Confessions of a Whore

“If you have something to confess, do it now. Give yourself some peace“.

Last night I Achievement Whored.

Well, sort of, as we’ll see… however more accurately I helped out a friend by setting up his attempt to ‘glitch’ Left 4 Dead to allow him to get an Achievement that is very difficult to unlock under normal play conditions. I actually only agreed to do this, because this particular glitch would only affect him – only he’d get the Achievement, and I wouldn’t. Which was exactly what I wanted, because if I unlocked this Achievement I would only find any satisfaction in it by doing it under proper play conditions – so I actively want to leave it locked as a potential goal for another time.

As I discussed the Achievements of L4D more with him, it was obvious there was quite a few “workaround” ways to get many of the Achievements on this game. Glitches like this were pretty complicated, but there were the far more obvious ones like putting it on the easiest difficulty setting, specifically playing solo, or with a group of 4, or the classic the ‘2nd controller’ offline ‘multiplayer’ mode. My friend was quite willing to use any or all of these techniques in The Quest for the Holy Unlock.

However, to defend my friend, as he’s not exactly an iWin controller-using baboon, he specifically didn’t ruin anyone else’s play session in his self-admitted Achievement Whoring, in fact, he explained he doesn’t like playing online competitive or even co-operative  games at all in general – due the the problem of most ‘pick up group’ players being total dickshits – a problem I do sympathise with entirely. So he actually chooses to get even the “Versus” mode Achievements via ‘exploits’ in only offline play where he can.

I came to the firmer conclusion that as I’d already suspected, and like so many games, L4D has some very poorly conceived Achievements.  So it won’t really interest me to try and get some of them at all because of this failure in the game’s design. However, it got me thinking further; why does my “Whoring” friend do it? Whereas I see this gamerscore meta-game as one not worth playing, except in particular circumstances, for the reasons explained in my previous take on Achievements (and also covered in an excellent post on Not Rocket Science too), my friend here was actively engaged in this meta-game and clearly deriving fun from it. I got the sense that he enjoyed for the feeling of completeness he got from getting the Achievements – even via any ‘unintended’ means necessary. Regardless of the method it still made him feel like he’d ‘finished’ the game (or finished a greater portion of). When I asked him about it more, this seemed to fit. He’s the type of player, of which I know many, that generally just plays any game through once, just to ’see the story’ and finish the game, and won’t care if he does it on easy mode or whatever as he doesn’t really necessary want the challenge or the potential frustration along with it. As for collecting achievements he said he mostly did it on a whim, as if it was almost an unconcious decision – and that he doesn’t do it for most games. But for certain games, like L4D, he’d decided he wanted to try to get as many Achievements as he possibly could – and any he was frustrated by not being able to get via ‘normal play’ he was happy to try and unlock via any other method, not for the gamerscore but just because he wanted to and he could. To me this was more the stance of a “collector”, and although surely not mutually exclusive, it does seem to be somewhat different than the ‘badge of honour’ (or skill or knowledge if you like) motivation that is more typical of the Achievement ‘hunter’. Which, when it results in ‘boosting’ play, I see as merely a cheaters perversion of  my own attitude to Achievements. Ie: potentially fun sub-goals and also records of what I consider real fun accomplishments in a game – hence why I refuse to take any measures to shortcut the fun I find in working towards those records.

Hmm, wrong image search...

Once the L4D unlock glitch had been ‘acheived’ though, I started having a quick play on the free demo of Ikaruga. It is on offer to Gold members this week for the paltry sum of 400 MSP, which is only about 3 pounds. I commented at the time in XBL chat that it seems almost rude not to buy it for such a cheap price as it’s a pretty good game that once-upon-a-time I had been totally hyped about… however that’s exactly the issue with it for me. I had it on the Dreamcast, I played it on the Dreamcast, and I still have a Dreamcast hooked up, right there next to my XBox 360 (albeit on an SD-TV as the DC’s lower resolution tends to look better). So really, why was I even  seriously considering spending extra cash on this game, that I could play for no additional cost, and could’ve played ‘for free’ at any point before now too?

Was it just for the higher fidelity graphics? Was it just for the online multiplayer, or the convenience of having it on my “main” console (& TV).. ? Perhaps… but when I found myself actually opening up the Achievements list to decide whether to buy the game or not it hit me. Had I unwittingly turned into some lesser varient of an Achievement Whore myself.. ? Was I really considering spending money just to get some gamerscore? With some relief as I analysed myself, I realised this wasn’t the case.

