The Psychology Behind Microtransactions and What It Means For The Industry

How to set up a fractured model in Unreal 4

Achieving the effect shown above isn't nearly as difficult as some might think.  By taking a simple model, splitting it up into a ton of pieces, and then replacing the fractured model with the unfractured one upon a death event, this stunning effect can easily be achieved in whatever game you might be creating!

Setup

In order to obtain the assets required for this effect, all you need is something 3D modeled, both in its fractured and whole form.

Fracturing a model is a simple process, utilizing the ability to run custom scripts from 3DS Max and/or Maya to have a program fracture the model at random into a desired number of pieces that we are able to specify. 

Below are links to download a 3DS Max and Maya script that when ran will fracture whatever model is currently open in the game.

3DS Max Fracture Script

Maya Fracture Script

Once the model has been fractured, save it as a .fbx (or whatever other format you use for your game), and import both the fractured and whole model into Unreal.

In Unreal

Once both models have been imported into Unreal, you might notice that the fractured model imported each individual piece of the fractured mesh as a separate mesh object.

If this has happened, a quick fix is necessary.  Create a new actor blueprint, and add an empty object called Root to it.  Then, under Root, add in all the pieces of the fractured mesh as static mesh components.  Make sure all these pieces have physics enabled.

Once you have the fractured model assembled into a blueprint, scripting out the process of replacing the whole model with the fractured on is quite simple!

Open the blueprint on the whole model.  Depending on how you plan to make the object break will determine how the object will know when to replace itself with the fractured model.  In this instance, I am using a float variable that keeps track of the current enemy's health to determine when the model should fracture.

Once the condition for the fracture has been met, all you need to do is to spawn in the fractured actor in the same position as the whole actor, and destroy the whole actor.  An example of this is shown in the screenshot below:

It's as simple as that!  Once health is less than or equal to 0, the fractured model will be spawned at the position of the whole model, and the whole model will destroy itself.  All that will be left is the fractured model in the exact position of the once existing whole one, left to be affected by gravity and fall apart!

Unity3D - A Game Engine Review

Unity in a Nutshell

Unity3D 2017 is the current version of one of the most popular 3rd party game engines open for the public to use, completely free of cost.  It supports both 2D and 3D development, and has been praised for its easy of use when it comes to learning the engine, porting to different platforms, and developing for mobile especially.  The engine supports both UnityScript (which is just a modified version of Javascript), and C#.

My Experience With the Engine

I started off learning Unity when I decided that I wanted to work with computers, back in November of 2015, my junior year of highschool.  I had recently started teaching myself Javascript through Codeacademy, and decided after making a bunch of simple calculator programs that it'd be cool to learn how to make a game.

Unity was the first engine I stumbled upon, and due to the excess of tutorials I was able to find on both their website and Youtube, I figured it couldn't be too difficult to learn.  I began right away, trying to learn how to work the very basics of the engine.

Once I got the basics of movement and manipulating objects in the scene view, I decided I was ready to create a complete game.  So, with almost no programming, texturing, 3D modeling, or game design experience, I set out to create a newer, better version of the Call of Duty: Zombies mode.

Shortly after realizing that this was more or less an impossible task for someone with no real game development skills, I moved onto a new project.  Something simpler.  A standard Unity horror game.  I spent months working on level design and improving my programming skills, including drafting up a system that would dynamically search for all the doors in a level, save their open/unlocked states, and update based on what parts of the level were loaded.  Sure, it took me 12 hours of straight frustration, but the entire experience was a learning opportunity.

I was so sure that the game was going well that I planned on selling it in October of 2017 (which obviously never happened), and released a public demo for people to test and give me feedback on.

Upon realizing that even my idea for a relatively simplistic horror game was way beyond my scope, I started yet another project, this one by the name of The Great Geometric Multiverse Tour.  This one, however, I am very close to actually completing, and have begun the process of incorporating an LLC in order to sell the game across platforms like Steam and itch.io!

Things I Like

Unity has a ton of features I love.  It'd take far too long to go into detail on them all, so I'll list out just a few.

• Easy to manage scene system.  Very good for transitioning between levels.
• Prefabs, and the ability to update all objects in a scene by only modifying one base prefab.
• Intuitive component stack, making adding, removing, and modifying both entire components and their values on an object very simple.
• The implementation of C# as a main language, making programming anything in the game easier and more simplistic.
• The ability to spectate both a game view and scene view side by side, even while the game is running.
• Ease in porting to a variety of platforms, especially various mobile platforms.
• Intuitive and simple UI creation.
• Huge store for free and paid assets, some of which I never start a game without!
• Excess of online tutorials, even beyond the standard documentation and videos on Unity's website.  You'll never not be able to find someone with a similar problem to yours.

Things I Don't Like

There aren't too many things that I don't like about Unity, though the things that I don't like about it are pretty large.

One of my main issues with Unity isn't so much about the physical engine itself, but rather in the connotation that the engine carries with it.  Due to the fact that Unity is one of the easiest game developing engines to learn out there right now, a lot of people (especially new comers and the inexperienced) gravitate towards it to work on their first projects.  Like any art (because game development is an art), the first pieces created by the artist are, well, usually they're pretty awful. 

This is a negative for Unity.  Because the barrier of entry is so low, games made in Unity often are pumped out by those still learning the ins and outs of game development, and usually at a much faster rate than the more polished and professional games.  This gives Unity as an engine a bad rep, and people often think that just because a game was made in Unity, it automatically won't be as good as a game made in another engine, such as Unreal.

My other major gripe with Unity is the lack of a proper material editor.  This frustrates me, because one of the major competing factors between Unity and Unreal, as with all engines, is graphics capabilities.  This, if anything, should motivate Unity to have a built in material editor, similar to the extremely popular plugin called ShaderForge.

Beyond these two major reasons and the occasional bug or slight frustration that comes along with any piece of software, I think Unity is an amazing tool, and its worth should be placed on its potential rather than what might typically be made in the engine by those who do not put its full capabilities to use.

Overwatch and its constant state of unbalance - But should we try to fix it?

How is Overwatch Unbalanced?

Put simply, the thing that puts Overwatch in a state of never ending unbalance is the fact that the range of mechanics for each character are so wide and varied.  For instance, some characters like Reaper can teleport across the map, and deal massive amounts of damage up close, while characters like Orisa can shoot enemies from much longer ranges, all wide almost consistently being able to keep a shield up to protect her teammates and herself.

