Archive for August, 2006
Game: Madden 07
Genre: Sports Simulation
Platform: Windows
Trial Period: Wednesday August 30 until I want to whack Madden in the cankle with a Turducken
I’m a football fan. I grew up in Buffalo, NY during the anti-climatic (for us anyways) Super Bowl runs of the Buffalo Bills. I currently live in Pittsburgh, PA, which is a football town through and through. I’m only involved in two Fantasy Leagues this year; I’ve cut down my number to ‘really focus on the game play’.
On the other hand, while I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a hard core gamer, I’m not a noob either. My video game tastes swing towards the RPG and rhythm genres on the consoles, with City of Heroes and a small MUD to fill my MMO tastes and UT2k4 for when I have a long day at work and I just feel like blowing small fury creatures up.
Yet I’ve never been able to get the two loves together. The last football video game I enjoyed was Mutant League Football, and that was more for the option to kill the ref then the actual game play. Before that, Tecmo Super Bowl was the game of choice, only cause Jim Kelley could throw from the back of his end zone, a touchdown pass to Andre Reed, who was in the other end zone. (Even though every Bills fan worth their chicken wings knew Frank Reich, the back up to Kelley, was the superior quarterback. Norwood didn’t lose the Super Bowl by kicking wide right, Kelley did by making time wasting calls as the Bills drove down the field to get into field goal range in Super Bowl XXV. But I digress…)
Heck, the last sports game I played was an EA Hockey game for the Genesis in the mid 90s. I remember the large learning curve for the controls to the game. Most other video games I’ve played had really intuitive controls. It made sense not only how the buttons were laid out, but what actions were given to the player to do. The NHL game I played it took me a weeks worth of playing time to understand the controls, a long time since I would only rent the game and not own it.
Which brings me to Madden. Over the summer I had mastered the controls for the EA hockey game, surely this EA football game would be no challenge? A friend invited me over to play it on his Genesis (He also had the Sega Channel back then. Remember the Sega Channel? This is here for time frame references only…). The controls for the Madden game that I played were unintuitive. I pressed the pass button, but it would always float, no matter if I held the button down or I just tapped it. I would run and was disoriented by the over the shoulder type of camera.
In general, I felt lost while playing this realistic football game, and swore off Madden ever since.
Ever since then, Madden has become a phenomenon. My roommates in college would spend hours playing it, making up personalized teams, running up the score, going 16-0 during their regular seasons. The game has become more than just a football game; I’ve listed it as a football simulator rather than a football game because of this. There are modes in the current ‘07 version where you start off as a college pre-draftee. You have mini games where you go through the NFL combine, get drafted, haggle over your contract, get sneaker endorsement deals, and I hear if you’re a wide receiver, you get to bitch loudly to the press and brand yourself an arrogant asshole. Just like in real life.
Part of me is impressed with this, it is emersion into the NFL world a fan like me can, before this, only dream of. Or watch the NFL Network, but who does that, honestly? This is the part of me that enjoys role playing my characters in MMOs, to surrender myself into the illusionary world 100%, to act as if I were a member of the universe. Another part of me finds all of this boring. Do I really want to have to run drills so my in game football avatar can shave a fraction of a second of his 40 yard time? Do I really want to sit down for hours at a time to figure out how best to alter my fake contract for fake millions of dollars that I can’t even buy anything with? As much as I love the NFL, I hate a lot of the admittedly necessary behind the scenes bullshit that goes on. I don’t want my escape, my fantasy, my idealized NFL version of me to be dragged into this. I just want my NFL avatar to have a good season, end up with a rushing title or defensive player of the year award.
One last thing before I get to my nice and shiny bullet points. (Oh yes, there will be bullet points. Hell, if my NFL character gets drafted by the Baltimore Ravens, there’ll even be real bullets, this is the realism Madden 07 has promised to me). I hate Madden, the personality. Now, I’m sure Coach Madden is a nice guy off camera, a smart one too. He did win a Super Bowl with the Raiders, that’s something not even my beloved Bills can claim. As an announcer, I loath his voice and his commentary. I hate turducken. I hate cankles. I hate ‘Boom’. I hate his tautological ‘commentary’. (”Now, to win the game, you have to score points, while keeping the other team from doing the same.” In the immortal words of my sister circa 10th grade, “No shit, Sherlock.”) When watching roommates play Madden, his repetitive comments would grate on me faster than Chad Johnson can make himself look like an ass after the cameras are on. (Another aside: Did anyone see his new hair do during the preseason games? Me thinks he auditioned for the role of Angel for an off Broadway production of Rent, but was rejected because he was ‘too flamboyant’ to play the drag queen role)
So, what do I expect going into Turducken ‘07?
