Shadowrun reimagined

I've been in love with the Shadowrun series ever since I first rented the Genesis game. I didn't discover the pen and paper version until much later, but I rented that game so many times that my parents finally bought it for me. So it should really be no surprise that I was excited about the 360 Shadowrun game in the works. My initial enthusiasm about the game has worn off though. Over the past seven months or so people have been reporting two things which make me very nervous about the game:

First of all, there is definitely not going to be any single player aspect to the game. This is a purely multiplayer game. This is such a let down, since the Shadowrun world makes a fantastic backdrop for an FPS game. You have characters wielding frickin' huge guns, cybernetics, and magic while running espionage and assassination missions for anonymous clients. To me that smells like a great setup for a single player game.

The second thing which bothers me about the game is that the developers have said there will only be 8-10 maps for the game. That's still a good number of maps, but combined with the lack of any single player mode, I'm just worried it won't be enough of a game to keep my interest for very long. For the standard $60 fee you pay for 360 games, I expect to at least spend 20 hours playing it. For example, I played through the entire single player campaign in both Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, and Rainbow Six: Vegas on both difficulties in addition to playing massive amounts of it online. Can a game with only multiplayer and a few maps really stack up against something as complete as Rainbow Six?

I suppose it really all depends on how good that multiplayer is. The concept is certainly a good one: guns are for killing, magic is a toolbox to which increases your chances for survival and destruction. The trailer for the game may not have the best graphics I've ever seen but the gameplay looks interesting, and the developers' recent comments have assuaged my fears to some degree. FASA has really put all of their eggs into the multiplayer basket, lets just hope they do it well because if not the game will be a complete failure.

Don't get me wrong. Despite my griping, I will be the first in line to buy it if the multiplayer is as good as it looks. I've certainly spent more than 20 hours on multiplayer in some of the games I own, and I plan doing the same for this one.

Anyway, enough of that. This information has been around for quite a while, and shouldn't be new to anyone who has been keeping up with the game. Instead, I'd like to talk about what the single player game could have been, while still keeping it a first person shooter (though a squad based one):

Imagine a single player storyline made up of around 10-15 well designed levels which take place in corporate buildings, warehouses, and the back alleys of a decimated Seattle. These are the "storyline levels" in which the single player story unfolds, each taking between 10-30 minutes to complete. Each of these maps would be crafted for the storyline alone (i.e. no filler), and approximately 4-6 hours of gameplay would take place in them.

Here's the kicker though: In between these storyline levels, there would be randomly generated levels with randomly generated objectives to complete. Static world geometry would always stay the same in these levels, but the people and objects in the level would change. For example, lets say the mission is to take place in an office building. The program would randomly choose from one of a few pre-built building shells. This building shell would not change (floor plan, stairways, windows, etc), but the game would then fill in the building with security guards, security checkpoints, cubicles, computers, desks, chairs, objectives, enemy runners, and so on based on a heuristic. This is similar to technology used by many other games for instancing a randomly created dungeon (even Nethack is really this idea, on a smaller scale). These intermediate missions would fill up maybe 3-4 hours of gameplay in between the storyline missions. (Or perhaps they are optional, allowing the player to gain experience and money before taking on the next "real" mission.) It would be even better if the game could randomly generate floorplans and sprawling alleyways, but I don't really know the feasibility of this. It's possible it could work because we aren't allowing full exploration of the world (just a single ten story office building, thanks), but that would certainly be an interesting programming/technological challenge.

These randomly generated missions would work in this case for a few key reasons. First of all, they fit into the overall "style" of Shadowrun in that you work a lot of odd jobs for shady characters and it wouldn't make a lot of sense if the story progressed completely linearly in the same way Halo does (for example). Secondly, as much as possible, the storyline missions should be completely devoid of "filler" content. Each of those 10-15 levels should be entirely related to the story must drive forward the game's plot. It is the job of these standalone missions to provide a logical break in the storyline, as well as some mindless fun. Third, having these randomly generated missions are not there to pad the length of the game. These standalone missions should be enjoyable by themselves and the player should want to play them (much in the same way that the Terrorist Hunt mode in Rainbow Six: Vegas is incredibly fun despite the fact that there isn't any storyline or point to it other than killing terrorists). I still go back and play Shadowrun missions for the Genesis despite having beat the game eons ago primarily because the mission structure was well designed. Lastly, this serves as a good way of having infinite missions for online play. I really enjoy playing Terrorist Hunt in R6 with friends, but I really wish the enemies had more than the two or three layouts that they currently do. If you could add a randomly changing floor plan to buildings, and objective targets which could be anywhere in the building you would have a highly replayable system.