Due to this diversity in movement, attack, and defense mechanics, some characters will naturally balance and counter one another.  For instance. Junkrat, a hero capable of dealing massive amounts of damage in a short amount of time is a counter for a hero like Reinhardt, a character who is large, slow, and uses his giant shield to protect his team.  When put up against one another, Junkrat will most likely have the advantage, due to the fact that he is smaller and harder to hit, has a far greater range compared to Rein's hammer, and can destroy Rein's shield in a matter of seconds.

However, like most characters in the game, Junkrat has a counter as well, the most notable of which is a sky flying, rocket shooting warrior by the name of Pharah.  Due to her ability to almost constantly state airborne, she nearly always has the advantage over Junkrat, as his projectile bombs often don't have enough range to hit her so high up, assuming an accurate shot could be made at her anyways.  Pairings like this exist in Overwatch, though characters do not always have a specific hero to counter them and thus create a greater balance in the game.

Characters such as Tracer, a hero with the ability to move at extreme speeds across the map, is a character that does not have one specific counter.  Sure, she can be stunned or stopped from time to time by certain heroes's abilities, such as Mcree's flashbang or Junkrat's trap, but more often than not she is able to easily maneuver around these obstacles.  Another character that crucially lacks balance is Bastion, a robot capable of deploying himself into a powerful turret that deals massive amounts of damage very quickly.  While this ability leaves Bastion immobile, given the right positioning, it can often be nearly impossible to kill him, especially given the fact that he can heal himself whenever he takes damage.  Features have been implemented in order to reduce his power, though most would argue that they have been generally ineffective.

Should we fix it?

What's interesting about Overwatch is that while so many people will be quick to complain that the game is unbalanced and unfair, rarely is any real solution proposed to fix the heroes.  This, I believe, is due to two major reasons.

This is perfectly true for whenever a hero is debuffed as well, such as the infamous time when Roadhog's hook no longer resulted in an instant kill almost every time for lower health characters.  Due to this, a huge amount of players begin to avoid Roadhog, and shifted over to dabble in the play styles of other available tanks.  Interesting enough, this led to the increased use in the newest hero was the time, Orisa.

The first reason is that it's just really difficult to balance such a complex game.  Every character is supposed to be fun to play, give the player a sense of purpose and the opportunity to master the mechanics assuming enough time is put forward.  Keeping this in mind, and in order to keep the core mechanics of most of the characters in tact, some abilities will be more naturally overpowering than others, with the possibility to go completely un-countered by any other hero just for the sake of preserving itself.

The second reason, which may just be a fortunate byproduct of the difficulty to balance the game, is the fact that the game goes through intentional cycles of unbalance, which then in turn begins to promote different play styles and the use of different heroes.  For instance, Overwatch has a community that often plays towards whatever the latest "meta" hero composition is, usually revolving around whatever hero has been recently buffed.  When Junkrat was given his second mine, a whole slew of new Junkrat players started showing up in each game.  When Bastion was able to heal while moving, a new wave of players trying out the new Bastion was seen.

The constant shift of the current meta, determined by whatever new buffs or debuffs are given to certain heroes, might be entirely intentional on Blizzard's part.  While yes, this sometimes does actually cause the game to become more balanced and create a more equal playing field, it allows for change in gameplay to occur in between larger happenings, such as the release of new content or the seasonal events.

Considering the style of Overwatch to a lifestyle game, it is important as developers to keep the player base interested in the game.  What spikes more interest than change in the core mechanics?  It keeps players on their toes, gives them something to look forward to, and while not always agreed upon, it keeps the game fresh and new, allowing for the downtime between events and new hero releases to be all the less monotonous.

So how can we fix Overwatch's unbalanced nature?  Long answer: given the heroes currently available, we can't, not without either heavily modifying existing mechanics of certain heroes, or adding new ones to counter those who have yet to be challenged.  Short answer: maybe we shouldn't, for the sake of keeping the game thriving.  So long as nothing is so unbalanced it is more frustrating than it is fun, changing the game simply for the sake of changing it can be more beneficial than anything.

Pimax 8K Virtual Reality Headset: How does this change the experience of gaming?

If you're at all interested in anything VR, you've probably heard of the new and upcoming Pimax 8K, the very first 8K virtual reality headset.

Features

      This room scale VR package separates itself from the competition by offering a variety of features that the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift do not yet currently support.  These features aren't absolutely revolutionary compared to the current state of competing VR models, though they offer a vast upgrade in the current technology of the VR experience.

These upgrades are primarily focused around the visual experience of VR and ow the player will better be able to become immersed in the world they are put into.  This includes a 200 degree field of view, a huge upgrade over the 145 degree field of view that the Vive can offer, the current leader in FOV for VR.  Just for frame of reference, the average FOV of the naked human eye is about 220 degrees.

The largest feature for the Pimax 8K is indicated in the very text of its name: it has a resolution of 8K, the very first of its kind.  This is four times the amount of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.  It has been claimed that due to this 4K resolution in each eye, the "screen door effect" that is commonly complained about in other VR headsets is a thing of the past.

The refresh rate is unfortunately still set a locked 90hz in the Pimax, which is no better than the Vive or Rift, though it makes up for its lack in innovation in refresh rates through its far more superior visual quality and pixel count, one of 16.6 million, nearly 8 times more than the Vive and Rift.  It also claims to have lower latency, and in combination with its higher resolution, drastically reduces the effects of motion sickness that are a frequent issue with VR users, especially those new to the experience.

One of the more appealing factors to this technology is that it will remain compatibly with existing VR software, such as SteamVR and Oculus Home, alongside bringing in its own VR software hub, known as PIPlay.  Not only will it be compatible with prior software, but also hardware, as Vive lighthouse stations for motion tracking and controllers will work perfectly fine with the headset.  As a Vive owner myself, this is extremely desirable, as I don't have to reconfigure my entire VR setup or purchase a whole new set of accessories to have this higher resolution experience.