* The controls will be impossible for me to pick up on. The game tries to be as realistic as possible at the sacrifice of too many controls. I’ll be playing on my PC (PS2 is busted), but using a PS2-like controller. I expect a step learning curve which will frustrate me to no end.
* Sound. I enjoy the sound of everything in the game non-Madden, but even the repetitive cheers, boos, and such can get old after a while. I’ll not turn off my sound, and force myself to all of this audio horror football show has to offer. (”Let’s do a fly route again! Let’s do a fly route again! It’s just a pump to the left, the a bomb to the ri-i-i-i-i-ght”)
* Simulation overload. As I don’t have the game in hand yet, I do not know the correct name, Franchise Mode or Player Mode or what. I’m not just going to submit myself to the game, but the meta-game in the background. Control the price of tickets, training camp and workouts during the week. My fear is while this will be fun, it will become mandatory to increase my character’s stats, and thus my enjoyment of the game, after a while, and turn the fun into work. Games shouldn’t be work.
* Difficulty. Something I’ve noted from others playing the game is games are either too easy (leading to not that satisfying 16-0 seasons) or too hard (leading to 0-16). I will start off on easy mode, but if my games are won by too large of a margin for 4 or more games in a row, I’ll up the difficulty. Win or lose, I’ll keep my season. (Won’t be one of those, “Restart the game if I’m losing” types).
* Cheating. Madden games come with the option to buy Madden cards, which you can use to ‘cheat’ in games. Cause fumbles more often, throw longer, narrow the uprights when the opposition is kicking a field goal. I will play PokeMadden, trying to collect them all, but I won’t use those cards. If I’m going to mimic myself in a video game being hit by or hitting other large, grown men while wearing molded plastic protection while running around on virtual artificial turf, I want things to be as realistic as possible.
Other things are bound to come up as I play, but there’s the rough sketch. Now, back to my Fantasy drafts…hmm, J.P. Losman’s still gonna be QB, poor QB, no above average receivers to pass to, means Willis Mcgahee’s gonna be the only source of offense for the Bills…do I pick him over Shaun Alexander?
August 24th, 2006
Over the past few days I’ve been trying to step beyond the 3-foot songs I’ve been mastering so far, and stretching my wings/feet further to the 4 and 5 foot categories. This has been an interesting challenge because it has involved getting much faster, as well as learning a few of what I call “special moves”. My own terms for some of these (since I don’t know the standard DDR slang) are half-beat triplets, forced foot-switches, and sequential diagonals. Half-beat triplets are when three steps need to be taken in the time normally taken for two. Forced foot-switching is when a holding step with one foot means you’re left to use the other foot for steps on all 3 remaining buttons (which can mean, for instance, having to use your left foot on the right button). Sequential diagonals aren’t particularly special – it means jumping on two buttons in a diagonal a few times – but on 4-foot and higher difficulties you’re expected to do this faster and more frequently, sometimes with many in a row. Maybe these don’t have terms in the DDR communities since they’re seen as being easy and standard anyway – if so I don’t care; I’ve named them now, and they’re still special to me. My precious babies…
So, progress wise I feel I’m doing well. I can get As in quite a few 4-foot songs now, though admittedly not always reliably. Since I don’t have that many songs with 4-foot available I decided to try and do some 5-foot songs too, and was quite surprised with how well I could do – a couple of As and Bs, as well as a few Cs, and most surprisingly an AA on one song. So either I’ve got some very easy 5-foot songs, or I’ve been doing some pretty fiendish 4-footers (I think possibly the latter given the trouble I had breaking into this level, though the AA 5-foot song is obviously very much simpler than others).