The main reason I cared about the Achievements was to see if they would give me a new viable “goal” that would make me want to re-play the game again, but the other more surprising reason to me, was that the Achievements, and the online nature of my XBL account itself, were also providing a means for me to to potentially be able to show my respect for the game & it’s developers in a very tangible fashion. If I bought & played the game it would show on my gamercard online on things like this blog and social networks. XBL Friends would see me playing the game. Ikaruga! It’s friggin’ hardcore Treasure shmup! Or if I unlocked an Achievement, I would be able to post it to my facebook newsfeed, and friends would see I was playing this game. I could easily display my liking for Treasure, others might see it and comment, ask what it is, or choose to play the game co-operatively with me or challenge my scores and the like…. I realised it was all of this that was actually the deciding factor in getting the game and playing it again. I don’t know what this says about my style of play – I suspect nothing really. The fact that such non-game features feature into my buying & playing decisions probably says more about me as a person than a gamer really – and just how much I like games in general!

To the spirit of a fighter

Stolen from somewhere on SRK.com! I actually needed a bit of help translating the advice dog - 'FOB' = "fresh off the boat" - a reference to displaying "contemporary East Asian youth cultures" in this instance Oh and 'AH' is Arcana Hearts.

There’s an article forthcoming on my full thoughts on Street Fighter IV, but I think it’s a summary enough to say for now that I’m no longer playing or following the game very much at all. However as long pre-supposed here on agoners, the main reason for the excitement around SF4 was not SF4 itself, but its position as a flagbearer for the return of the 2d fighting game scene in general. And what a return it has been!

The years of having nothing fighting game wise to play, and/or no-one to play against have ended, and now the pendulum has swung the other way with veritable a glut of good fighting games, and XBox Live and other competition generally always available. And not to mention the excellent joysticks and controllers now available, neatly solving all my joystick issues, are also mainly thanks to SF4.

The trouble now is finding the time to play them all, and deciding which to play and which to dedicate my real ’serious’ gaming time to as well. Perhaps the advice dog can help?

This past few weeks have been especially mad with both Garou: Mark of the Wolves & The King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match being released to XBox Live Arcade.

I’d never had the chance to play Garou at all before, but it seems to be a really great engine and really fun to play so far. It appears to be pretty much the ‘Street Fighter 3′ of the Fatal Fury series, set after the other games, with only a single returning (much older) character, with vastly improved graphics & animation and even technical additions to the game engine centering around just-defense, a kind of parry. I’m intrigued to actually find out more about where some of these characters come from too, although many are of pretty obvious parentage/heritage. This game on it’s own just a couple of years ago would’ve had me immensely excited & playing it night after night. Now it’s practically lost in the sea of fighting games.

Too many great characters & games!

The King of Fighters 98 Ulitimate Match, as well as being an appropriately long-winded title, actually lives up to it’s billing. Another game I’d never got to play, I was really shocked at how amazing it is. I really lost touch with KOF beyond 97 & one of the contributing factors was constantly having my favourite characters removed or having their moves changed beyond all recognition. But KOF98UM is a glorious return to form for me!

OHMSHIT!!GEYSER!

Virtually every one of my favourite characters or moves are back & in the form I used and loved them – it’s almost like meeting old friends again.

The only huge let-down with both SNK games is that the netcode & Live interface is almost tragically poor. The input lag is worse than even SF4, and at times even worse than older XBox titles like 3rd Strike. This is such a terrible shame really, as it will really put a shelf-life on both of these titles as it will hamper any attempts at “serious play” for me, because I don’t have any similarly passionate local competition. The one saving grace for them is that, like SF4, it is possible to cancel out of fighting high-ping opponents altogether. But the odd awful game still seems to occur.

Still, it’s such a pity that something much better wasn’t done with these great games that would’ve had so much potential online. It still absolutely astounds me that no fighting game has ever managed to “get it all right” in terms of its online interface, given how many years systems like XBox Live & GGPO have been around.

The next couple of months will also bring us Marvel Vs Capcom 2 to Live Arcade, and hopefully a PAL release of King of Fighters 12, both of which will hopefully involve further attempts by the same companies to better their online fighting experiences, so there is some hope at least. Oh and I’m certainly not forgetting SSF2T HD Remix! Taken as a whole package, including the netcode, HD Remix is still the best fighting game around, and one I cannot ever foresee leaving behind.