    Impact on Gaming

The impact that this emerging technology will have on gaming, assuming it is has high quality as it is advertised to be, will be tremendous for the VR market.  Higher resolution headsets mean higher detailed worlds, as well as larger ones.  Due to an increase in pixel density, more things can be fit into a smaller spot, thus allowing for longer ranges of detailed sight to be achieved in VR.  Combine this with the larger FOV and players will have completely new and entirely more immersive experiences than every before, being able to see threats and objectives at better angles, from better distances, and in even greater detail.

This greater detail will also be a huge advantage towards games that have any amount of text in them, as text is one of the most difficult things to make out in VR due to the screen door effect and lack of crispness needed to fully make out the words.  Tutorials that are reliant on text can now be more in detail, signs in VR games can actually have purpose, and different kinds of games that utilize lots of text in their menus or HUD can be pursued with more confidence.

   Use for Developers

First and foremost, Pimax 8K will be fully compatible with the Unity3D and Unreal development engines, allowing for easy integration of the technology into existing or newly developed games.  On top of this, no new hardware is needed for the headset to be used, making existing VR games easily able to be played on the headset using Rift or Vive controllers and base stations.  Developers will not have to learn how to implement the new technology, and instead can focus on making larger, more detailed worlds, as explained above.

The level of realism this headset will begin to provide will allow for developers to craft far more immersive and convincing worlds.  This is especially important when trying to cultivate feelings of beauty and wonder, such as in an exploration game, or feelings of fear and dread, such as in a horror game.  Whatever this new level of immersion is used for, it will bring VR experiences to a new level for developers and gamers alike, and I'm truly excited to see the creativity that is sprouted from this higher technology.

   Do I Want It?

It's basically 4K VR that only requires the purchase of a headset.  What the hell do you think?  Now, having the $500 or so to buy one is another story, but thankfully due to the recent drop in price of the HTC Vive, we can expect the cost of VR products to steadily decline over time and as the technology advances and is evermore perfected.

Skyrim's Masterfully Designed World

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an absolute masterpiece when it comes to world design.  Not only does it further explore the realm of Tamriel, the main landmass in the Elder Scrolls universe, with all the lore and races present in previous Elder Scroll games, but it also creates its own stories using its own unique landmarks, cities, and scenery.

Cities

The cities of Skyrim are always bustling with life.  Whether it be guards stopping you from entrance to Whiterun in the very beginning of the game unless you state your business, or a murder occurring right as you walk through the doors of Markarth,  Skyrim's cities all contain their own culture and personality, and differ in the ways they react to specific actions taken by the player.  Befriend the Jarl of Whiterun, and you'll become Thane, a higher up in the city.  Want to learn magic?  Go to the College in Winterhold.  Want to become a better thief?  Join the Thieves Guild in the sewers of Riften.  Each city has a different story, which is exactly how Skyrim divides up most of the major quests, each pertaining to a respective city or area.

It goes without saying that even with its dated graphics, the providence of Skyrim is beautiful.  Many of its aging cities are built on some sort of rock formation with an emphasis of water, be it rivers, waterfalls, oceans, or lakes, present in most all cities.  Accompanied with the sounds of city dwellers, merchants chanting off items or sale, and guards making comments as you pass by, each city is populated, stunning, and alive.

Dungeons

Skyrim's beautiful rolling landscapes would be lacking if not contrasted by the dark and dingy dungeons of the world.  While these areas might be disgusting, damp, and cramped, they are designed exactly in that way in order to emulate a real, ancient dungeon.

Rubble is piled up in every corner, vines crawl over the floor and walls, and trickles of water drip from the ceiling.  Just like every other aspect of Skyrim's world, the atmosphere is amazing.  The use of shiny materials in dim light really gives the dungeons a feeling of moist, aged, molding cave, to the point where sometimes I feel as though I can almost smell it.  While the dungeons may not all be completely unique from one another, especially after having explored a lot of them in the game, they still stand as a true example of how lighting, sound, and materials alone can make a place feel so alive (or dead, in this case, but that's the entire point).

Hidden Wonders

One of the best parts of Skyrim actually lies outside of any major town or quest-line the game gives you.  It's something that is easy to skim over when playing through the game, though you'd definitely notice something missing if it wasn't there.  What I'm talking about are the little gems that are scattered throughout the map that really breath life into the game.  These can be as subtle as skeletons hidden with a stash of gold and a note detailing the moments leading up until their death (like the one guy hidden behind an arrangement of pipes in the underground Dwarven city) to as blatant as a pack of wolves attacking an unsuspecting goat in the wilderness.  Whatever the case, these small events add to the realism of the world, detailing it beyond the big picture and refining the image that the world tries to project onto the player.  While these events or small happenings may be small, they are significant in the fact that they show that the world continues to live and breath and fight and die right alongside the player, whether they are there to experience it happening in the present, or to experience the remains of the aftermath of some event.

Riverwood

One of my favorite areas in any game ever is the welcoming strip of houses in the small little village of Riverwood.  This village is the first you come across in the game (assuming you don't just wander aimlessly after leaving the cave in the tutorial), and for good reason too, as it completely packed with character and stories right from the get go.

Upon entering Riverwood, you see farm animals roaming the street, people going about their daily business in their shops or on their porches, an old lady screaming that she swore she saw a dragon and her son telling her that she is crazy and there is no such thing.  Riverwood is important not only in the aesthetic it brings to the game, but as well as the central hub that it provides the player with.  Players are encouraged to interact with the community in order to trade, craft potions, craft weapons and armor, as well as complete side quests for individuals that helps to build stories between certain characters, even if not a part of the main story line of the game.

This town serves as a perfect example of how both environment and story can set the pace of a game, drive it forward, and immerse the player forever more in the luscious world of Skyrim.

Let's Talk About Lee: Why is a good character essential to Telltale Games and how does Lee from The Walking Dead fit this profile?

Appearances

Lee is the main character for Telltale Games' The Walking Dead: Season One, a story driven, choice based RPG.  The player takes on the role of Lee, guiding along his various decisions he must make throughout the story as he chaperones and protects a young girl, Clementine, from the undead in this post-apocalyptic adventure.  The story of the game adapts itself around the choices you make, with the more difficult choices usually molding the game the most.

Setting up Lee's story

It can be argued that the most interesting thing about Lee is the way that his story unfolds as the game draws out, both in terms of his backstory as well as the one that he lives with the supporting characters around him.

