that it will be a fun little epilogue.  The problem is that it’s a completely different game.  People are obviously a lot smarter than AI opponents but the real problem is that when I hop in, say, a Call of Duty match just to have some fun, everyone else there has played the map 150 times, knows what to do, where to be, and possibly has a bunch of friends on their team with headsets to better coordinate my death.  So what ends up happening is that I run around a corner and get blasted in the face before I can react because they know that that’s a choke-point.  Or I stop moving for one second and get shot in the back.  At the end of the match, I have 15 death and 2 kills and the whole thing just seems stupid.

Now I want to be clear, I’m not condemning online multiplayer here.  What I’m saying is that in my desire for variety in the games I play (and indeed that I also watch some TV, play some sports, etc.) means that I’ve never had one game that I’ve committed enough multiplayer time to to be good enough for me to enjoy myself.  There’s a whole set of people who learned Call of Duty, and with the flurry of similar-feeling multiplay shooters out there, have staked hills that I don’t have the patience to climb.  In the end, it seems to me that the sport of online gaming is something that you do right or you don’t do at all.  What’s it they say, the mark of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go try a little Last of Us factions mode…

-Doug

Do you enjoy online multiplayer?  To tell me what I’m doing wrong, comment or send an e-mail to thedailydpad@gmail.com.  Check back here every week for more gaming commentary and take a look at Daily D-Pad on Youtube for some cool videos!

 

Argument Against, Video Game Argument

HD ports and Definitive Editions

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So, I must confess that the console I’ve been playing the most the past couple weeks is my old Gamecube. I’m a bit OCD and I enjoy going back to polish off games that I never 100% completed. This time around, I took on the task of replaying The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker with the goal of collecting all collectables, including completing the figurine collection. For those who don’t know, there was an item in Wind Waker called the picto-box, that was essentially and in-game camera. by taking a picture of any character or enemy in the game and bringing it to an NPC near the second dungeon, you could get figurines with descriptions to put in an in-game gallery, similar to the trophies that you collect in Super Smash Bros. There are over 100 figures, so it’s a time consuming task to say the least.

All of this is a long-winded (pardon the pun) way of saying that I’ve been looking at old gamecube graphics for a lot of hours. So when I put in my copy of Wind Waker HD, last year’s rerelease for the Wii U, it was something of a shock to the system. Nostalgia might make you remember Wind Waker like Wind Waker HD, but when you put them side by side, it’s a stark difference. As much as I enjoy the collector’s pleasure of owning the original gamecube disc (I never have been able to bring myself to sell games I’ve beaten), there is no way I would ever play through the Gamecube version if I decided to beat Wind Waker a fourth time. Between the graphics and the elimination of some fetch-questing, I’ll stick with the HD version from now on. All in all, the upgrade was worth buying the game again at full price. At least to me.

Why then did I make the opposite decision on another game that many consider classic?  Just recently, Naughty Dog rereleased their critically acclaimed PS3 title, The Last of Us, on PS4.  Being a fan of the original game, I considered upgrading, but eventually decided against it.  Tomarris, my friend and counterpart over on the YouTube side of The Daily D Pad, came to a different conclusion, as you might know if you came here from the link in his Last of Us tips and tricks video.  But for me there wasn’t enough value in the “Definitive Edition” for me to pay up a second time.

First of all, like Wind Waker and its HD counterpart, I have looked at the PS3 and PS4 versions of The Last of Us Side by side in the same room.  To my own eye (and agreeing with the anecdotal evidence), you can tell the difference, but it is slight.  When you use the right stick to swing the camera quickly, the difference is most apparent.  The higher frame rate on the PS4 version is easily seen under these circumstances.  Also, in low light in-game environments, the PS4 version seems to show less shadow because of upgrades to the engine.  Most  of the time, though the graphical differences weren’t glaring to me.  If you have ever been to an eye doctor to have your eyeglasses prescription changed, the difference from 720p on the PS3 and 1080p on the PS4 is like that very last set of choices on that lens device that you look at the eye chart with.  “Is the line of letters clearer with choice A … or B.  A … or B.  You usually need to  go back and forth a few times until you’re sure which lens makes the image clearer.  The subtle upgrade in resolution with the Definitive Edition is like that.  Side by side with the old version, you need to look back and forth a few times to be sure.  It wasn’t like Wind Waker HD, where it was obvious as hell which was which.

