Team Classic

So, Bungie added a new playlist to Halo Reach, the Team Classic playlist. Their goal with the playlist was to make Reach feel less like Reach and more like older Halo titles. The changes sound like they’ll cancel each other out (health regenerates faster, more damage), but it ends up creating a faster paced game that does feel like old-school Halo. It’s a total blast, and the community-created map remakes are fantastic.

The first level I played was titled ‘Eclipse’, and I had no idea what the hell that was: turns out, it’s a remake of my favourite FPS map of all time, Lockout. All nine maps in the playlist are recreations of classic Halo maps, and they were all made by dedicated members of the Halo community. Weirdly enough, Bungie chose not to include Reflection, their home-bred Halo 2 remake map. Seems like a poor choice, considering that it’s an excellent map, and the Team Classic playlist suffers from a huge amount of dark blue as you cannot recolour homemade maps. Still, the maps are the best part, and they can be found here.

While I often mock large game communities, including (perhaps especially?) the Halo community, it’s nice to have proof that for every hundred jackasses playing hardcore rap music into their microphones, there are guys who spend hours and hours to make excellent maps, people who spend hours testing these game settings to ensure that they’re as fun as possible, and good people who enjoy making the game they play better. So for all you Reach players out there, hit the link above to download the maps for your own custom games, and I’ll see you in the Team Classic playlist!

Keeping Up With The Joneses

It’s getting more and more difficult to keep up with the online games I play. I’m playing a few single player games at the moment (Donkey Kong, LittleBigPlanet 2, Need For Speed, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood), and I’m trying to keep up with the multiplayer games I want to enjoy, but I can’t.

In Starcraft 2, I’ve lost 18 out of the last 25 matches I’ve played. I used to be a Diamond level player (admittedly that was a bit of a fluke, but I like to think I was legitimate Gold), but right now I’m finding the Silver League to be difficult. I’m adapting, and I’ve turned the losing streak around (four out of those 7 wins were in my last 5 games) but it’s still a hard pill to swallow.

And all the time I spend playing Starcraft is time I’m not spending practicing Halo; I’ve never been this bad at crushing down Elites as I am right now; I haven’t even beaten the Campaign on Legendary yet, and let’s not even look at my multiplayer stats! (A Halo stat tracking website actually told me to just stop playing). And my World of Warcraft characters have fallen the furthest behind. Only one of my 70+ characters has surpassed 80 (he’s capped at 85, actually), and he isn’t even well geared enough to do Cataclysm heroics. And if I take the few hours it’ll take to gear him, my Starcraft skills will start to falter. Plus, a bunch of my friends are trying to get me into League of Legends, but thankfully I despise it, so that’s not a problem. And I think it’s a fair assumption that I won’t be hitting level 50 in AssCreeBro’s online play, although I do enjoy it.

I’m too much of a broad gamer to try and focus on these games. Because all of the time I spend on getting better at games I love is preventing me from seeking out new experiences. If I can draw any conclusions from my Achievements post, it’s that I don’t finish enough games; I’m just biting off more than I can chew. But I’d rather enjoy my games buffet style than play, say, only World of Warcraft but be a l337 h4x0r raider.

If this comes across as baseless whining, I don’t mean it to be. This is a great time where I have so many A+ games to be playing, so many different experiences I can enjoy. It’s just funny that this great variety is coming at the expense of savouring games that could otherwise occupy me for months. Still, I suppose I’ve learned nothing, save that it’s difficult to keep up with the Joneses (assuming the Joneses are hardcore Halo players). But as long as I finish Dragon Age before Dragon Age 2 launches, I think I’ll be okay.

Failure To Launch

While getting the small things right is admirable, an equal amount of attention needs to be paid to that opening experience. Every time some new tech tool or collectors edition game launches, an unboxing video hits the web. First impressions are important.