The game begins with Lee riding in the back of a cop car, deep in thought and filled with quiet emotion for some unknown reason.  The particular reason that he was arrested in the first place is unknown to the player until later into the game, where there is an option to confess to Clementine that Lee has killed someone who had slept with his wife.  What's interesting is that even though a player might go a good length of the game thinking that Lee is a decent person (he risks his life multiple times to save his fellow group members and puts his life on the line to watch over a little girl), they keep a suspicion in the back of their mind that Lee has a deeper, darker side to his character, much like how many of the characters in the game might see him.

Characteristics and how they affect the game

Lee's characteristics drastically affect the way tat the game is played, which completely makes sense seeing as the game is story driven and the interactions between the characters is the main driving force of both the plot and the gameplay.

Lee is portrayed as being extremely protective and caring, and as such, the gameplay is structured around his character.  The player is given not only multiple opportunities to express Lee's caring and protective nature (such as saving Clementine or another one in the group from certain death), but also the chance to explore the darker, more revenge driven nature of his character, such as kicking Lily out of the group or quickly killing Lily's father after he begins to turn. 

How Would I Make These Great Titles Even Better?

DOOM

DOOM is an intense, highly fast paced, bullet hell of a first person shooter.  It's a complete gore fest.  The explosions are vibrant and the kills are sweet.  The landscapes are hellish, literally, and the ambiance is terrifically horrific.  The gun play is quick, fun, and intense.  The game overall is a masterpiece, but is it perfect?  Of course not.

Just as every form of art, while it has objective guidelines that be used to determine the game's strengths and weaknesses, it is ultimately a subjective experience.  Being as such, it is open to suggestion by all who experience it, regardless of their level of enjoyment or satisfaction they got from the game.  I love this game, personally, but I still have a few things I would love to see added.

One major refinement I'd love to see incorporated into DOOM is the revival of their multiplayer community.  I think one of the reasons that DOOM's multiplayer failed is the same reason its single player campaigns have been so successful: predictable enemy types.  In the single player section of DOOM, enemies are instantly recognizable from a far, and once you learn their patterns of attack and defense, you can begin to develop a strategy of attack once you identify the threats you are presented with.  In conjunction with this idea, each weapon you are equipped with is strongest in a particular area, and can be used in combination with other weapons and situations in order to create the perfect strategy to take down your enemies.  Compare this with an online multiplayer base with an infinite number of unpredictable players, play styles, and means of attack and defense, and DOOM simmers down to a gory first person combat arena, that while may be fun for a while, doesn't have enough real substance to hold up.  Adding some sort of objective based situation may allow for patterns in play style among a diverse set of players to emerge, allowing opposing players to formulate strategies around these typical behaviors, allowing for an organic infusion of the best of both single player predictability and multiplayer's intensity and unique experiences offered each time around.

Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge is another fast paced title, this time with a focus on parkour and first person platforming, rather than combat.  You play as a parkour expert, running from the police throughout the urban jungle, swinging from poles, jumping from roofs, and running along walls to get to your destination as quickly as possible.  While the game features some combat, a majority of it is spent running away from foes rather than confronting them head-on.

This is exactly a place where I think Mirror's Edge squandered some gameplay potential.  While I understand that the aim of the game was to focus mostly on platforming and the movement of your character, I think it would have given the game a whole other layer of substance if the developers had incorporated a largest combat system into the game.  If they made weapons more frequent rather than the occasional gun fight you'd be forced to get into, the game may not be entirely focused on parkour alone anymore, but could attempt to weave combat into the mix of movement as well.

There is a level that I think perfectly demonstrates the potential of this mixed mechanic.  It takes place in some underground facility, and you must jump from pillars perched up high above the ground to find the optimal point to snipe your enemies down with this huge, powerful rifle.  Had the developers carried this idea out further through the levels, I think the game would gain a whole new element of gameplay, though I do understand how this might drown out the main theme of parkour and platforming the developers were attempting to reach for.

Law Breakers

Law Breakers combines the best of both worlds of insane, flexible movement with gung-ho style gun play and rush-based shooting mechanics.  You are pit up against another enemy team, allowed to select a single hero with unique abilities and attributes that can assist in your team securing whatever objective you need to capture.  These abilities range from double jumps to jet packs, from sliding stabs to grenade launchers, creating a vast and diverse set of characters to choose from.

When I first played Law Breakers, I thought the game was fun as hell, but after a while, I began to grow frustrated.  An issue with the game seemed that while it featured some 14 or so different heroes to choose from, I found myself, as well as others, picking from an even smaller and more select pool of the available heroes.  This causes many of the games to feel rather stale, as though I was playing the same thing over and over again, just on different levels of skill, and consequently, different levels of frustration.

I think the major reason for this is the lack of balance in the game, both through the heroes and how they counter one another, as well as the level design and game mode choices.  A central theme of Law Breakers is the various sections of anti-gravity wells that are scattered throughout each map, typically centered around the objective players aim to capture.  This is all fine and dandy until you start giving certain characters more of an advantage in these low gravity, highly important areas of attack and defense, such as a jet boost or double jump.  This immediately creates an imbalance around the center point of the game, and if the other team wishes to balance the odds, they are better off resorting to playing similar characters themselves, thus restoring some sort of balance among the objective zone.  Imbalance in games, especially games of a competitive nature, isn't always necessarily a bad thing, but it is extremely difficult to implement properly.  Law Breakers choose to have their imbalance centered around the primary objective, something that all players on both sides should have an equal chance at capturing, with the only variable being their skill and mastery of their chosen character.  But when you begin to give advantages to certain characters in that objective zone, it's no wonder that you see the same characters getting picked over and over again.

Similarly, no two heroes REALLY counter each other, which is something that other hero based shooters such as Overwatch needed to master in order to truly play properly.  This lack of countering heroes leads players to consistently pick the easiest characters to do well with, or the most powerful characters, and since their only real counter is a duplicate hero of the same power and stats, little diversion in the players' characters occurs.

Counter-Strike:Global Offensive - Why Have I Spent 40 Hours Last Week Playing This Competitive Shooter?

Game Title: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Publisher: Valve
Year:  2012
ESRB Rating: M
Platform:  Windows 10 PC
Genre:  Competitive First Person Shooter

Fun Factor

You don't always need the most complex game mechanics of the decade intertwined with the best story arch of the century in order to create a fantastically crafted game.  Sometimes you just need some guns, flashbangs, and an objective to bomb to have an addicting enough game to throw your life away playing.

