Hello again, and my apologies for not writing sooner. Ironically, I’ve been too weary to do anything other than play games recently, not able to write about them. Still, now that I have some actual new content in my library, it might be a good time to change that, no?

Anyway, about “The Sacrifice” DLC … let me just say that I have in many ways the reverse experience from most fans of the Left 4 Dead series. Not being particularly interested in either game, I didn’t start playing until a friend threw up his hands and gifted me Left 4 Dead 2 during the summer sale. The point of this being that “The Sacrifice” was my first experience with content from the original game.

We’ve all had to listen to the Broken Base rant about the differences between the games, many of the fans seemingly convinced that Rochelle, Coach, and the rest are shallow, dull imitations of the originals. Having never seen any of this supposedly great development outside of Machinima works, was it all really all it was cracked up to be? After a nerve-wracking four-hour download, I decided to find out.

Note that this blog is not a review and makes no effort to separate fact and opinion. It is solely a commentary on the player’s experience and should not be treated as a reliable or quotable source.

Let’s start with game mechanics. There’s nothing all that different from previous Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns in the first two chapters. Players will run into all the regular weapons and items on the way, with perhaps a slight bias towards Bile Bombs thanks to the massive numbers of CEDA Infected on the way. Chargers, Spitters, and Jockeys pose the usual threats. My first playthrough resulted in a double instant kill when a Charger knocked two players off a barge, a nasty surprise that fortunately was rectified by a rescue closet a minute later.

Two unique points for the campaign come up. First is the Crescendo Event in the first chapter, involving a Tank sealed in a boxcar. Yes, in order to progress you have to open a door and let out a Tank. Finding another way around apparently isn’t an option. Some people never learn, I guess. The second is the presence of exploding barrels. While most people will read this and immediately remember some fun times involving a red barrel and a couple less-than-brilliant Combine Overwatch, in “The Sacrifice” they tend to be more sedate. Rather than epically exploding, they go up sort of like a combination propane tank and Molotov. They are also a rather dull grey color, making it possible to confuse the perfectly safe models with the dangerous ones. I tend to find that disappointing, but then again “stuff blowing up” is more the province of “The Parish” campaign, and it’s possible to simply ignore the barrels entirely if the thought is depressing.

The final chapter is much as you would expect, played on the same map as “The Passing” finale complete with jukebox and Heavy Machine Gun. Valve has stated that this is an experiment in a new type of Left 4 Dead finale, with multiple simultaneous objectives. In this case, the objectives are three generators that need to be started. There’s no gas in this level, so players simply have to hold E (or whatever custom bind you’ve established) to start them up. Once that happens, it’s all over but the shooting … at least until the last generator fails. Good luck, person who happens to be playing Bill: there’s multiple Tanks and Special Infected, and that generator is farther away than it looks. Just a hint here, you’ll want to have a full complement of human players on the server. Bots will not sacrifice themselves and are terrible at covering other people from the bridge.

My impression of this new style of finale is middling, being someone who never liked finales much in the first place. It doesn’t feel very new, being effectively “Dead Center” with three gas cans or “Dark Carnival” with (or more accurately without) three Midnight Riders songs. It’s also one of the shortest finales in the game, though all the action is there. If you like frenetic shooting for a couple minutes rather than methodical gathering for several, go ahead, you’ll love this.

The reason I figured this needed to be written, however, wasn’t about the mechanics, since we knew ahead of time those would be (no pun intended) passable. What I wanted answered was, for someone who played the games in the wrong order, is this apparent slice of the original the game I’ve been told it is?

Well, now we come to the hard part. The simple answer is that from a character design standpoint, “The Sacrifice” is little better than a community map. Being used to constant banter between Nick and Ellis, Nick and Coach, and Nick and whoever he’s managed to piss off now, the Left 4 Dead Survivors are almost silent. Dialogue is usually limited to two or three lines at the beginning of each chapter, such as Zoey briefly shouting at Bill for events in the comic or Francis promising to teach Louis how to fish. (BTW, Francis now hates islands. Well, better than nothing I guess.) Best line in the game so far is Zoey at the first crescendo event, promising to open the next boxcar with a Tank in it. There’s also some good lines when a Survivor jumps off the bridge to make it to the generator, but in general there’s very little to make the characters unique. No friendly fire dialogue, no weapon commentary, nothing.

