noahdoyle

Okay, now that I've got about 12+ hours of online multiplayer under my belt, I think I can speak to this a bit better. Multiplayer is still superb, but there are some flaws. Once the enemy piles on with an AC-130 and Chopper Gunner, it's really hard to recover from that.

I think much of my current criticism stems not from poor design decisions, but directions IW failed to take:

Customizable appearance of your character in the game. Granted, with 6 sides, this might have been complex but not unprecedented.

A Virginia Suburbs/Restaurant District multiplayer map. Their focus on verticality, I think, kept them away from this, and I think the multiplayer is weaker for it.

A White House/Mall multiplayer map. Same reasoning as above.

Along with the lack of America MP maps, a reluctance to give the American campaign map the last bit of emotional punch that would have made them perfect: civilians. With Brazilian civvies being caught in the crossfire in the favela levels, and the whole point of 'No Russian' being to massacre Russian civvies, not having them in the Virginia levels is a distinct failure.

Not having a Russia vs. American Milita MP level or two. If we can have the Favela gang militia, why not a bunch of American civvies with guns shooting at the Russkies? Hell, if you're going to call one level 'Wolverines!', at least let us play it.

Another side in the MP should have been 'Russian Terror/Mafia', your fellow mass murderers in 'No Russian'. Terminal and Estate could easily feature them.

I went to see La Boheme last night. Stunning music, beautiful voices, evocative sets...

...but I have to admit, I didn't get it.

I've heard the music (& vocals) before, but I had no idea of the plot. I read a synopsis before I went, so I'd have some sort of idea what was going on...or so I thought. The synopsis left me a bit confused, thinking, "Is that it?" I had the same thought at the end of the performance. I got a better sense of the characters from the opera itself, of course, but - I felt like I had only seen part of a story at best. Upon further research, it seems that the original source material (novel and play) were essentially plotless collections of vignettes.

Other observations: the drama of the singers didn't seem to match the content of their songs - some of the most stirring passages were about rather mundane things. Other things seemed to come out of left field - Parpignol cavorts onto the stage, the kids follow him; he leaves, the kids follow him. Bluntly, what was the point? Colline sings a mournful farewell to his coat before he goes to sell it to help Mimi - suddenly, in the last moments of the last act, this coat becomes the most important thing in the world to him, and to give it up is supposed to be an act of sacrifice. IF it was this important, why not show us that? There's nothing about it until that point.

It's possible that I've missed something vitally important - I did go into this relatively ignorant. I'm hoping someone can point out what that might be.

I thoroughly enjoyed the music and I'd like to see more opera. But next time, something with more plot, I think.

Contains spoilers and rants. You've been warned.

What is it with sequels of late? Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - better gameplay, atrocious campaign story. Gears of War 2 - better gameplay, incoherent campaign story. Modern Warfare 2 - improved multiplayer experience...yep, you guessed it, agnonizingly stupid campaign story.

Is there a shooter that has a campaign narrative that isn't horrible? Halo was good, Halo2 was better (approaching superb), but Bungie seriously dropped the ball with 3. ODST was far, far better.

The narrative for MW1 was much, much better than MW2, but the fights inside the story for MW2 were a lot more fun, more diverse. They were good (for the most part) set-piece battles, but the story tying them together was...look, it made zero sense. A PFC is tagged for a special ops team, then is suddenly a super-spy infiltrating the highest echelons of a Russian terror/crime gang? If this Makarov dude is so bad, why not just kill him? You're standing next to him with a machine gun, hello? Oh, no, wait - Activision?IW wanted to be 'edgy' and 'push the envelope' by showing you just how evil the terrorists are...by having you gun down hundreds of fleeing, screaming civilians in a Russian airport. It's supposed to drive home how bad these guys are.

Bull. Activision and Infinity Ward deserve to get called on this, and hard. Want to make it so that you know how bad these guys are? They should have taken a page from their own playbook in MW1, and have you be a helpless civvie, trying to run away - let you get to where you think you're going to escape, only to get gunned down in the end. In MW1, you never played the bad guys. 'Oh, no, you're an agent who has infiltrated...'

Again, bull. I appreciate the 'action movie' style of story telling, but 'PFC-to-007' falls into the 'incredibly stupid action movie' subset of that.

So, in the end, Agent 00-PFC is killed - Makarov knew you were an American plant all along - and the Russians somehow now blame the Americans for the massacre.

No, 'how' isn't explained. They just do. Despite having perpetrated an enormously evil act while having your faces caught on security cameras (no masks, and you're standing next to the most wanted man in Russia), nope, somehow this is the American's fault.