CSGO is my most played game in my Steam library, clocking in at 140 hours total, 40 of which of those where just in the past week and a half or so.  To put how addicting this game is into perspective, I am still considered somewhat of an inexperienced player in the competitive aspect of this game, even though I have such a high playtime.

My total playtime for this game breaks apart as such: approximately 100 hours playing Demolition alone, while the other 40 have been spent on Competitive.  Due to this massive split in game modes, I'll spend a bit of time talking about my experience with both.

First off is Demolition.  If you've ever played CSGO before, I know what you're thinking: "You spent 100 fucking hours playing nothing but Demo?", and to that I answer "Hell yeah, and I had a damn good time with it too, fuck off."  Demolition is one of the less popular game modes in CSGO, though I'd have to argue that it is one of the most enjoyable for a few key reasons.  One of the main reasons I've always preferred Demo over Comp is that the pressure is far less.  When I first began playing CSGO, I'll admit that I was never one to really enjoy highly competitive games, so I took the most casual approach of testing the waters with Demolition.  Right off the bat, I loved it.  It took real skill to get good at, as you couldn't just spray and pray like you could with most other modern day shooters (looking at you, Call of Duty).  In addition to this, I loved the way the game progressed through each round.  In a stark contrast to its Competitive counterpart, Demolition does not have a money system.  Instead of buying weapons each round, you are awarded a new weapon in a line of predetermined guns if you were able to score a kill in the previous round.  What I love about this is that you can really focus on just mindlessly killing your foes, rather than having to balance when and when not to buy, what to buy, and if you should buy a certain weapon in accordance to the current loadout of your teammates.



This casual focus of Demolition is only reinforced by the smaller map sizes, forcing players into combat more frequently, subsequently speeding up the length of each game.

Competitive, while obviously keeping the main gun mechanics in place, is a totally different ballpark in terms of gameplay.  With Demo, you often found both teams rushing in to get kills, with bomb plants rarely being the main focus, which is the total opposite of Competitive.  The stakes are much higher in Comp, as failing to win has much more lasting consequences.  Of course, I am talking about the ranking system that accompanies Comp, and while the losses may be more punishing than in Demo, the wins also bring the chance of a rank up, which can be wore as a visual and calculated display of how skilled a player you actually are.

While I found Comp extremely fun and it has been the main focus of my recent CSGO playtime, its more tactical and high stakes nature more quickly drains me.  In addition to this higher functioning gameplay, the matches often last much longer on average, usually 2 or 3 times longer than some Demo matches.

Overall, CSGO is fun no matter what mode you decide to jump into.  If you're looking for a more consistent, constantly rewarding experience where the losses are minimal, Demolition is for you, especially if you seek a more casual and fast paced experience.  If you want your wins to mean something much more and enjoy a more tactical, skilled style of gameplay, Comp is for you, so long as you don't mind the occasional hissy-fits a Gold Nova 1 will throw because an unranked player is crushing them with only a tenth of the total playtime invested.

Learning Curve

CSGO has probably one of the steepest learning curves I have ever experienced in a game thus far, so long as first person shooters go.  What makes this game vastly different from the massive amount of titles in the FPS genre is your inability to aim down sights on most weapons in the game.



On top of the fact that aiming is now much more difficult, the way the bullets spray for each gun is of much variation, and significantly reduces your accuracy if you don't develop good spray-control habits.  The very first time I ever played CSGO, I was unbelievably frustrated by the amount of times I would die seemingly without getting a single hit on someone I was shooting at full-auto.  The reason for this is because with most shooters, bullets travel in a relatively straight line with recoil only playing a minimal effect on the trajectory of your shots.  Accompanied with the ability to aim down sights, and you have great control over where you shoot.

Weapons in CSGO rarely go in a perfect line from the barrel, and the chance that bullets will stray from your reticle depend on a variety of factors, such as your current speed, if you're jumping, crouching, or standing still, if you've just been hit by an enemy, how long you have been currently firing, and even the weapon type itself.

It took me at least 10 hours of the game to get good enough to get a few kills per match, and at about 140 total hours, I would like to think I'm about average in terms of competitive performance.  Of course, I still have a bad game here and there, sometimes multiple bad games in a row, but overall, it's taken me 140 hours to get decent.  I have seen players with over 500, sometimes over 1000 hours who were slightly better than me, and even occasionally just as good as me.  It only goes to show that the game require a tremendous amount of skill, coordination, and determination to get fairly good at it, which only adds to its overall appeal.

Graphics

While the graphics for CSGO aren't hyper realistic, they hold up after 5 years.  They certainly aren't the best anyone has ever seen, but they aren't really old enough to remark upon, keeping the game feeling fresh and fairly new, even if it is approaching the "older" phase of its life.

There isn't really much more to say about the graphics of CSGO.  They aren't a strong point for the game, but they aren't a weak one either.  Given a different style or aesthetic, the game would still play and feel relatively the same, if not just a bit odd, so I can't really say the graphics exist for any other purpose than to display the game.  They don't add mood, tone, or set any particular scene, but that's not a bad thing.  It allows for more of the player's focus to be centralized on the gameplay, which is the game's strongest factor overall.

Audio

Audio in CSGO is your best friend, specifically the sound effects.  I don't give a shit about the glitchy ass music that assaults my ears every time I launch the game and the buying phase music at the beginning of each comp round that does NOT stop playing for the entire duration of the match if I alt-tab out of the game, god-for-fucking-bid, no I'm talking about the sound effects and how they are often the largest determining factor as to whether or not you win or lose a firefight.

Obviously, anyone who has played a shooter before knows that listening in on the enemy team's gunshots is often a good clue as to their general location, allowing you to better position yourself for the appropriate attack/defense, however your ability to analyze sound must be much more sophisticated in CSGO.

Let me first begin by saying that if you just bought the game and you don't have a decent pair of headphones, just return the damn thing, because you're going to have a bad time if you can't locate the source of a sound, even a quick and subtle shift of a foot against brick or the cocking of a weapon's charging handle from around a corner.