Um …

OK, let’s try and be honest about this. Any way you look at it, PC owners get “The Sacrifice” free, so if you can spare the 3 GB HDD space there’s little reason not to try it out. But I have to say I’m fairly disappointed in Valve’s latest attempt. Did the fans exaggerate the potential of the original game? Did Valve fail to come through for once, sacrificing quality for meeting a deadline? Were my expectations too high thanks to reverse nostalgia? I honestly can’t be certain.

I will promise those of you who disagree with my immediate thoughts this. There’s still some achievements left in the DLC, and Versus is fun regardless of campaign, so I will give this one a couple more chances. But I think it’s fair to say it was not what I was expecting. Even the most rabid Left 4 Dead fan should be able to leave that opinion alone.

Honor the sacrifice.

Just how good do graphics have to get before they become overkill? It’s a question that’s likely been beaten into the ground, almost as much as the dreaded games-as-art debate, but it’s rare that anyone says anything other than an absolute. Obviously, any realist knows enforcing Hollywood-level graphical depth is just as idiotic as claiming the first-generation consoles were as far as they needed to go, so is there any system, some function with an input and output?

We all like pretty colors and good lighting. However, producing these qualities of graphics is incredibly expensive and does not always enhance the experience. I’ve thought about it and came to what seemed like a brilliant connection at the time it entered my mind. The level of graphical performance required is in direct relation not to the realism of the subject matter, but to the realism of the experience.

Sounds like circular logic, doesn’t it? It’s possible it might be the delusional thoughts brought on by insomnia and excessive exposure to the Half-Life 2 soundtrack, or it could be a blinding insight that explains an awful lot about the world. I’ll let you judge that.

Back on topic. Look at an extreme example, the first Final Fantasy game. Most indie games of today eclipse it in graphical depth, yet it works and looks perfectly well with the graphics it has. Why? I’d claim that the turn-based system is already pretty far from normal experience, and thus matching that with what amounts to pixel art by today’s standards is not only fair, but aesthetically appealing. One could argue that the graphics of the latest installment of the series are overkill for a system that still holds to its turn-based roots. One could also argue that the game is just one big cinematic and should be rendered as such. I’m not going to touch that argument.

A second example in the same line would be the Nintendo Wars series, also known as the Advance Wars series in the United States. A game based off of modern military tactics would seem like an ideal candidate for realism-level graphics, but oddly enough it seems to function best with the somewhat cartoony style currently in use. Again, this is a case where the turn-based system and elaborate numerical damage calculations go against the realism of the total experience.

Moving on, one major factor I’ve noticed that has a massive effect on the realism of the experience, and thus on the graphical detail required, is the on-screen elements or HUD in games. While the real world is making progress in augmented reality (an interesting technology you should read up on), as of current no information delivery system currently in use displays information the way we do in games. It’s a significant reality break in, say, most RTS games, where the lower quarter of the screen is normally taken up by various buttons and such. It’s possible to go fully symbolic with these games, or go for flashy instead of realistic like most developers do.

Likewise, the opposite is very much true. Portal has as its subjects a protagonist who can jump through space and the psychotic computer trying to kill her, yet at least in my opinion the game improves as the graphics increase in detail. (Actually, I think the pre-release version of the game, which had a number of upgrades not found in the final product, was significantly better to look at.) Compare this with a modern, super-detailed shooter like Modern Warfare 2, which is a supposedly possible situation but takes you out of the experience with various numbers and that annoying strawberry jelly that shows up when hurt. In some ways, the improved graphical detail makes it less pleasant to look at.

I’d like to wrap this up by mentioning a sub-trope (or possibly super-trope) of my assertion. Since I’ve said multiple times that the important thing in design is experience, it follows that artists and programmers should focus on the aesthetic appeal of their work and not its comparison to real life. In other words, it’s exactly like everyone’s been saying: art direction is more important than detail. The examples of this are too many to list, so I’ll mention another way to summarize this would be, “it’s more important to look cool than to look real.”