Which is why it’s critical that a game launches properly. and painful when it doesn’t. A successful launch lets players start playing the game when they get home, and immediately begin to enjoy every aspect of the game. A successful launch also happens on-time. Now, a successful launch shouldn’t be terribly difficult; games often go gold weeks before they launch, giving the developer & publisher time with a gold master to test their online system for bugs, stress test their servers, or even issue a day 1 patch, although that’s not ideal. And developers have been releasing games for years now; I’m sure they have fairly accurate estimates of rough launch-day sales, how much stress that will put on their servers, etc.

I can think of two games that all launched within the last year that all put massive amounts of stress on their respective servers; Starcraft 2 & Halo: Reach. Both games had nearly flawless launches for me, and based on the websites & forums I track, 99% of users feel the same way. Battle.net was functional & operational, allowing me to be crushed into the ground several times on the midnight launch with no notable lag, despite three people playing Starcraft 2 through my one residential connection (!!!). Halo’s launch was near flawless; everything in-game worked fine, but Bungie.net experienced a bit of lag with loading your matches online. Furthermore, your character’s model did not update properly on Bungie.net. Otherwise, all critical game elements on both titles worked great, and loading your match stats was running 100% after a few hours.

These two games are both huge, enormous launches; that’s why it’s such a shame when a game like Rock Band 3 is released in such a sloppy manner. EA is a monolithic company with huge resources; this launch should have been even smoother, considering it’s not as online intensive as Starcraft or Halo. The worst part about Rock Band 3’s launch was actually getting the game into people’s hands. First there was the stupidity about the PS3 keyboard & game bundle not being sold in North America. Really, EA?

Then Harmonix ran into major issues with exporting from Rock Band 2. Rather than just patching that game to allow a direct export of track files to your hard drive, they made it a download from Microsoft & Sony’s digital stores. Not only does this take up a fair chunk of your bandwidth (just under 2gb for me), but this required both Microsoft and Sony to upload the content to their servers. Xbox 360 exporting hit around midnightish, and the PS3 export hitting around 2:00 PM the next day. Really shoddy show; why weren’t the songs uploaded to Microsoft or Sony the day before? They also seem to be sort of figuring this out as they go; not only did many PS3 Rock Band 2 export downloads accidentally make you download a Lego Rock Band track pack, now on the Xbox they actually ran out of Lego Rock Band keys. Why wasn’t this figured out two or three weeks ago? And why not just let you copy the songs directly from the disc; that would have solved every single issue here.

Of course, the rest of their web services were totally borked. The new Rockband.com didn’t even launch until 11 PM, unfortunately, and there wasn’t very much there. Linking your Rock Band 3 to the website still isn’t up, despite there being a large and visible link on the page.

Couldn’t they at least pop open Dreamweaver and add a disclaimer “Not currently available”?

Later in the week came the bad news for Rock Band Stage Kit owners. While it had been previously confirmed that it works with Rock Band 3, only several days after purchase did Harmonix confirm it doesn’t work. Of course, the Rock Band disc is non-returnable, and the export fee is non-refundable. For the vast majority of Rock Band 3 owners this is a total non-issue, but for a few very dedicated fans, this is brutal; at the very least, Harmonix could have at least been honest up front.

The final nail in the coffin has been the difficulty many people have been getting with physically getting copies of the game. Gamestop/EB Games in Canada didn’t even receive the keyboard bundles at their warehouse for the PS3 until the day Rock Band released, leaving many people in the dust. The bundles they did ship were low in number, meaning only people who preordered a fair amount early even received keyboards. The pro Mustang guitar hasn’t been even seen in Ottawa; Amazon.com now has it launching on November 16th for Xbox 360 and November 24th for PS3. And finally, until yesterday, my local EB Games has still not received a single disc copy of Rock Band 3 for PS3 (does Harmonix have something against Sony, or is it just me?)

In short, actually buying the game, short of people who preordered just the disc, has been far too difficult.

