A wider point of view, The Aftermath

As far as gaming goes though, 2011 has been an important year for first person shooters. There were some ambitious titles this year, many debuts. Most of them poised to capture the hearts and minds of the same public. Now at the end of the year, at last, we can look back as the dust settles. As I type this I am aware that I'm writing this from the one perspective, that of the PC gamer. I also realize there were more interesting shooters this year then mentioned here. But I wanted to keep the scope of this post limited to those games aiming squarely at Call Of Duty. For some these are competitive games and PC still remains the home of that. Console gamers should look to PC as well, because the tech that's present now will be what dictates the hardware of the next consoles. This is especially important now, because the next wave shouldn't be too long out.
Talking about hardware almost always means talking about graphics. But I shouldn't sell PC gaming short, it's not all about graphics. The social aspect of gaming shouldn't go unnoticed. More and more people are playing games. Pulled in by their friends, or simply because everyone else is doing it.
It won't be long before we find it hard to imagine the social aspect absent from gaming. For a good long while now Steam, Xbox Live and PSN have been familiar names to gamers, yet these platforms are still evolving. Becoming more social oriented instead of being just a digital marketplace. Facebook is the norm to follow. This year was also important because it marks the point at which console ports seem to look really dated. This is generally a bad thing, making developers push their tech if they want to keep selling on PC. It only takes one, because if the competition does...
So how did the other contenders to the throne fare? I'll give you the rundown of what I remembered.

Homefront turned out a little Battlefield-clone that could. Or at least wanted. At first glance, gameplay looked like a cross between the fast paced action of Call Of Duty and the scope of Battlefield Bad Company. Multiplayer was about that, if you could handle the way it played. Inertia and loose screws are two words I could use to describe the experience. None of them are overly negative, but it took some getting used to. Not nearly as fluent as CoD, but still fast. Not nearly as deep as Battlefield but not shallow either. The PC version of the game got some extra attention and it showed as this was by far the superior version. Just looking at the archaic options screen that looked as dense as an excel sheet made me smile. But that's where the praise stops for most people. Homefront got outclassed by the competition in every way. I also make a deliberate point not to mention the campaign mode. It set the scene for Homefront, let's leave it at that.
The Homefront franchise is not done though. THQ wants its militairy shooter. After all, they've been doing very well recently with their other titles such as Darksiders, Saints Row and all things Warhammer 40k. To everyone's surprise Crytek will be making Homefront 2. Originator Kaos studios was put out of business.

Crytek also had its own seminal shooter this year. Showing the prowess of the Cryengine3. At the time of the release of Crysis2 is was quite clear that real time computer graphics had taken the next step. This first engine that was ready to enter the next generation was still on current consoles. But it was until the engine started showing some muscle on DX11 tech that we saw we were dealing with an engine for tomorrow. My quad core PC with a single gtx460 had to bow out but the screenshots thrown around the web spoke volumes. Crytek had made another engine for tomorrow's systems.
The game itself was very good indeed, the gameplay mechanics deviated drastically from the standard run and gun found elsewhere. Instead you'd run, gun, cloak, super-jump, shield up and gun some more. Unfortunately the game was run like a console game, even the MP part was done by a console developer: Crytek UK, formerly Free Radical Design. Known from Timesplitters and more recently, not to mention notoriously, Haze. As a result the MP was well done but FRD was clueless when hackers started taking over as soon as the game went live. Pirates could play MP unhindered. Bringing with them the ire of all honest Crysis fans that made the franchise what it was. Steps were taken, but by then the game was bleeding active players.
The single player campaign was quite good. I'd rate it higher than both Battlefield 3 and MW3's campaings. Sure it was a lot more linear than Crysis1, but it still had set pieces which one could tackle whichever way you wanted. The story was a lot better and held a few interesting twists.

