Wow…these things are getting to be more and more of a chore each week. I just want this quarter to be over already. Oh well, I haven’t really been playing much this week. Still grinding my way through Earthbound and playing Team Fortress 2 which recently released updates for both the Spy and Sniper classes, as well as changing a few other things. Other than that the only other thing I played this week was the Nanovor game given out in class, which has been alright. I can’t rightly criticize it for not thoroughly entertaining me because it’s a kid’s game and I’m not really the one that Smith & Tinker were thinking of when they made this game.
Since I have little to say about the Nanovor game I’ll just start with that. It’s a fun, simple, pokemon-esque game that’s being developed by Smith & Tinker games. The past week a few of the game’s team talked to our class and handed out electronic toys that come with the game, allowing us to play around. The toy itself is rather nice with a surprisingly high-quality screen, and it comes preloaded with 3 minigames and a selection of Nanovor monsters (the pokemon of the game). I have only had two problems with the device, one of which is admittedly stupid. When I first opened the package (the toy was packed in a clamshell plastic case and zip ties) I spent a good solid minute trying to turn the dang thing on, fumbling around with it like an idiot while everybody else’s was playing a start-up jingle. Right out of the gate this children’s toy had bested me…ouch. Covered in the stench of failure I asked the person sitting next to me to turn mine on, and he looked at me for a second with understandable perplexity until he showed the little power switch on top of the system. WTF…of course it was obvious but I still couldn’t figure it out on my own. Was I really just stupider than an 8 year old? Yes. But, to my defense, it might serve the toy better to maybe color the switch yellow or orange, colors already present on the device. No harm in making more obvious something so integral to the experience, right? I really, really, really hope that somewhere in the world, after the game’s release, a little kid gets frustrated because s/he cannot turn the toy on, thus vindicating me (somewhat) of my stupidity… My only other problem with the toy has been the lack of easy volume control. There’s no switch and no buttons on the toy for changing volume, forcing you to change it within a menu. While not a deal-breaker, it is frustrating at times.
The Nanovor game itself, where you have a team of monsters fighting each other, is fun and simple. Really, there are no complaints that I really have to leverage here. The client is manageable, gameplay balance is sound, and evolutions are varied and unique. I wouldn’t be surprised if my younger self would have loved something like this…God knows I was a total sucker for Pokemon. And YuGiOh. After the talks last week, though, I do have a much greater respect for the development and marketing of these games. There’s so much more to making games for kids than I ever really gave credit for, and kudos to the guys at Smith & Tinker for what they’ve done and I wish the best of luck for them and their product.
Kay-O, with that out of the way, the only other thing I really have to discuss is the new TF2 update, specifically the new weapons unlock system. A while back, when I gushed over how great TF2 is I talked about how unlocking a new weapons forced players to try new characters, becoming more adept with that specific class. A player would have to unlock X amount of achievements to earn weapon X, Y amount of achievements for weapon Y, and so on. It was because of this system that I finally came to respect the Scout as a class and see just what it was he was good for. Now, however, with the release of the Sniper and Spy updates, Valve have implemented a new, controversial, system for unlocking weapons; one where achievements meant nothing and weapon unlocks are chalked up to random drops over time.
For example, before for the Scout update, I would only unlock “The Sandman” (Scout’s new melee weapon) after unlocking 16 achievements, or something like that. Now, I can still try that, or I can just mindlessly grind with which ever class I want, because every few hours players will “Discover” new weapons while playing. For the new Sniper/Spy weapons, one can only unlock those by playing a long time and hoping that the random drop results in giving one of the six new weapons. However, the system doesn’t just give you weapons you have yet to receive, you are just as likely to get multiples of old weapons as you are to get a new weapon. Personally, over the 9’ish hours I’ve played as of today, I’ve unlocked four weapons, one new and three that I already had. Hooray? One of my friends who has also played just over 9 hours has unlocked at least seven weapons, and to my knowledge three of them are new. Player can also pick up new hats for the classes, which do nothing but look cool/different, also obtained via random drop.
Personally I am not too upset with the system, because I am a sh*t sniper and am too big a coward to play Spy (it’s just too tense…and I’m a baby). It would have taken me the better part of forever to get the new weapons for these guys, though there are some drawbacks. What’s interesting about all this is how this changes so much of TF2 into more of an MMORPG. Now I essentially have to grind, like I would in any of my RPGs, to get the items that I want. No more do I absolutely have to become proficient with a class to unlock its new weapons. When I look at things like this, I surprisingly get a little upset. When the new updates came out I used to be excited at having this hurdle to surmount. Every time I logged on I would have a specific set of goals in mind. Now, however, if my goal is to unlock the Sniper’s new primary weapons, it could take anywhere from one hour to several days of consecutive play. I was playing earlier today, hoping to unlock anything at all because the last 6 hours I had played I didn’t unlock a damn thing. I got so upset and frustrated that I quit playing because “this s*it is not worth my time right now.” About an hour before writing this I went back in because I didn’t want to end my play session on such a sour note, and after about an hour and a half I got a new weapon for the Spy…Hooray. By that point I had become so flustered and jaded that the reward did little to satisfy me. In JRPGs, my favorite RPG, I love level grinding but I abhor hunting for items, just because so little is in my control, and once I commit to getting a certain item the game is now in total control, leaving me subject to the laws of probability and chaos theory.
All that been said, I am still not completely against the system. It might just be for the free TF2 weekend, where Valve allows every steam user to play TF2 for free without buying it, that this system persists, but that doesn’t seem too likely to me. On the team fortress blog, Valve have said that they will create a trading system so that players can trade weapons with one another, which would justify the useless duplicates that we have all picked up en masse. I love Valve so very much, and it’ll take more than this to turn me off of TF2, at least for the time being.
*too lazy for picks this week...who really gives a f***..?
No comments:
Post a Comment