So, the Russians invade the US.

No, I'm not kidding.

Using the codes stolen from a downed spy satellite, they manage to penetrate the NORAD defenses with hundreds of air transports on both the east and west coats...

Seriously, stop laughing.

No, it's not explained where all this hardware came from, or how all those airport radars missed the swarms of Russian fighters and transports, etc.

So you've got zillions of Russian paratroops dropping all over NE Virginia and Washington DC. In an homage to a very under-rated movie, the first episode of this section is titled, 'Wolverines'. And it contains some of the best fights in the entire game. Fighting your way through typical American suburbs and a restaurant section (Fridays, Burger King and Taco Bell, slightly changed but obvious) was quite moving. Hans Zimmer's score was well done - it contributed to the 'I can't believe this is happening' sensation.

(Now, when you're fighting in the favela shantytown in Brazil, there's civilians that get in the way, but in Virgina, there's none - which I thought was an mistake, as the emotional impact would have been even more powerful. Also note - all the civvies are adults, Activision/IW isn't that stupid.)

Huge battles in DC itself ensue, and those are fun and emotional, but not quite as much as the first ones.

More hijinks around the world ensue(and I'll get them out of order), but they really make no sense. Your old commander was a prisoner of the Russians, but you rescue him and to halt the war in the US east coast, you assault a Russian sub base and fire off one of it's missles to EMP the Eastern Seaboard.

(Also, at this point, you transition to one of MW2's 'NPC' vignettes - you're an astronaut outside the ISS, and you see the missile coming over the horizon, headed for the US. Everyone seems quite confused, despite the fact that, oh, the US has been invaded - perhaps a missile launch shouldn't be that surprising? Did I mention that the writing is stupid?

So, the warhead detonates exo-atmospheric, shuts down the east coast. Then, the shockwave destroys the ISS and sends you hurtling away.

Shockwave.

In space.

Really, at this point, it's a Michael Bay movie. You have to infiltrate some oil rigs being used as SAM sites, because the oil workers are being held as human shields so the Navy won't just obliterate them. Despite that there's a serious, global war on. Cool battle, stupid premise. Later, you have to rush out of a gulag, because the Navy's more interested in blowing it up than you succeeding at your mission.

And then, the Crown Jewel of Stupid is presented:

The main bad guy? Nope, not the Russian terrorist or Mideast dictator of the previous installment - you know, the ones who are bad guys in real life?

Nope.

It's the American general you've been working for all along.

Sigh. No, we can't have bad guys who are actual bad guys, it's always got to be us, the American audience, the folks who bought millions of copies of this game.

(This is why I'm so down about 'Avatar' - it's the most beautiful, well-envisioned way of separating the audience members from $10 while telling them that they're the enemy.)

General Shepard's motivation for setting up the massacre of hundreds of civilians, igniting a global war that will kill many, many more of his own troops and civilians? He was the commander of the forces that got nuked by the Mideast dictator in MW1 - "I lost 30,000 men in the blink of an eye, and the world just watched. Now there will be no shortage of patriots, of volunteers".

Okay, I'll wait until you've stopped laughing. Yep, not only is he General Evil Mastermind, he's got this cadre of personally loyal 'Shadow Company' US forces, whom you have to fight against (as the SAS guys) to get to him. So, to cap it all off, you're killing Americans.

Here's the thing - all of these cool, set-piece battles could have occurred, but the plot to weave them together was agonizingly dumb.

Infiltrate the Russian terror mob? Fine, show me doing that - Splinter Cell: Double Agent, anyone?

SEAL assault on an oil rig? Any number of reasons, but in theirs, the USN had far, far better reasons to just smear it.

Attack a Russian Gulag to rescue a prisoner? No prob - but they never explained why Makarov wanted this guy - or why it mattered that he did.

Hunting through Brazilian shantytowns? Sure, their explanation almost made sense.

Desperate battles on US soil? Frighteningly easy. Russian terror/mafia and/or Islamic militant cells + cached weapons & vehicles in uninspected containers = nightmare.

Hunting a bad guy through caves and valleys? Again, we already had the Russians and Islamists as enemies, why does it have to be the Americans all of a sudden?

Very fun fights, very very poor storytelling.

***

Okay, all that said, multiplayer is fun and significantly improved.

My problem is that it's still old-school FPS - no cover, no blindfire. Having the NPCs do that in the single-player campaign was incredibly frustrating. This is late 2009, people. They also failed to put in the newest versus matchup, US v. Russians in the US. This was a huge part of single-player, why wasn't it in multiplayer? The game also desperately needs 2-4 player co-op campaign.