Brink didn't need a new engine. Brink took another, more artsy direction. The look of the shooter game with the hooligans was well established. The caricatures in this game wield caricatures of real guns. Too bad then, the gameplay wasn't quite the caricature of what Team Fortress has to offer. The concept of the game was painfully limited. Multiplayer matches were essentially a series of objective-oriented team challenges. Where one side would have to stop the advance of the other. These story missions got very old very fast though and that's what killed the game for me. The missions were well made but once everybody figured out the maps, every match would play out more or less in the same way. Needless to say, things got boring. I still feel extra, more open, game modes such as team death match, domination and payload could have saved this game.

After my disappointment with Brink, I was hesitant to give Bethesda more money for Rage. So I am holding off until Rage gets a hefty discount, or steam has a sale on it. Rage was well received by the press. And people seemed to like it well enough. The PC version wasn't very good at first - the techniques used by Carmack were more fit for consoles. This brought out the usual pitchfork mob of disgruntled PC gamers. Carmack sold out. Carmack lost his mind. Carmack has left us. Carmack made amends. He then stated that the PC should propably have been the lead platform for the game, and will be for future ID projects. PC problems were fixed within a few patches though, so in the end it all came together. The big upside to Rage is that Bethesda now has a established next generation engine. The engine is very powerful as it is, making Rage run at 60fps on current consoles is no small feat. Though it remains to be seen if it will be used in the future. The next big FPS from Bethesda will be Prey2, and that looks fantastic even though it still runs on the old Doom 3 engine.

Once, in a Steam review of the game I wrote the following (see quote):

Simply put, TF2 has become the best shooter of all time. It has proven its staying power for years now: the timeless art style, the classic gameplay, the support from one of the best developers. The micro-transaction based free to play model is a sign of things to come, as TF2 is the herald of a new age in computer gaming.

And I feel I was pretty much right. Even though I wrote it in a hurry in exchange for an event achievement. TF2 went free to play this year. Boldly going where no big mainstream shooter dared go. Valve was rewarded in a huge way for their calculated gamble. The game even surpassed Counter Strike, which had been on top for years, as the most played Steam game.
Income from TF2 now comes solely from microtransactions from the in-game store. Once a player buys an item, he'll activate the random drop roulette that exists within the game. Which gives him even more, craftable and tradable items.
By making the game free, Valve has effectively invited everyone to the in-games store that has already made them, and the in-store item creators, a fortune. With this Valve has changed its initial stance on character customization. They had always put character silhouette first, to improve the recognizability of the various classes. Don't take out the pitchforks just yet, because this means we can expect more solid titles from Valve because of this. Dressing up your own characters is fun but this doesn't say anything about how fun the game is to play. The answer is very. But by all means try the game out for yourself. It's free. Despite being really old in gaming terms, TF2 is still getting a ton of attention from its creators, almost as if it was an MMO. There's something new almost every month. Valve isn't resting on their laurels either. Soon Counter Strike: Global Offensive will storm Steam, and the world as the next e-sport. Next to DOTA2. Another e-sports game. They don't seem to concerned about what happens in the world of FPS, keeping Counter Strike in a league of its own. Much like that other e-sports titan, Starcraft from Blizzard.
Duking it out for the mass market though, are EA and Activision. The title fight! In the next post.

A wider point of view, part one.

I may or may not have mentioned the end of civilization recently, which may or may not be coming our way soon. But just in case of a global meltdown, I'm preparing for extreme violence. Luckily as a Belgian I'm not far away from one of the world's most renowned weapons manufacturers. So when I go online and equip a FN F2000, like the ones delivered to the Libyan special forces, to headshot teenagers in Battlefield, I'm actually celebrating our great Belgian Culture. How our Minister of War, Pieter De Crem, would swell with pride and joy upon reading this post. If only he knew how to read. Yet all of that pales in comparison when compared to the way the man can pre flight check a Lockheed C-130 by patting the side of the fuselage as if congratulating it after winning the Ostend Derby. Sadly, the last great Belgian military victory dates back to when horses were high tech in the year 1302, when we kicked the French all the way back to France. We haven't had a French related problem ever since, proving the value of armed conflict once more. But let's not dwell on political games.