Being able to shoot and hit your enemy is only half the battle, as a majority of the time you are trying to, in the stealthiest way possible, locate the exact position of your enemy before they locate you.  More often than not, knowing where an enemy is a huge upper hand that, with even a sub-par amount of aiming skill, can almost always help you win an encounter with a foe.

Footsteps are the most common thing to listen for, but you can also listen out for snipe scopes adjusting, grenades, smokes, or flashbangs being activated, and even weapon switching.

With the combination of good teammates providing frequent callouts for the general locations of enemies, and the ability to pinpoint a more precise idea of where they can be using sound alone, you'll seem so much better at the game than you might actually be.

Controls

The controls for CSGO are standard first person shooter controls, using either the scroll wheel (don't recommend, coming from a guy who has died too many times due to using it and being stupid) or the number keys.

The abnormality, as discussed previously, exists not necessarily in the physical controls themselves, but in the complexity of the individual gun handling.  Often, if you choose not to control your weapon spray, or simply aren't experienced enough to understand how to do this properly, you have to handle the gun differently than you would in a typical first person shooter.  In order to ensure the most accurate spray possible, it's usually recommended to drag your weapon downwards as you shoot it, as the resulting recoil will move the barrel of the gun up, thus equalizing the point of impact.  How much you should drag your gun down really depends on the individual weapon, though it can be said that sub machine guns, with their faster rate of fire, typically need more work down on them as compared to a slower shooting rifle.

While the recoil from the rifles' low rate of fire may not compare to that of a sub machine gun's, it is made up by the more erratic spray pattern that rifles usually seem to have, while their smaller sub machine gun brothers have a rather tight spray pattern, assuming you're standing still in both instances.

However, weapons with the lowest rate of fire, such as the AWP, the most powerful gun in the game, has a fairly accurate spray pattern, even if you are moving a bit.  Each gun seems to balance itself out, either by reducing fire rate and increasing damage, or by increasing fire rate and decreasing spray patterns.

Level Design

The level design of CSGO is fairly the same across each respective gamemode, with only slight deviations in physical construction of the levels, and the only major overhaul between each map being the theme (Is it a town like Inferno?  A desert village like Dust II?  An office like, well, Office?).

Below are a few screenshots of some of the most popular competitive maps.

Dust II

Mirage

Cache

Inferno

Office

As you begin to examine each map, you notice some very obviously similarities, the most noticeable of which being that every single map displayed above has the same pattern: Terrorists on one side, Counter-Terrorists on the opposite side, and three paths of attack between them both.

Even the callouts of the sections of the maps are close to the same, with nearly every middle path being named the appropriate callout of "Mid", and each long corridor or alley, which is also featured in at least one place each map being called some variation of "Long".

If we inspect the main maps for Demolition, we will see a similar pattern begin to emerge.

Lake

Bank

Safehouse

Shorttrain

Sugarcane

While Competitive maps featured a three way path to the other side, Demolition maps feature maps with typically one center objective, usually the bomb site, that all players will naturally gravitate towards.  Even more interesting is that for each map, while the paths are a bit less defined, three paths of attack often make an appearance on their way towards the center-most bomb site objective.

For instance, on Bank, you can either go straight into the bank, to the market on one side, or the garage on the other side.  Similarly, in Safehouse and Sugarcane, you can move through the middle, more contested part of the map, or attempt to flank the enemy by taking the side paths, though they may be more difficult to navigate.

The way the levels are designed only supports certain aspects of gameplay, such as the subtle art of flashbangs and smokes.  A proper flash or smoke can obscure the enemies sight long enough to ambush them, retreat from them, or even ninja a bomb plant.

No matter what gamemode you decide to play, CSGO strategically moves you towards other players, naturally creating hot points of contested firefights and choke points with its three path core level design.

Changes

For god's sake Valve, turn down the goddamn default main menu volume.  It's almost like you're trying to warn me away from the salt mine that is the community.

For real though, there aren't many things I would suggest to change about CSGO.  Avid players have told me that they wish there wasn't such a focus on the skin market trades, as to allow for more development work not only on CSGO itself, but other equally awaited Valve games.

The community can be a bit toxic at times, but that's not necessarily the game's fault, and there isn't much that can be done about people getting pissed off when they lose.
The only major thing I would suggest, if possible, would to better the security of the game, preventing the fairly high number of hackers to be present in online matches.  It's never fun when you're trying your best against a guy that can always headshot you around a corner, even if you made no noise for the past minute and you're in some obscure area of the map.

Sometimes it's just too obvious.

Recommendation

I have 140 hours in this game, so what do you think I'll say when asked if I recommend it?

It's fun, it's addicting, and it's a classic, must-have for anyone who has ever taken an interest in the shooter genre.

Plus, it's only $15.  I typically rate a game's price/content by $1 per hour on average, depending on the game.  Considering this game has average visuals and nothing about it is truly spectacular or really too inventive, I'll leave our scale at $1/hour.

Given the game is $15, and I played 140 hours so far, I have only paid about 10 cents on average per hour of content I received from the game.  That is one hell of a good number in my book.

Buy this annoyingly fun game.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - One of the Largest Open World Games Experienced On The Go

Game Title: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Publisher: Nintendo
Year:  2017
ESRB Rating: E 10+
Platform:  Nintendo Switch
Genre:  Open World Adventure

Fun Factor

There is a reason that Breath of the Wild won The Game Award for Most Anticipated Game of 2016.  Not only was the game hyped seemingly more than the first manned mission to the moon, but in a rare turn of events, the game actually delivered and exceeded the expectations that most had for the game.

I paid $600 for the complete Zelda kit of the Nintendo Switch a few days after it launched, and for nearly a month and a half, I only had Breath of the Wild on my brand new console, but let me tell you something:  I don't regret it one bit. (Just so long as you don't keep saying 600...).

Breath of the Wild is a breath of fresh air in the ever growing, crowded market for open world games, and even for a Zelda game, the open world nature of the game perfectly fits the design of it.  Killing monsters is fun, mixing potions is fun, dungeons are unique and enjoyable, but most importantly, the focus on exploration and encouragement it gives to the player to find their way around the world and discover things without having a map hold their hand to every interesting destination is perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this game.