Someday, somebody will get a 'modern warfare' game right.

Then again, I miss Full Spectrum Warrior, so it's not like I'm in the mainstream of players...

After months of going around and around with my friend Sean (we love these sort of conversations - world-building is in our blood), I finally decided on a setting for the scifi game I'm going to be running for our group, eventually.

Me: "So, what we want is not too hard science, but not Trek/Star Wars. It takes time to get from one star to another - not weeks, but not hours. Communication is by fastest ship, no FTL radio or sensors, to preserve isolation and independence. Some aliens, but again, not SW or ST levels - and they can't be *too* alien, or it weakens later developments. A large, possibly over-bearing government, but with a frontier for the adventurous and troublemakers to flee to. Ancient alien ruins to explore."

Sean: "Yeah, that's pretty much it."

Me: "Do you realize that we've just described Traveller's Spinward Marches?"

Sean: *pause* "Heh. Good thing you have all the books, then."

UPDATE: And of course, in my reply to John in the comments, I realize that I haven't 'finally decided' anything. As usual. Ah, well. It's not like I don't have a year or two to get this ready.

"Daddy, were there people on that plane?"

That was the question I faced not two minutes after I'd turned on the TV that Tuesday morning. In shock at the effects of the first impact, I had forgotten that my 4-year old was watching. Then, live, the second plane hit, and he asked that question.

It was all I could do to answer, "Yes, there were."

The next day, I took him to preschool, and stood outside with some of the moms (and a few dads like me), and we didn't say much.

Then, the noise started.

A low roar, mechanical whining undertones, growing slowly louder. And louder. And louder still. Obviously, some sort of airplane, but the skies were empty when we drove in that morning.

And it got louder. The windows of the cars in the parking lot were vibrating, the morning sunlight reflected trembling off them. We looked at each other with a mixture of fear and resigned disbelief: You've got to be kidding me - Indianapolis? But there were no jetliners aloft to hijack, no planes full of men, women and children for pagan barbarians to massacre.

Two F-15s - Eagles by God - roared over us, not 500 feet above, making slow turns in the clear, clear skies. Fuel tanks on the centerline, and the wings loaded with missiles; Sidewinder and AMRAAM, our modern Joyeuse and Durendal.

I wish I could say that we cheered, that we sighed in relief. I allowed myself a grin and a sigh, but others were no less nervous. Later some would criticize and mock the military's reactions, but having talked to a few of the men who flew in the days of empty skies, I knew why they were there. I knew why their commanders had sent them aloft.

Those Eagles, loaded for war and slowly looping over north suburban Indianapolis, were making a very simple statement:

We failed you; we're sorry.

Chee, Dai and Cha-cha are newly minted members of the Guard, the exploration and defense force of the Pond tribe of rats. They have been sent out to see what they can find in the ruined houses that dot the landscape, structures built by the long-gone Humans - and to make sure that no hostile creatures are getting too close to the tribe's warrens.

Where the Pond tribe lives is typical of the Middle Lands, the areas of many houses that ring the Tall Kingdoms (semi-mythical towers built by the Humans to reach the sky). It is not as open as the Great Expanses, and thus more survivable. Much of the Pond tribe's knowledge comes from the visit some years ago of a migrating tribe who knew much of both distant lands.

Chee is a crafter and an archer, Dai is very strong and a good Guardsrat, and Cha-cha is an historian and explorer. They use the Flowing Tunnels to travel underground to their first destination, a group of houses that haven't been swept lately. The houses border on an open field so there is concern for larger predators moving in. As they emerge from the tunnel into the edge of a rockpath, they begin to argue about which way to go. As they argue, Dai notices that from across the rockpath, something is climbing out of another tunnel exit. Four times the length of an adult rat but similar in shape, the stinking possum notices them, and charges, hissing its hunger. Dai draws his sword, Chee readies an arrow as Cha-cha tries to come up with a plan...

(For a spur-of-the-moment story, I've really come to like this setting. It might be a little too post-apocalyptic for the little guys; they won't like the idea of all the humans being dead, so I may have to do some ret-conning and make their world 'now' instead of 'tomorrow'. But still, we're essentially looking at D&D in the 'modern' world - ancient ruins, horrible monsters (possums, dogs, cats, hawks, snakes - and think how scary wasps would be if each one was the size of your arm?), secrets and treasures to discover. There's very little armor, stealth is the order of the day, but swords, spears, shields, bows and such are all there. Crossbows for the more advanced nations, etc.)

The time: ca. 1500 years in the future.