What makes this launch so disappointing isn’t just that it was bungled. It’s that they shouldn’t have been bungled this badly. Harmonix and EA have both done big launches before. Both teams have lots of experience managing web services, and all the hardware and software was announced early enough that it should have been available in fair numbers, with appropriate pricing. Export information should have been figured out much earlier, uploaded to the servers earlier; it should have been available when people brought their copy of Rock Band home. Obviously none of these are game-breaking issues; I absolutely adore Rock Band 3. It’s fantastic, and it comes highly recommended from the LvlofDetail Review Team™.

But its launch was a failure.

Remember Move

Alternative controls. They're hot. People dig 'em. Whether it's a dance pad, a badass Ion Drum Rocker, touchscreen, fake guitar, less-fake guitar, wiggle, waggle, or haggle, alternative control input is sort of this generation's headlining act. The Wii is the only console with a built-in motion control, and after years of mocking and ridicule, both Sony and Microsoft are shamelessly releasing their own motion controls. Sony's has already launched, but I feel that they picked a poor time to launch it; just a bad context.

Playstation Move is intended to increase the lifespan of the Playstation 3 console, add all sorts of interesting capabilities, and essentially be the "big Playstation release of the year" especially with no LittleBigPlanet, no Uncharted, no Killzone this holiday season (Seriously, Sony has like nothing for core gamers this holiday). It launched on September 17th.

Halo: Reach is obviously the huge Microsoft launch of the year. It's one of the Xbox 360's biggest launch titles ever. It launched on September 14th.

I wonder which one beat the other in media attention? Hint: a simple Google search pulls about 30 million results for Playstation Move, and 90 million results for Halo Reach. Funny, you'd think a peripheral which is going to be mentioned in every single article about PS Move compatible games would pull more results than just a single game! Yes, I understand that this is completely unscientific and not a fair measure of popularity. Still, I think it's an interesting way to compare mindshare, or attention, or just volume of articles.

Comparing sales is of course just as unfair as they're in completely different product categories and pricing ranges (Well, they're actually in similar pricing ranges if you compare the base products, bundles, Legendary editions, and all the related hoo-yah). But still, it wasn't the most . . . flashy launch for a product that is intended to boost the Playstation brand and appeal to a new audience. A lot of potential shelf & advertising space was flooded by Halo advertisements. Now, had they waited a couple of weeks, it would have launched right before the big holiday blitz, before it would compete directly with Kinect, but after core consumer mindspace & store shelfspace had regrown from the various Halo-overdose. Alternatively, they could have launched prior to the Halo release, right when families are in "back-to-school shopping mode" and are checking out big box stores, where big interactive displays could draw the eyes of bored kids (and bored parents!).

It's generally not an amazing time for that sort of launch. Around that time lots of older kids are heading off to college; a great time to pick up a well-known multiplayer competitive shooter to play with your new roommates, NOT a great time to pick up a more complicated input system. They have fond memories of enjoying the new Halo title in fall with their classmates. While Move is a great potential source of enjoyment for this same group of people, it's a pricier investment for a multiplayer environment, something you must keep in mind for cheap students. And unlike Wii Sports, Move no longer has the "NEW" factor anymore, so it's less appealing for drunken antics when half of them already cart around a Wii with them.

Lots of families will be interested in Move . . . and lots of families are just reeling from back-to-school purchasing and preparing for the Christmas blitz. Few families buy "Post-Back-To-School-Gifts". Launching it during back to school would have worked better, but not immediately after.

So, what's the best time to launch Move? Right after your competition launches their biggest game of the year, right after one spending spree but before people are prepared to spend even more for the Christmas launch? September is not a bad time to launch . . . but in context, it's not the best time

Disclaimer: this is pure punditry based solely on my opinion of the launch date of Move. I have no idea about actual sales numbers . . . I think it's just a poor time for that sort of launch, contextually speaking. It's also odd that Sony hasn't really crowed about sales figures.

To sum up, Move was absolutely buried by Halo in terms of store space, advertisements, and mindshare. Sony could have picked a much better time to launch the exact same product, but the context surrounding it's launch was . . . not ideal. Halo Reach's marketing campaign "Remember Reach" is pretty appropriate for Move, given the circumstances.