Missions themselves (both storyline and standalone) would have one or two primary objectives, and one to three secondary objectives. To complete a mission, you have to complete the primary objectives. To get a bonus payment, you have to complete the secondary objectives as you find them, but you may leave the mission any time you have completed the primary objectives. The randomly generated standalone missions could pick objectives randomly from a few preprogrammed objectives (eliminate character X, hack into the such-and-such terminal, and so on).

With this game we could also add back in the concepts of experience, character levels, and equipment. Other games (such as Planetside and Rainbow Six: Vegas) have added the concept of experience and levels to first person shooters with a good degree of success. The only thing I'd add to this is adding more of the Shadowrun rules, and using money as a limiting factor in the single player game. You actually have to buy new weapons, armor, and cybernetics as they become available. The two sticking points I see with this are combat rules and decking. Pen and paper Shadowrun obviously has specific rules for combat, but I don't see those fitting in at all here. It's possible to slightly increase accuracy (and possibly damage) as the character gains levels, but this is an FPS, and we shouldn't monkey with too much with the mechanics in this department. Decking is right out. It's fantastic in the Genesis version of Shadowrun, and a good DM can make pen and paper decking ridiculously fun, but I really think a game of this nature should focus on meatspace instead of cyberspace.

Lastly, just so we are clear, leave magic in! It's probably a good idea to tone it down slightly though. This is not only to make the game a bit closer to the source books (teleportation, for example, is explicitly forbidden in Shadowrun), but also to increase the challenge of some areas. Even if your character can walk through walls, I doubt Joe Shmo security guard can do the same, so why not just drop through two floors to get away? The ideas the Shadowrun team has for magic would work great for a multiplayer game, but some of them may be problematic for a single player game.

This is what I would do with the Shadowrun series, if given the chance.

Is such a game possible? I'd like to think so. This kind of game would require roughly the same amount of content as a game like Rainbow Six: Vegas does, but some of the hand-created content would be replaced with randomly generated areas. We have seen in other games that randomly generated content is possible, but I bet it would take a good deal of work to ensure that the generated maps are playable. Thankfully, for multiplayer, you wouldn't need to pass these generated maps over the internet, just seed the map generator with the same heuristic and everyone will generate the same one.

Oh well, I can dream can't I?

Halo

Lets just come right out and say it. The original Halo is a fantastic game, the sequel to Halo is so awful I cringe every time I hear someone talking about it. Of course, I don't think I can win for losing. Hating Halo is the trendy thing to do, loving Halo is the trendy thing to do, and here I am riding the fence.

It's easy for some to dismiss Halo as a fanboy delusion, but there are some things about the game which make it one of the best first person shooters I've ever played. Here is a quick summation of them, in no particular order:

1. The story has a compelling storyline (for a first person shooter anyway) which goes above and beyond the standard FPS modus operandi of "get the story out of the way so you can start killing lots of interesting creatures."
2. The weapons system was well thought out. All of the weapons, except the pistol, are very well balanced. The human weapons act exactly as I feel they should handle, and the alien weapons feel...well, alien. You aren't given ridiculously overpowered weapons such as the beam sword, and the flow of battle is very natural.
3. The vehicles in the game are very well designed. The Warthog (lightweight vehicle) is very agile, the Scorpion (tank) feels slow and tank-like. The vehicles which provide you protection (IE you are not hurt while in them) all have health of their own, and you are hurt when hit inside an invincible vehicle.
4. The game has a nigh perfect PC translation, so you can play with a mouse and keyboard with all it's wonderful benefits.

The only things I can say bad about Halo is the pistol needs to be rebalanced, and the console version cannot be played over Xbox Live. All in all, if you are an FPS fan, and you have missed the original Halo, you should pick it up. Aside from being the trendy thing to hate, there's no reason not to.

Halo 2, on the other hand, is FPS gaming gone horribly, horribly wrong. I honestly cannot fathom why people aren't up in arms over the various aspects of the game. For the sake of fairness, lets look at what Halo 2 got right:

1. Online multiplayer! This was incredibly lacking from the original.
   
2. Matchmaking is done very well. So long as you aren't on the bottom of the ladder, you can find a match of equal skill level almost instantly.
3. Better graphics.

These things cannot make up for the flaws though. In no particular order:

1. The single player game is basically unfinished, and the storyline is rather disappointing.
2. The weapons have been changed, and mostly for the worse. The plasma pistol acts like a cruise missile, making it impossible to get out of the way unless you are at point blank range...and even then it's iffy. You have to be using a two handed weapon or dual wielding to be competitive. The beam sword instant kill is irritating, but not completely unbalanced. And so on.
3. The vehicles in the game have been completely changed, mostly for the worst.
4. The most damning aspect of Halo 2 is the huge head hit boxes combined with crazy impossible auto-aim corrections.