The place: the Orion Arm and surrounding areas.

The 'feel': Star Wars as seen through a Firefly lens; darkness clouding the past and future.

The setting: As humanity expanded across the stars, it found itself to be alone. There were ruins of non-human civilizations long, long dead, but no intelligent aliens were to be found. No voices around the watering hole, no bright sparks of fellow travellers in the night.

So, humans made themselves friends; chimps, gorillas, dogs, cats, raccoons, rats. Over the centuries, all were uplifted to the flowering of sentience, given hands and speech and thought. Although humanity has stumbled (the faint, lingering bitterness from the Uplift Revolt (also called the Great Liberation Struggle, or the Primate War) a century ago will attest to that), the creation of the other Children of Terra has been for the better. Mankind has brothers with whom he can share the stars.

It is a time of technological wonders become commonplace, but limited by culture and economics. The shining cities of the core worlds host billions in relative luxury, while the frontier is a place of poverty and hardship. Antigravity and hyperdrives are taken for granted, but the horse and cartridge firearm are still useful tools out beyond where the big ships cruise. Said hyperdrive can be fixed with a box of hand tools, but an AI is grown as an organic-crystal matrix, achieving sentience in a process that no-one understands.

The Government has undergone many changes in the past millennia and a half; periods of Empire, Theocracy, Republic, all have come and gone. Currently, the Fifth Republic holds sway, the Senators and Ministers seated in the traditional capitol on Terra. The Emperor abidcated in the wake of the Uplift Revolt, and the mandate of heaven was for his son to refuse the throne, which he did. The throne sits empty while the halls of the Republic Senate and Ministries are filled.

Empires and Republics come and go, but what endures is the Bureaucracy. The enormous structure that allows the governance of so many worlds is the essential feature of said government. Without it, all would be lawless, disorganized chaos; the mouthpieces of the Bureaucracy point to life on the distant frontier and other recalcitrant worlds as examples of such a fate. Rare is the Emperor or Minister who can oppose the Bureaucracy; rarer still are the reformers. The Bureaucracy expresses the mandate of heaven, sometimes with strength, sometimes with weakness.

The Fifth Republic is composed of good people, for the most part. Traditional abuses and privilege are brought up shorter than before and the welfare of the people is high in their minds. Exploration has flourished once more, and the great archaeological digs on distant worlds are revealing more of the vanished civilizations of the winged, barrel-bodied creatures with their curious radial symmetry.

(This is to be the setting for an RPG my group will be running...in a few years...)

71 weeks since the last entry...so, here's something:

"Gen. Greivous (who isn't some no-name who-cares alien general nobody's heard of nor cares about), the salvaged remains of Darth Maul grafted into a Jedi-killing droid body by Palpatine, is the Messiah for the Cult of the Maker Reborn - a droid religion existing on the fringes of Republic society, known to only a few. The cult foresaw the arrival of a droid/organic hybrid that would lead the downtrodden masses of electronic sentients to freedom from their organic oppressors (the casual mindwipes, the slavery, the abuse - imagine the Jawa Sandcrawler filled with equivalent human wreckage, bought and sold). The Separatist Movement backfires, as does Palpatine's plan for a clone army; Maul/Grievous turns the massive droid armies on their creators, then marches on Coruscant. The Grand Army of the Republic, seeing the droids as fellow slaves rather than inhuman opponents, fragments into multiple rebel and loyalist factions. the Jedi are split as well, leading to a battle that leaves Palpatine, Skywalker and much of the Council dead. Those who oppose the war go 'rogue', refusing to follow a decimated and morally bankrupt Council. Others remain loyal and become even more hard-line as the Great Revolt is cast as an Organic vs. Machine war. The original purpose of demonstrating strength before negotiations by taking Coruscant begins to devolve into a bitter war of flesh against metal that drags on for years. The Geonosians design the Death Star as a final weapon to destroy the droid-controlled worlds, but the IG-88 series commando droids prove to be more effective than hoped; one of them manages to infiltrate the unfinished Death Star and uses it to significantly damage the Loyalist fleets before it is destroyed. The newly reconstituted Mandalorian nation (the rebel clone factions) steadfastly refuses to take sides, but Maul/Grievous' corruption threatens to turn his anger against all organic life, not just the enslavers of the Republic."

Needs work. Doesn't flow as nicely as the Droid Revolution. Then again, I wanted something that would turn the Star Wars setting on its head...

Plenty of lurking, very few comments; time to get my own journal, I suppose. Presently, this is simply a placeholder so that I may comment upon others' journals without being rude. Posts may follow, or not.