In the end, I almost upgraded anyway when Gamestop offered 50% if you traded in your PS3 version, but I balked for two reasons that very likely don’t apply to you, dear reader.  The first is that I mostly play single player, so free multiplayer DLC is not a draw for me.  The second is that the total Hard Drive install on PS3 is about 5.5 GB between the main game and the Left Behind DLC.  On PS4, the mandatory install is 50 GB.  Killzone: Shadow Fall was the same, and at that pace, I can only put 9 games (remember that with firmware, the actually PS4 memory is quite a bit less than 500GB) on my PS4 at a time.  So in the interest of putting off buying a bigger Hard Drive for as long as possible, I’ll stick with my PS3 copy.

-Doug H

Have you played either version of The Last of Us?  Sound off in the comments or email us at thedailydpad@gmail.com.  And be sure to check out our Last of Us content at Daily D Pad on Youtube.

Video Game Argument

Is Day One a good thing?

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As this Blog is just starting, Day 1 seemed an appropriate topic to begin with. What is Day 1 for a video game blog, you ask? Well, there are plenty of “Day Ones” (my, that is an awkward plural in writing) out there, particularly in two video game arenas. The first, and most obvious, I think, is the survival game. Whether you’re playing Minecraft, DayZ, or Don’t Starve, Day One is crucial. Every new play-through starts in that same place. But, as our title asks, is that a place we want to be?
First off, I don’t think anyone is under the delusion that a Day One is much fun by itself. Your first day in Minecraft, the popular resource gathering and building game, is spent scrabbling to put together just enough to get through the night. In DayZ, an online, zombie survival sim, where frankly the difficulty means that your Day One is also your only day, it is about as far from fun as you can get to be basically alone and naked, scrounging through tins and candy wrappers in abandoned farms, hoping just to find something useful enough to use before a zombie, or worse, other players find you. Despite the promise of a fresh slate, Day One in these games is most defined by starting from zero and having a long uphill climb ahead before any kind of stability or security can be found.
A different kind of example we can look at is the strategy game. Take Advance Wars, for example, the turn based, grid based classic for the gameboy. Each turn is a Day and those first few turns in games that usually have thirty or forty, are always exactly the same in most cases: beginning the construction of infantry and support troops to make enough money or secure enough space to build the bigger, better, units. It’s always the same and it’s rarely interesting. How about Pikmin. In this case, Day One is essentially a tutorial, and everyone loves tutorials, right? The Prosecution rests. But what about the Defense?
Now to be fair, any Day One does serve a purpose of a kind. While I jest about tutorials, you have to learn how to play Pikmin somehow, right? No one runs before they walk. Working backwards, the Day One in Advance Wars (or similar games like Fire Emblem) may often be the same, but it is in those first few turns that determine the course of everything that follows. Watching your opponent early on lets you know whether they plan to play the long game or invest early, trying to wipe you out before you can produce high powered units. What fronts are they defending, etc? And to be fair, campaign missions in Advance Wars usually start the player out with Units already on the field, and a specific arrangement of Enemy troops to analyze.
So how about the survival game? I don’t think I can ever justify calling Day One “fun” in Day Z or Minecraft, but I do think I can justify a value for it. The early days of a survival game provide the difficulty, and in extension, the reward for these games. Why do people enjoy super difficult platformers like Cloudberry Kingdom and Donkey Kong Country Returns? Because when you finally do prevail, it’s really damn satisfying. You feeling like you’ve conquered the world! If it was easy, the reward wouldn’t be so good. Likewise, without suffering through Day One (and Two and probably Three) in a game like Day Z or Minecraft, it wouldn’t be as special to have built a home, or fortress, with defenses and resources, and security. You get the satisfaction (if you stick with it) of looking out at what you’ve built and knowing that you made all, against the odds, from nothing.
In the end, despite how little fun a Day One ever is, I think we need them in our video games. While beginning with an empty battlefield in Advance Wars is still annoying, in all the other circumstances above, I thing Day One is something you need. You need it to set the stage, lay out the rules, and challenge you to make it to Day Two. So the next time you’re with a friend who’s playing Minecraft or DayZ for the first time and feels like they’re not any good, maybe prop them up and tell them it’ll get better. Unless they suck at video games. Then they should stop and go play Kirby.

If you liked reading this post, check out our videos at Daily D Pad on Youtube and check back here every week for new stuff! If you have something you want to discuss or want to leave feedback of any kind, e-mail us at thedailydpad@gmail.com

Best,
Doug and Tomarris