Because the only part of the game you must play in a sequential order is the Great Plateau tutorial, you are free to complete any of the major quests in whatever order you please, filling the remaining time fighting random monster camps, completing side quests, and even just getting lost in the massive world.  This feeling of pure freedom, combined with the all the potential that a world crafted so hugely can offer, allows for the player to feel in possession of Link, treating him as though he was them and actively driving him to do the things THEY want to do.  This contrasts with a large about of story-driven games these days that treat the character as more of an actor in the game world, set to follow a specific script with some time allocated with improvisation, though they are never really in control of what they choose to do.  

No matter how you spend your time, whether it be proactively attacking some objective or passively laundering about, you find yourself enjoying the experience, completely immersed in the lush scenery, and rarely bored, as there is just so much content packed into such a tiny cartridge.

Learning Curve

Something that Breath of the Wild balances extremely well is the learning curve.  The game starts off relatively easy, though it requires you to think, whether that be about how you will approach a new puzzle or making the decision of how you'll move in to attack a camp full of monsters.


In the beginning, you have very little in the way of mechanically being able to solve the problems you are faced with.  You can pick up a wooden club, and if you're lucky, a rusty old sword, but those are about your only choices at first.  You can make some basic potions, but they don't really do much to help out, and you have very little health and means to heal yourself, so you have to avoid taking hits too often if you want to survive.

But as you progress through the towns and shrines, you begin to collect more knowledge and items, and only grow more skilled.  At the start, you can hardly scale down a steep hill without losing your breath and rolling down the cliff side like a brain dead puppy without legs, whereas later in the game, you can glide miles with ease, before dropping an attack on an unsuspecting enemy from above with your flame sword and so many hearts you can hardly see the screen anymore.  Super cool stuff.

The difficulty scales very well.  As soon as you leave the tutorial area, you could technically charge straight up to Hyrule Castle and fight Ganon with a nothing but a tree branch and some old tattered rags on your back, but the monstrous Guardians would kill you long before you could even come close.  Similarly, you are free to explore any part of the world, providing you can actually survive it.  There are no restrictions or bounds on where you can go or what you can do, but if you try to challenge the bull, you're going to get the horns, prepared or not.

Enemies also scale extremely well.  It's simple, but as you move to more difficult areas, more difficult enemies are to be fought, with their levels of difficulty being denoted by the color of their skin.  Every few days in game, a Blood Moon arises, resetting all the enemy camps as to allow for no area to ever truly be cleared out for too long, keeping the combat frequent, but with a break of well earned rest if you defeat your enemies.

Graphics

The visuals in Breath of the Wild are easily one of it's strongest points.  Take out the engaging combat, the heart wrenching story, and even the thematic music, and you are still left with a gorgeous exploration/navigation simulator.

Breath of the Wild is most certainly not a photo realistic game, but its not supposed to be.  The aesthetic of the game is a beautiful, painted world with a focus on nature, and the art style reflects this perfect, even while being a bit cartoony.  Even with a dynamic lighting system, Breath of the Wild manages to create beautifully lit areas and landscapes, and I swear there is nothing more satisfying than the shader moving that grass over the long ranging hills in the breeze, so gentle and with such a light grace.

The game truly encompasses the beauty of the outdoors, and the wild atmosphere is peaceful and extravagant.  This is one of the best looking games I have ever played, and due to its visuals alone deserves recognition.

There isn't too much more to say about the graphics of this game other than how fantastically well done they are, and how much I suggest you look at it, because this game is pure eye candy for anyone with even a hint of love for nature.

Audio

The thing I love about Breath of the Wild is the audio, more particularly the music.  Each village you stumble upon has a distinct feeling, which is only enhanced and brought even further to life by the clever use of music to set a tone for a particular setting.  Goron city, a settlement full of rock-like mountain dwellers, is accompanied by a robust and heavy tune, while something like the bird town of the Rito Village is played to the tune of flutes and and wind instruments, giving a floaty, whimsical vibe to the town.























Even the background music that plays while wandering between significant destinations gives a heroic feeling of exploration and adventure, while sometimes cutting out entirely in order to help emphasize the chorus of nature, really adding a highlight to the "wild" aspect of the game.

The music of Breath of the Wild enhances the overall tone of the game substantially, and apart from being beautifully scored and cross fading perfectly between moments of combat, exploration, and village discovery, it is just awfully nice to listen to, even outside the game.

Controls

The controls for Breath of the Wild are fairly straightforward.  The only innovative piece to touch upon would be the use of motion controls for your magnet power and your bow, though we have seen this done before on other platforms, most notably of which has to be the late and great Wii.

Due to this, I'll take this section to talk a bit about how the game fairs on a more portable, mobile platform: the undocked Switch.  Now, the docked Switch is essentially a home console with a slightly different controller, but the mobile version is much more interesting.

The first interesting thing I noticed is that Breath of the Wild seems to have been built exclusively for the undocked Switch, as more detailed areas of the world, such as the Korok forest and certain villages, begin to lag when played on an external display.  Although, this lag is fairly minimal and is said to have been addressed in a recent patch.

Other than the issue of occasional lag, playing between either the Switch's screen or an external monitor has very little of an impact on the game itself.  A huge benefit to allowing players to experience this game on the go means whenever they feel like they want to play, they are able to pull it out of their bag and jump in, and while this might be a greatly exciting concept, it is sometimes difficult to pull off with a game like this, to no real fault of its own.  Many of the quests in Breath of the Wild are extensively drawn out, so unless a player has more than 20 minutes on their hands (and that's really cutting it close), it's really not even worth booting up the game as you'll only find yourself having to shut it down in the middle of something exciting, which can be a real source of frustration.

Again, this is to no fault of the game itself, but still remains a bit of an issue.  This game is best played when you dedicate a good chunk of time for each sitting, and is not easy to jump in and out of, therefore, for the most part, portability of the game has no huge advantages as it might for other shorter, more fast paced games.

Characters

The characters in Breath of the Wild really stand out.  Each character has a well developed personality, and a backstory that often intertwines with other characters in the game.  Some characters are humorous and fun, like the Korok, while others are ghastly and vicious, like the Bokoblins.

One of my favorite characters has to be the Prince of the Zora Domain, Prince Sidon.  Like most characters in the game, Prince Sidon has only a few lines of spoken dialogue at most, though the entirety of his personality is told not only through the text he says, but through the subtle sounds he makes as his text changes on screen, alongside the music and body language that accompanies him.