Suffice to say, I've been playing a lot of games. Mostly shooters. My most recent stint started about half a year ago with the release of the Medal Of Honor reboot. But even before that the market has been flooded with big budget hardcore first person shooter (fps) games. One remarkable trend among these titles: most of them are multi-platform. Console popularity is on an all time high with developers because of the large user base. So the leading versions are often for console and then get ported over to the PC. A process that almost always leads to an inferior PC title compared to pure PC games. Developers porting from console to PC usually leave out a lot of functionality or options the hardcore PC community is used to. Such as mod tools and dedicated servers. But the lack of one often ignored option has been irking me to no end: A configurable Field Of View variable.
The field of view determines what the viewing angle (in degrees) of a game is according to the old 4:3 aspect ratio. So a 65 FoV gives the player a 65 degrees viewing angle. This same variable, 65, will result in a somewhat wider view in 16:10 and 16:9 widescreen aspect rations.. Maybe it's not quite as ignored as I think though, but I am getting the idea that many devs just don't care. Which leads people who actually are passionate about this topic to write about how devs just don't care.

The following blog posts require a bit of gaming history to really be understood. This first post sets the scene for what is to follow.
I will talk about first person shooters on both PC and consoles. The differences, the design choices and the consequences. To some this might be sliced bread, but I'll highlight the necessary info just in case. And this chronological summary will provide some perspective on the genre today. This is by no means a complete list though, but it highlights the big hitters.

The game that popularized the "modern war" setting was Call Of Duty 4. Current generation CoD games were made with a very heavily modified Quake3 engine by Infinity Ward. The game has a fully moddable FoV in the .cfg file, which could be modified with a simple text editor. The game was smash hit and instant classic on consoles first and PC second. Which led to the sequel Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

A big console shift happened with this game. All variables were locked away, including the FoV. While still having a somewhat usable FoV even for PC, other neglected options, the biggest of which were dedicated servers and the access to an ingame console, made this game into the most hated Call Of Duty for the hardcore PC community. The outstanding production values made things worse as Infinity Ward dropped out of favor. Not supporting the game beyond a few simple bug fixes and exploits added insult to injury.

Not long after Battlefield Bad Company 2 was released. The name "Bad Company" denotes the console offshoot of the Battlefield series. Made by European developer DICE, the original had no PC version but the sequel did. Surprisingly it was quite configurable via an editable config file which allowed PC gamers to change the FoV, among other things. One year after release, the game still has quite an active PC community. While not a steamworks game it still makes the steam top 10 most played games list almost every day. Yet it can't get close to the popularity of CoD.

The 2010 release of Medal Of Honor marked the reboot of the series with a modern combat setting. Not surprisingly it was heavily influenced by the succes of MW2. It had a troubled development though and the game was ultimately split into two separate pieces with two different engines. Resulting in two quite distinct games. The Single Player campaign used Epic's Unreal Engine 3. Which has encrypted configuration files, making it impossible to adjust the FoV. Producer EA pushed the game primarily for the console market to compete with CoD but got absolutely destroyed in sales.
The multiplayer side of the game was done by DICE. They used their proprietary Frostbite engine giving players the same options as Bad Company 2. Making it quite configurable.

The current king of the market is Call Of Duty Black Ops. Made by Treyarch, it has been well supported across all platforms. Needed indeed because the release version of the game was very buggy for PC and PS3. The lead PC programmer (@pcdev) made a promise to make this a genuine PC title. A statement that was bound to come back to haunt him. Yet as a result this CoD game is much more configurable and enjoyable than MW2, its biggest rival. The games options menu has a built-in FoV slider. It and many more variables can be edited with a text editor just as before too. A remarkable and commendable return to form. As were dedicated servers. Mod tools are promised with a future patch.

Not a cross platform game but still important is Guerrilla's Killzone 3, as it is intended to be the flagship FPS game on Playstation 3. It's backed by Sony and presumably the answer to Microsoft's Halo before CoD took over the market. Rightly lauded for it's superb visual design but despite all effort has failed to catch on and hasn't even come close to competing with CoD.