There are also yet more games that are leaving a bitter taste of absence for me though. Both Virtual On Oratorio Tangram and BlazBlue are games I’d love to be playing and would be hugely excited about. However VOOT is awaiting a decent twin stick controller to be available to me – in the UK – before it actually becomes worth playing! But at least Hori are planning to manufacture one in Japan, so I have some hopes I’ll be able to pick up one and get a chance to play this game online (although it apparently suffers from the same netcode failings as the SNK games.. *sigh*). BlazBlue is incredibly frustrating for me, thanks to my old enemies: Region lock-out disks, and No PAL release whatsoever. Now this situation has occured before – for one of my potential favourite XBox 360 games, All-Pro Football 2k8, which was why I’d originally purchased an NTSC American 360 Elite… however when it RROD’d on me, I was left with a fixed PAL UK model instead, so I’m now unable to play 2k8. The same has happened with a few other games, notably Japan-only ones though (like Super Robot Wars XO), and now its the case with BlazBlue too. This is always a pretty irritating state of affairs, but it causes RAGE GAUGE levels of annoyance when you can actually ’see’ your friends on your XBox Live friends list playing it!

It just brings home how utterly retarded and ass-backwards region lock-outs for non-global release games are – they are literally just refusing to take my money, pointlessly. As long as it gets released at some point though, I won’t be too upset, as I do have plenty enough other games to be playing. So in some ways this is a good time for it not to be released. But the problem is that when it does eventually come out in the UK, I’ll be hopelessly behind the learning curve compared to the top players (not that it’s at all certain I’d ever be competitive at it anyway!), and I’ll be really upset if we don’t get an equivalent collectors edition set as the USA and Asia got, because the idea of  a tutorial DVD included with the game is one of the things that particularly drew me into potentially getting into this game much more seriously than I otherwise would. I’m also irritated by the total lack of information on this, because I’d be quite tempted to try and get ahold of another NTSC 360 if this game isn’t going to receive a PAL release sometime soon.

Anyway, I don’t want to grumble too much, because the main point of this post was just to say ”yay, I was right!” when it comes to the rejuvenation of the 2d fighting game scene – there’s never been so many great reasons NOT to play SF4!

Electronic Blog Makers are not dead!

I just thought I ought to drop by and let everyone know that this blog is still aliiive ‘dammit’! And so are it’s writers. I’ve just been hopelessly busy with other areas of my life and so has Navan. Now of course I’ve still being cramming in some gaming time too, but it’s been heavily squeezed, and thus my blogging time has been squeezed even further. We hope to get some more writers involved with this blog as well, and we have a couple of interested parties, but we’ll have to see how it goes. As far as my gaming goes, I’ve been enjoying a lot of stuff on the 360 as always – especially Magic the Gathering: Duels of Planeswalkers, Left For Dead, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves lately. On the PC I’m still playing & enjoying Kongai a lot and it’s gotten even more fun with rebalancing and better ranked match play. I’m also slowly trundling through the uninspired Half Life in an attempt to get back to the Orange Box (& Half Life 2!) eventually, to continue that series of articles. I’m also ridiculously hyped that NeoEmpire will be running a fighting game tournament that includes an XBox 360 tournament for Street Fighter 2 HD Remix – so I’ll finally be able to enter my first ever proper games tournament later this year.

Anyway, just to reassure anyone about the lack of new blogs here that I’m far from bereft of content of my own.. I have numerous draft articles I want to put up here as well as some additions to existing articles. In the meantime, I’d like to draw your attention to a couple of new additions on our sidebar of links. The first being Dead Pixel Skyline and the second being The Bottom Feeder both of which contain some great stuff that I expect readers of Agoners would enjoy.

I’m also thrilled to see that our monthly blog views are still rising steadily (albeit more slowly now) despite the lack of new content here. So a big thanks everyone who’s reading (& hopefully enjoying) any of our content, both old and (relatively) new If anyone wants to chime in with any comments on any old articles, please do so. I try to keep articles for Agoners that will be worthy reads throughout time as opposed to time-bound news pieces, so hopefully they are still comment-worthy. Also, if you are interested in writing for Agoners, do get in touch. Cheers.