However, this progress has come at a price, and that price is hard work. After the first 30 minutes I spent solely doing 4-foot songs my legs felt like jelly and I had to take a rest before I could continue. I’ve gotten a bit more used to them now, but the two hour sessions I tend to do have still been very exhausting, with need of frequent breaks and breathers. And it’s not just physical exhaustion either – the concentration on timing in this game can really exhaust you mentally. By the end of the two hours I find that although I could maybe keep going physically, mentally I’m just incapacitated. I can’t concentrate on the steps enough to time anything right or prepare for different moves, and the arrows just flash by whilst I whimper pathetically. I’m going to have to give up on my habit of writing up a report right after playing – I just can’t gather my thoughts properly, let alone try to think of interesting or witty comments (that’s hard enough for me anyway). My left ankle’s also been playing up a bit. I sprained it a few months ago trying to learn to ice skate – that was an even more embarrassing and pathetic event than trying DDR (it doesn’t help when 8 year olds pick it up in seconds, whilst after an hour you’re still clutching to the barrier in mortal fear). Sometimes after heavier gaming my ankle starts aching again, but (un)fortunately this shouldn’t get in the way of continuing to play.
I’m still making what I consider to be silly newbie mistakes, like mixing the up and down arrows, and completely mis-timing certain jumps. I’m also really terrible at songs where the arrow speed is frustratingly slow, or where the speed changes dramatically at several stages in the song. But in spite of these troubles I am still pleased with how far I’ve gotten to date. I’m now doing well in songs that looked utterly impossible ten days ago. Sometimes I find myself not needing to concentrate as much on the game, and just let my feet glide over the buttons themselves. The game’s coming a lot more naturally to me now. Lyrics have been getting stuck in my head a lot, and some mornings I wake up seeing arrows and imagining steps in my mind, which is perhaps a sign I’ve been playing too much. But it’s getting me one step closer to heaven (baby), which is one step closer to you. However, Billie Jean is not my lover (she’s just a girl), and as I try to make my way to the ordinary world, I will survive, in the gay bar, gay bar. Mah-na mah-na (do do-do do).
There are frustrations though. Many of them are to do with problems revolving around the Stepmania program itself, and though I won’t let that interfere with my overall rating of the DDR genre, permit me a little rant. I was told there was an “Event Mode” whereby you wouldn’t have to play 3 stages at a time, you would just keep selecting songs endlessly (otherwise it takes you to the high score and credits screen after 3 songs and you have to go through the very poor menu system to start again). I figured this would be a popular option, and searched in all the usual places – general options, gameplay options, machine options, miscellaneous… Where did I eventually find the damned thing? “Coin Options”. Why for the love of god is there such a things as coin options?! Why is such an important gameplay feature in there? Coin options has other things in it like how many “coins” you need for a “credit”, and how many games you can have per credit (coins are “inserted” simply by pressing a button – thankfully this whole system can be turned off). There’s even a book-keeping screen so you can keep track of how many “coins” you’ve “spent”. Why, I ask? Why?! Who the hell would want to play at home pretending that they have some slot machine on their computer? Or are there weirdos that actually build a whole DDR machine in their houses with full metal pads and coin slots and everything? If so, are these people allowed to breed? What is wrong with people that they would actually choose their game at home to have all the stupid set-up quirks of an arcade game? Do they get some sadistic pleasure from this, or are they actually imagining themselves in an arcade area surrounded by adoring fans as they play? I’m reminded of my original biased conceptions from three weeks ago of what home-playing DDR fans “must” be like…
Also, the difficulty ratings are so very poorly laid out. I can understand that some 4-foot songs are like 5-foots and so forth – I can excuse some subjective ratings on that. But on top of that are the game classifications of Light, Standard and Heavy difficulty areas. It would be logical for the game to simply put all 2 and 3-foots into Light, 4 to 6-foots in Standard and 7-foot or above in Heavy, or something along those lines at least. Instead the people designing the step-charts have to choose which foot level goes into which difficulty ranking, meaning even further confusion over difficulty levels. There are 2-foot songs in Standard and 5-foot songs in Light. To confound the issue even more, although you can switch difficulty levels within the music menu, what songs are currently displayed is purely dependant on which songs fit the difficulty you’re currently showing. So if you’re in Light mode certain easy 3 or 4 foot songs won’t show up unless you switch over to Standard. This makes it a giant nuisance to navigate through the music looking for ones you’re able to play – in the end you have to try and memorise what foot ratings the songs are given on the different difficulty levels. This isn’t easy with several dozen tracks. It’s all so frustrating when it could be solved with a far simpler system!