Local Matchmaking

I'm genuinely surprised that this hasn't made a bigger splash yet; Bungie completely revamped Halo's matchmaking system for local players, making me happier than I could ever realize.

As I'm sure many people have noticed, it's becoming more and more difficult to play games locally anymore. You know what I mean; sitting physically with somebody (Oh the humanity!) playing the same game on the same television at the same time. Games that do feature local play (Scott Pilgrim, New Super Mario Bros Wii) are often mocked for having little or no online feature.

Bungie is one of the few companies that still respects local gaming, and they cemented that position with Halo: Reach.

Halo: Combat Evolved featured an extremely in-depth set of split-screen options. Play the entire campaign with a buddy, or of course competitive multiplayer. Halo 2 extended that feature, but also moved the whole shebang online, as did Halo 3. And thankfully, you did NOT need two, three, or four Xbox Live accounts to bring your buddies.

However, one of the more irritating things about that was the gulf between ranked and unranked matches. I of courseunderstand the gulf in one sense; how does one track the rank of "guests"? What ended up happening was that there were two broad categories of game playlists; ranked, and unranked. Of course, you could bring guests into unranked, but not into ranked games. If you did have two Xbox Live accounts, you can bring 'em both into ranked playlists, except for playlists like Lone Wolf, which are free-for-all. Lots of good times were had in Team Doubles. Still a bothersome situation; some of the ranked playlists (Team Slayer, Team Doubles) were fantastic, and I don't always want to play Multi-Team or Team Actionsack (Correction: I never want to play Team Actionsack). The social playlists tended to be more "fun", but sometimes you want genuine competition. Of course, you not only need two active Xbox Live Gold Accounts, but they must both be on the same Xbox; if my friend All In Vain's account is on his Xbox at home, we have to "recover" it at my house, then he must re-recover it when he gets home. It's just an unnecessary hassle and cost, not to mention awkward to understand (For people who aren't knowledgable with Xbox Live and how it works, it genuinely is confusing; they can play with four friends in this playlist, why not this playlist?). This also creates stupid playlists like "Team Slayer" (ranked) and "Social Slayer" (unranked). This shouldn't be needed.

Enter Halo: Reach.

In a brilliant move, Reach's playlists no longer have independent rankings. Each playlist simply has a "Local Players" count, which is quite easy to see. Thus, in a team gametype I can play with my three non-Xbox Live friends, but in a one-man score attack it clearly indicates that no local players can enter. Thus my buddy doesn't need to recover his Xbox Live account for the two of us to play Arena Doubles. Of course he needs to recover his account if he wants the credits and ranking, but he might not care. Besides, there's nothing Bungie can do about that; the atrocious account recovery system is all Microsoft. It makes the entire system much more transparent, easy to navigate, and it allows my friends and I to choose between Team Slayer of Multi-Team without having to fight it.

The other advantage is that you simply have a rank, rather than a rank for each playlist and an overall rank. You also have an Arena Rating, but that's something much more hardcore and essentially unrelated to this post. Bungie posted anextremely interesting look at their Arena Rating system on their website; if the phrases betrayal penalty and arc tangent in the same article make your heart all a-flutter, check it out. This removes that unusual situation where you see somebody with an extremely basic rank, but then you look them up and find that they're a General who gets more kills in a day than you've achieved across your entire life. As amusing as that could be, it really wasn't when they destroyed you.

Of course, it also completely disregards the Xbox Live standard of "Player" and "Ranked" matches. The whole Xbox Live "Trueskill" is in there in the background . . . somewhere. I have no idea what Microsoft thinks about their entire system being bofrangled by Bungie, especially since Trueskill was in part derived from Halo 2's Optimatch matchmaking system.

In general, I'm quite happy that me and my buddies, sitting on the same couch, are allowed to play Halo: Reach online with minimal hassle. The same can't be said for most games these days.