It's really hard to stress how much point 4 ruins the game. You really have to see this to believe it:



In most FPS games you need at least a modicum of skill to pull off a headshot or even just to hit the other players. All of this combines to make multiplayer farcical, and a complete waste of time. Why not just play a real FPS and see how you stack up?

Edit: It's really just the hit boxes and auto-aim issue which makes me hate the game so much, but I suppose I really should have added a more as to what my specific problems with the vehicles are. That's what I get for rushing a post out the door.

I have two complaints about the vehicle system: The warthog is entirely too destructible. I can't seem to get from point A to point B without it blowing up due to small encounters which I was trying to avoid anyway. The banshee is the same way, only good for 2 to 3 encounters with ground units (minus rocket launchers) and it's ready to explode.

On the other hand, Halo 2's vehicle system is still better than a lot of the other FPS games we see out there. Perfect Dark's jetpack and uncontrollable hovercraft come to mind. Those two honestly seem like they were tacked on as an afterthought.

First Person Shooters

For the longest time I didn't like console first person shooters (Goldeneye and Perfect Dark being the exceptions). I grew up with Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, and Doom. I even spent an unhealthy amount of time playing Unreal Tournament in high school. By the time I put down the original Unreal Tournament, I could beat the hardest bot setting in a 1 on 1 death match.

I did play some console FPS games as well, but really the only things which were out there worth playing were Goldeneye and its sequel, Perfect Dark. I never thought of them as being in the same category as PC FPS games since the playing style was completely different. The primary difference was the fact that you never really had to worry about more than one axis of rotation when lining up a shot. Auto-aim took care of when an enemy was above or below you; you simply had to point the crosshairs in their general direction and they are dead.

When the X-Box generation consoles started getting FPS games, I immediately hated them. They fixed the problem with the previous generation of console FPS games: auto-aim. These new-fangled games require you to use two joysticks to control your crosshairs, adding skill back into the game, but they lacked one thing which the PC games got right: finesse. If two players of equal skill are playing an FPS against each other, with one person using a controller and the other using a keyboard and mouse, the mouse would win every time.

For those of you who have never seen a skilled player on a PC FPS, you may have a hard time believing this. A skilled player will set the mouse sensitivity very high, so that they can quickly adjust their crosshairs when they see a target. As an example, lets compare Unreal Tournament 2004 for the PC to Halo for the original X-Box. If you compared the crosshair movement in Halo to the mouse sensitivity I set UT to play at, you would see my mouse sensitivity is roughly 4-5 times the speed of the crosshairs in Halo. Now you can increase the sensitivity in Halo up from its default, but this will not give you as much control as a mouse will when you are moving your cursor.

What is the result of this? When I see someone in a PC FPS, I use the mouse to perform a "Sweeping Shot," meaning I sweep the crosshairs directly to the person I want to shoot and pull the trigger. This is done so fast that I sometimes sweep past them, but I still click at the right time, landing the shot roughly 90% of the time. For something analogous to the Flack Cannon in UT or the Shotgun in F.E.A.R., this is usually an instant kill within the first split second of the encounter. This is in contrast to most console FPS games I've played where the average 1 on 1 encounter lasts slightly longer, requiring extra time (but still not very long) to line up the shot.

Maybe this all is just a result of my upbringing. I'll be the first to tell you I'm no expert in console FPS games. I'm pretty good, but my cousin still kills me in Halo multiplayer, and I slaughter him at Unreal Tournament. Initially it was hard to convince him that I was actually good at FPS games until we started playing UT in Assault mode on the same side. At the end of the match I had roughly 100 kills to his 40, and I died half as much as he did. He was so used to stomping me at Halo it took a while to sink in.

I had a similar experience my second year of college. There was a LAN party hosted on campus where the primary tournament featured Quake 3: Arena. One of the local gamer groups, consisting mostly of frat boys who considered themselves gods of FPS gaming (both console and PC), showed up and talked non stop about how good they were and how they were going to dominate the tournament. They shut up after the first two rounds. In their defense, they were fairly good, taking home second and third place, but I'd bet for all their bragging about how good they are at first person shooters, they had never met anyone who was actually good at PC FPS games.

More recently, I've started adding that twitch reflex into my console gaming. In Rainbow Six: Vegas, I do pretty well with a shotgun by upping my controller sensitivity and using sweeping shots. This is effective, but not as effective as it is with a mouse. Maybe I'm just asking for too much out of the controller.