On a final note, I went out to a danceclub last night for a friend’s birthday. The DJ was playing lot of 80s stuff, and at one point Billie Jean came on. I was pretty shocked – it’s not a song often played in clubs, but more importantly it’s the song I’ve been playing the most of by far in Stepmania, and the first 4-footer I got an A in. So after getting that A I was wondering just how good my dancing to this song would be. I didn’t have my dance mat with me unfortunately, but I tried dancing to some of the steps I remembered – doing my half-beat triplets and forced foot-switches. I avoided doing any sequential diagonal jumps, since that sort of thing might have drawn too much attention… Overall I’m sure I looked very silly, but thankfully the club was dark and the few people that knew me there were already quite intoxicated. Also, I’m guessing it’s just as silly looking as my normal dancing. I did get some compliments for my dancing that night actually, but I think it was more for effort than style.
Positives: Still improving my skill at this. Y’know, that’s been about the only positive there’s been to the genre so far. Oh yeah, and my mat doesn’t stink as much any more (even though I probably do – so sweaty!)
Negatives: Frustration with Stepmania itself aside, and ignoring the current pain in my ankle, the biggest negative has to be with how this game creeps into you when you play it too much. I’ve generally been doing 2 hours every two or three days, with extra hour sessions when I get the chance. Any game played this often will get into your dreams and subconscious thoughts, and it’s not particularly nice. For people playing this game every day it must simply be a part of their life, always somewhere in the back recesses of their mind, and that’s pretty freaky from my perspective…
Overall so far: This game still hasn’t gripped me, and I still don’t see the general appeal behind the genre. It is no longer an interesting peculiarity and is more and more becoming hard work. I’m toiling at it purely for the aim of achieving better scores. Could someone point out where the fun is?
August 20th, 2006
All right, folks, it’s confession time. After my abortive attempt to log in on Monday, I have steadfastly refused to log in to WoW at all. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s all the other ways in which my life has gone to shit in the past two days.
Anyway, the details of why I’m not playing aren’t quite as important as the fact that I haven’t brought teh funni since last week. (Arguably it could be said that I have, in fact, never brought teh funni but to that I say– it’s my damn site and I’ll do what I want with it.) What this means is that, rather than cut the project short, or do both you and the game a disservice by not going through the full thirty days, I’m going to extend my trial period by one week; the new trial period will end on September 2nd, 2006. That’s right, Blizzard is going to get at least $15 out of me. I figure they deserve it, at least for not letting the Tauren Male dance be “the milkshake song”.
I do have real-life and personal stuff to take care of today, none of which is any of your business, so don’t ask. If all goes according to plan, I’ll at least have one twelve-hour Catass-a-thon to report on between now and the end of the month.
As soon as I have one more play session (normal length) under my belt, I’ll do up a “midway point” report. ‘Till then, En Taro Adun– damn, wait, that’s Starcraft. Meh, same difference.
August 17th, 2006
…Worries for another day
Let the music play
Down in Fraggle Rock!
Okay, so I promised a more fun update, with the plan being to get drunk and play Stepmania with a friend who will make sure I enjoy it. Unfortunately that’s been postponed, but it should hopefully happen shortly. In its place here are some lyrics from the old theme song for Captain Planet:
‘We’re the Planeteers,
You can be one too,
Cause saving our planet is the thing to do!
Looting and polluting
Is not the way,
Hear what Captain Planet has to say:
“The power is yours!”’
Can you imagine that show airing these days? 5 teenagers of different racial backgrounds hold rings for each element (the fifth element being Heart!), combining their powers to stop pollution and save the planet from the evil corporations and scientists! Maybe that was totally gnarly when we were kids, but these days Bush would accuse it of being hippies trying to brainwash our children. Terrorist hippies!