Bulletstorm was made in response to the "serious" military shooters of the last year. This over-the-top arcade shooter was ported to PC and uses the Unreal3 engine. Many PC options were left out in the release version and the config files encrypted, which sent forums alight with rage. To soften the blow a bit for PC gamers, a decrypter was posted on the Bulletstorm forums so they could edit the config file.

Homefront is made by Kaos Studios. A spiritual successor to the developer's earlier game Frontlines. They develop games using Unreal3, not a very promising sign if we look at its history. However, Kaos has been wooing PC gamers with exclusive features, dedicated servers and the promise of editable config files. The game was recently released with moderate success. Undoubtedly it will get stiff competition from existing and upcoming games. But the success of Counter Strike has shown that a PC shooter doesn't necessarily needs to be a looker to be a darling. If it keeps getting support.

Speaking of lookers, Crysis 2 is developed by Crytek. Responsible for the exquisite Far Cry & Crysis 1. Crytek will now foray into the console market with this sequel. Now suddenly skeptical PC gamers are promised the same great Crysis style support and features. Crytek have a lot to live up to as the first Crysis had and still has the most impressive game engine to date. Just about every variable was editable. The game had dedicated servers and modding tools. It was pretty much exactly what the PC community wanted from a FPS game. Gameplay footage from Crysis 2 has been very promising so far. The demo, released on 4/03/2011, was not. Gamers all over the internet were predicting doom and gloom because the demo lacked just about every configurable setting while carrying over a few key console features, such as the now infamous "press start to play" opening screen and aim assist for gamepad users. A demo isn't representative however, so here's hoping Crytek remembers its promises.

Brink is being developed by ID software protegé Splash Damage. Like Bulletstorm a reaction to current "realistic" shooters and like Team Fortress 2 is very stylized. The game uses the ID4 engine, known from Doom3, which was also used in Splash Damage's Enemy Territory Quake Wars. They seem to be very aggressive in their stance on the genre, and very confident of the game's success. They also have the material to back up their claim as the game seems to be in great shape. The PC legacy of the ID4 engine is telling, the game is promised to be fully configurable with an ingame console, FoV modification and dedicated servers on PC. If the game is a success it could spell the end for Call Of Duty clones.

Speaking of ID software. It is also cooking up a new game, with a new engine. It's called Rage and will appear on consoles and PC. Curiously, it seems to be the only one breaking new ground with its engine. As the FoV seems very wide compared to other console shooters. Which is good news for everyone. Perhaps the venerable giant, I'm talking about ID, can come back to compete in style.

Battlefield 3 is the upcoming DICE blockbuster. Using an upgraded frostbite engine, it was originally a PC exclusive and will be using the latest DX11 technology. Meaning the PC version is the one to be downgraded to the DX9 generation consoles. Couple this with DICE's excellent PC support and it should be in great shape.

And then there's Valve. They release few new games, but instead opt to support their games long after release. Counter Strike, Left For Dead and Team Fortress 2 are prime examples. Updated almost every other day, fully modable, dedicated servers and more have made these games fan favorites.
Valve had their own FoV incident when Half-Life 2 was first released on PC in 2004. Many of people were complaining about getting motion sick while playing the game. The standard FoV was set at 75. Shortly after, a patch addressed the problem by adding a feature to modify the FoV to 90. Keep in mind that the Call of Duty standard anno 2011 is 65. You can read more about this historic event here and here and even here.
Most likely the game was configured as such because at the time Valve didn't want their brand new engine to run slowly. So they probably narrowed the FoV to boost performance. Which is key to my next post.

There's another layer of politics going on though. I've mentioned developers so far but it's the publishers who're really competing for the market. The big players are Activision with everything Call Of Duty, EA with Battlefield, Medal Of Honor and Crysis, THQ with Homefront and Bethesda with Brink and Rage.
At present, everyone on the market is trying to knock Activision of its throne, with little success. In my next post I'll explain just why this is and why it's probably not going to change anytime soon while this battle is fought on the consoles. Which in a way has consequences for our PC gaming freedom.

Don't forget to also read part two of A wider point of view.