Without hardly speaking many actual words outside one or two dedicated cut scenes, Nintendo is able to paint Prince Sidon as a cocky, though loving and charismatic character, one who is boastful and eager to do all he can to help you, the newly arrived hero, to save his Domain from the one of the Divine Beasts.

Many characters, even ones that do not have a direct impact on the outcome of the story or the overall gameplay, are animated and alive in a similar fashion.  When spoken to (and sometimes even when not directly approached first!), many characters will speak a few lines of dialogue that while may not be entirely revealing to who they are allows for the player to have a grasp on a basic archetype of who they are speaking to, as well as a familiarity with the setting around them.  Often, hints are given in the way of characters speaking to Link, as opposed to the sadly more typical fashion of a blatant line of text on the screen telling you what to do.

Story

The story for Breath of the Wild is melancholy one, riddled with emotion and heartache, and plays an active part in the gameplay itself.  While the main story may be more on the heavier side of things, the various side quests and the charisma of specific characters help to add humor and more lighthearted, whimsical moments that other Zelda and Nintendo games are often known for.

The heroic tale of Link begins with a great awakening after having slumbered in silence for years away in a sealed off tomb.  Upon escaping from the rocky prison, you discover that all of Hyrule has been overrun by ancient spider-like robots, known as Guardians.  These Guardians, once meant to defeat the evil powers of an entity known as Calamity Ganon, now find themselves possessed by the very thing they were meant to oppose.

Through a fairly lengthy, though necessary, tutorial, you learn the basic mechanics of the game, such as cooking and brewing potions, as well as combat and how to take on a few of the many foes you will encounter on your journey.  One of the most important things taught are the puzzle dungeons, called Shrines, which allow for later opportunities to upgrade health and stamina upon completion.

After this introduction to the main conflict of the game (helping save Princess Zelda all the work of fighting Ganon alone for like a hundred years to protect your lazy, sleeping ass), you are free to roam about the world as you wish, collecting bits and pieces of story that help add depth to the overarching theme of the game, while not being absolutely needed, and therefore are not forced onto the player.

This adaptive story-telling mechanic, through the use of pictures that bring back memories as well as conversations you'll have with villages about their surroundings and history, really allows Breath of the Wild to drive home the main idea that it pushes from the very beginning: freedom of exploration and discovery.

You are free to discover the story as you wish, but you don't have to.  You can kill random camps of enemies for however long you want, although the game promises to give you more of a straight line purpose if you want it.

Breath of the Wild balances the heartbreak of slowly discovering the death of all of your friends nearly a hundred years ago with the satisfaction of avenging them each time you complete one of the main Divine Beast dungeons.  By doing this, the game allows for a wide range of emotions to be felt, only to be ever more supported by the layout of the world and the structure in which you can discover and play at your own pace, allowing for these emotions and experiences to cycle naturally, rather than being forced onto the player in a specific time frame.

Level Design

The world in Breath of the Wild is huge, nearly 1.5 times larger than Skyrim, which is famously known for it's large and detailed world.  This works to Breath of the Wild's advantage, as previously stated, exploration is one of the largest focuses in the game after all, and giving the player more to explore is effectively added more content without really having to do anything more than level design.

Something great about the giant world is that not only is it huge, but it is also rich.  I mean rich in terms of all the random stuff scattered about for you to do, stuff so trivial yet so engaging that you couldn't even classify it as a side quest.

One prime example of this is the 700 or so (or is it 900?  Not like I'll ever find them all anyways.) Korok that are hidden throughout the world.  These Korok give you tiny rewards that allow to to upgrade your carrying capacity for solving simple, though sometimes challenging puzzles.  Such puzzles can be as simple as "you lifted up this rock!  Good job, here's a seed!" to as complicated as "put that metal cube in the perfect position as to accurately match the metallic symbol directly adjacent to it" or "step on this leaf thingy and run over there as fast as you fucking can and don't even think about messing up or you're not getting shit."  As you might be able to tell from my way of explaining it, sometimes they can be a bit... frustrating.

All the same, the Korok are one of the many oddities that can be found on your adventure through Hyrule, adding depth and character to the world without having to take up too much of the player's or developer's time.

Changes

About 40 hours in (and yes, I know those are chump numbers, but I'm a busy guy and a developer myself), it is very hard to recommend any major changes to the game, except I wish it was longer, which is an impossible request to ask due to the fact that the game is already humongous and I haven't even scratched the surface of it all yet.

No, it's not a perfect game, and I'm sure there were many small features that I didn't appreciate in all my time playing, but off of the top of my head, I have no major gripes with Breath of the Wild.

The only suggestion I would have that might change the game a fair bit is the either rework the stealth system, or scrap it entirely.  There are many potions and combinations you can use to increase the overall stealth of Link, though I rarely found myself using this.  Part of the problem with the stealth system also lies in the detection system on the enemies.  Maybe I just suck at it, but I found that sneaking up on enemies was only as good as the first enemy you killed, because after that, there was almost no way to hide your kill, and now you have the whole camp pouncing on you.



Due to this fact, I strictly kept combat to a "run and gun" rush style of fighting, and if I wasn't strong enough to take on more than one enemy at a time, I found it pointless to attempt a sneak attack, as it had been fairly unsuccessful in past attempts.

But, again, I dislike most stealth games and I'm not very good at them either, so perhaps others got much more out of the system than I did.  As far as I'm concerned, the game would fair just as well without it.

Recommendation

I am always shocked to hear that someone has not been able to experience the magnificence of Skyrim, as the game is so dear to my heart, I could not fathom the idea that someone else has not had the pleasure of sitting through the adventurous and oh so captivating game.  That same feeling I told towards Skyrim is now applied to Breath of the Wild, for most all the same reasons.

The story is interesting and compels you to push forward, rather than just being something slapped on haphazardly at the last moment, the mechanics are new and fluent, working off one another allowing you to move, fight, and explore in connected arrays of button presses, and the immersion of the world is otherworldly.

If you have a Switch, I have no idea why you have denied yourself the absolute pleasure of playing this game.

If you don't have a Switch, this game allow is enough to pick one up.

Get this game, love it, and remember it forever, because there is no way in hell you're going to forget an experience like the one this masterpiece provides.