Also somewhat disturbing was finding the theme tune to Alvin and the Chipmunks. The lines go something along the ling of “So get set to have some fun, We’ll bring you action… and satisfaction… We’re the chipmunks, Coming on stronger than ever before!” As I was dancing to this, hearing that high-pitched chipmunk voice sing about coming on stronger and giving me satisfaction, I was extremely creeped out. Didn’t stop me getting an A though…
But anyway, enough of such tomfoolery! Back to the game itself, which has gripped and excited me so intensely that I’ve taken a whole six days to bother shoving out another article about it. To be honest there’s not a great amount to report. This game is really starting to bore me a fair amount now. I’ve usually been playing 30-60 minutes a day, and gradually trying to improve myself. I’ve gone through all my 3-foot songs and gotten A rankings in the vast majority. I managed to impress myself by trying out a 3-foot song I’ve never heard of before and cranking out an AA grade first go!
But 4-foot songs are still an uphill struggle. Today, after going through all the harder 3-foot songs, I gave 4-foot Billie Jean another few tries. First attempt – fail. Second attempt, struggling, but for once I actually managed a D! That’s the first time I’ve been happy with a D outside of cup sizes! After that I felt on a roll, I went another time and was doing amazingly well. I got the health meter up to full, stringing along a very good combo, and was hoping for an A when I started screwing up near the end – resulted in a C overall. After that I was just too tired to do well (I’d been dancing for a good 2 hours straight) so I gave up.
But tomorrow is another day… I am determined to get into the 4-foot songs and do better. I’m also still perplexed by the grade rankings you get at the end. An AA seems only possible if you never miss a single beat. An A only seems possible if you get your bar to full, whilst a B is if it’s nearly full. C and D are obviously lower down the line (which is actually rare to get – either you have the song covered well and you get an A or B, or you totally cock up and fail). However, there seems to be some other factor here since sometimes you get a B if your bar is full, and sometimes an A if it’s not quite full. I’m guessing it must be the number of perfect steps, or how high a combo you can get.
I’ve messed around with the settings a bit and managed to turn the stupid menu timer off (who the hell would want that on?) though I still can’t find a way to disable the way it forces you into a 3-stage mode of play. Interestingly I found an option to turn off the “Marvellous” rating for your steps. I can only assume this means that in terms of points Marvellous is exactly the same as Perfect – it’s only something added on for display. Looking at the post-song statistics I can sort of see why – on the songs I’m good at over 50% of my steps are Marvellous, with a further 25-30% Perfect. Without that extra high rating I’d simply be seeing the same Perfect score all the time. I figure there must be some damn amazing grade for getting the highest rating on every step – something I’ll have to experiment with some time on an easy song. But I really can’t see what the heck is the difference between Great and Marvellous – that split-second variation just really ain’t obvious.
The alterations I made to my pad are getting a little worn – the polystyrene on the left and right buttons has developed a groove in the middle making the buttons a little less responsive at times. I’ll have to look at reworking these with harder materials. Still a few slipping problems too, but not enough to interfere with play – the mat just needs a little adjustment in between stages sometimes. It will be interesting in future to see just how different the proper arcade machines are to my pathetic little patched up cheapo dance mat…
Positives: Well, I guess I’m still improving, albeit very slowly… I don’t feel like a complete pillock playing any more – just bored really.
Negatives: Forget embarrassment or shame, this game is just turning out really really dull. The initial joy from something new has quickly worn off and I’m left really struggling to want to play.
Overall so far: The thing I’ve never understood, and that I understand even less now, is that there are people who play this regularly, on a daily basis sometimes. There are forums with tens of thousands of users dedicated to Stepmania. Why? Just why…? To keep this up I’m going to have to try and add a bit of spice…
August 14th, 2006
My server is down– both of them, now that I think about it. Both Anvilmar and Dark Iron are down. I am Jack’s quivering little ball of hatred.
Of course, Anvilmar is listed as down on the server status page; players are directed to the Realm Status forums where we’re greeted with a list of servers down for “emergency maintenance”. DI is on there (even though it’s listed as online on the status page) but not Anvilmar.
SO FULL OF IRRATIONAL RAGE.
August 14th, 2006
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