What this means as a practical matter is probably only of interest to developers, but I’ll say it anyway. We’re all misguided if we spend our time and money looking for the perfect fabric or grass texture and not the glaring dissonance that exists in a game. These are games, after all, experiences not always meant to imitate life, and why should such tasks even be attempted? Consumers are picky, yes, but they’re more discerning than we give them credit for.

While I cannot claim to be an expert at the strategy genre, it remains one of my favorites. There’s something endlessly attractive about taking nothing and turning it into an unstoppable force, in a manner that the leveling up of RPGs cannot match. Nowhere else will you see entire armies at your command, more firepower than any single character could ever muster.

But enough of me rambling. I bought (pre-ordered, in fact) Supreme Commander 2 off Steam in the hopes of finding a top-notch strategy game while we wait for StarCraft 2 to release. I wasn’t certain what to expect, having never touched the original game. Strategy, even RTS, is not by any means uniform in quality or substance. Compare Homeworld 2 and Eufloria and you’ll see what I mean.

If I had to sum up my experience in one sentence, I’d say it’s a LOT like StarCraft. The rapid pace, huge numbers, and sudden changes in the flow of battle are there, making the game alternately exhilarating and terrifying. It’s not that simple, of course, and there were some things I felt it did better, some worse, and a lot that were one hundred percent unique. Keep reading for those little details.

Note that this blog is not a review and makes no effort to separate fact and opinion. It is solely a commentary on the player’s experience and should not be treated as a reliable or quotable source.

I’ll start with the bad news. While Supreme Commander 2 plays like StarCraft in several ways, the single-player campaign doesn’t even come close in quality. There’s a story, yes, and it has the potential to be truly epic, but it falls flat on execution.

A good example of this is the use of nuclear weapons, which show up IN THE FIRST MISSION. And not to do anything spectacular, either: the missile launch blows up the base’s communications array. Further along, nuclear missiles are used to do everything from blowing up a city that has already been evacuated (twice, in fact) to clearing out an already-empty platform before landing an attack force. As a somewhat experienced RTS player, the use of nuclear weapons alone is not going to terrify me or convince me the villain is thoroughly evil. And to highlight that, by the end of each story arc you learn to use nuclear weapons yourself, diminishing their story value even further.

This is not helped by subpar voice acting and character development. This isn’t just a matter of emotionless voices, after all, that was used to excellent effect in Homeworld 2 to contrast with the desperate struggle of the Hiigaran fleet. The characters instead have half-hearted voices and emotions, showing annoyance where rage would be expected. Overall, it’s hard to care when a character dies or suffers a terrible loss, since they don’t ever show they’re more human than the forces under their command.

Now that’s out of the way, I’ll tell you what I love about the game.

While the campaign may lack in story potential, it’s an excellent teaching tool for the multiplayer component of Supreme Commander 2. Even at normal difficulty, it provides a decent challenge and really helps pound in the complexity and scale of the game. The wealth of options available to a player is incredible, and the single-player element introduces these abilities slowly enough to get comfortable with each one. I strongly suggest playing it to completion, even if it gets dull. You’ll recognize its value once you get to skirmish matches.

Supreme Commander 2 also makes the bane of poorly-designed strategy games, the victory fleet, less than useful. While the tips suggest you should build as many of the high-end, high-powered Experimental units as you can afford, in practice conventional units win out. A lone Experimental may look like it can tear up a base on its own, but thinking this way usually results in the giant assault walker or whatever falling to bits just outside this base. The great Experimental units also obey the law of Tactical Rock Paper Scissors: that is, the fact that they’re devastating against one unit type doesn’t make them all-powerful. Experimental gunships can level an undefended base by themselves, but they possess no significant anti-air attack and can be cut down by fighters.

My experience tells me to never rely too much on one unit or type of unit. While Experimental units will greatly boost the power of your army, never bring them anywhere without a group of conventional units. Often they can cause as much damage as the Experimental, and they’re easier to replace.

The game manages to defeat turtling players without resorting to overkill maneuvers like missile strikes. Shields may look attractive to a defending player, but they’re really only a last-ditch effect and are useless without units to fire back at the attacker. Likewise, while point defenses are incredibly useful and can hold off minor pushes in great enough numbers, their cost is prohibitive. A single tower isn’t much cheaper than a factory or a couple of siege units, making them only a short-term strategy. I again found it makes far more sense to keep units at your base or any strategic point constantly, which will shred attackers far faster. The same applies to your opponents, who can simply be steamrolled with enough firepower if they haven’t got enough units. In this game, position doesn’t win, numbers do.

In a similar vein to my last point, base construction is exceptionally simple. In comparison with some other RTS titles, which have complex webs of prerequisites for structures, the only requirement for construction is that you have the research and resources to build it. There’s none of this requiring one type of factory before building another type. This makes getting a base up and running quick and easy and allows players to jump into the action right away.

My favorite design aspect of the game, however, is the research itself. While RTS games usually have a research tree, nothing else I’ve played streamlines it to the extent Supreme Commander 2 does. Everything is in one tab, separated by category and displaying the numerical effect when the mouse is held over a specific technology. It was an annoying feature of some games I’ve touched that researching, say, an upgrade for an ability user was needed for a type of infantry. That level of complexity simply slows the game down in my opinion.

In summary, Supreme Commander 2 has thus far managed to fulfill the expectations I had when I bought it and still surprise me with extra benefits in places I was not expecting. While the game is still young and I have yet to experience every corner of the experience (if such a thing is possible), this is an investment I feel pleased I made. This is why I have such good memories of the strategy genre and why I intend to keep playing it, for games like this one.

It’s been a long journey. I’ll try and keep this brief.

Several months ago, I encountered two people who immediately impressed me with their tolerance and generosity. I was very new to the idea of internet message boards and was more than a little overwhelmed. Fortunately, both of these men were willing to help. The former, using an avatar I didn’t recognize until months later (it was a Trigun avatar), routinely showed up to provide support and encouragement. The latter, a somewhat engimatic man who I fondly called SilverDrag, had the great responsibility of organizing the community’s blogs into some sort of order, including smiting the least useful ones. I remember him because he never once gave my work such a mark, recognizing it as a man finding himself rather than the ramblings of a deranged troll.

I’ll skip most of the next couple of months and simply say I eventually felt it was time to move to a different site. I knew both of these men had accounts here and figured it was worth a try. So after a few minutes fighting with the sign-up process (it was one in the morning and I wasn’t thinking straight), I became a member of Gamer Limit under the username KyoShiranui. I hope people like it. It’s easier to pronounce than my old one at least.

Now, since Gamer Limit is a gaming site and this is what passes for an introduction blog, I’ll go into my exploits in that arena. I started gaming around a decade ago when I discovered Age of Empires 2, an RTS game I would happily play for hours at a time. For most of the next couple of years, I was in the odd position of being a PC-exclusive gamer, mostly focusing on RTS games, business simulators, and other games where I could have fun trying to keep track of a whole rack of things at once. Occasionally I would jump in on a friend or relative and use their systems for a while, becoming at least familiar with FF7, Star Wars: Battlefront, various Advance Wars games, and the early forms of Pokemon. Like any gamer, I also experimented with a few other genres, trying out Neverwinter Nights and finding I preferred the pen-and-paper version better.

This didn’t change until two years ago, when my family purchased our first console, the Nintendo Wii. This was my first experience with console games in their entirety, and I’ll say I wish I hadn’t missed everything that came before. While I tried a bit of everything we had for the system, including Wii Fit, mostly I played Okami. It was one of those games that just resonated for whatever reason. (To clear things up, it’s also the source of my username, not the Fatal Fury series like many seem to think.)

As of current, I no longer have access to the Wii, at least not until break. I now own a DS, however, which honestly I should give more use. I also have a halfway decent PC that I bought factory-built with my student discount, though in hindsight I should have built the damn thing myself. My current favorite is Team Fortress 2, which I’m willing to play at almost any hour, and I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Supreme Commander 2, the first RTS game I’ve played in quite some time. Also on my list of prospectives is StarCraft 2, finally ready after thirteen years of waiting, and Okamiden, which can’t come soon enough. Don’t judge me.

That about wraps it up, to be honest. I’ll just say I’m glad to be here, in a place that seems to balance gaming news and opinion with actual gaming and community. Hopefully we’ll get along fine.