Gabe Newell, from Valve software, recently conducted a focus group session with deaf gamers. Three videos are available of this event: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Note that the audio quality is, ironically, pretty bad in each video.

One of the most interesting tidbits from these videos involves Valve's desire to introduce a deaf character into a future game (possibly in the Half Life universe). An idea is floated where Alyx has taught Dog sign language, based on a past crush she had with a deaf individual. In essence, it would be an excuse for Valve to develop the necessary technology for characters to sign. Pretty cool.

I think it's great that Valve is doing this. In the accessibility world, blind people get nearly all of the focus. For a gaming company to branch out into this realm is really quite remarkable. I'm looking forward to see how Valve implements this new technology, and I'm excited to see where the Half Life story goes with this (assuming, of course, that Half Life is the intended universe for this work).

I recently purchased a copy of Far Cry 2 on Steam. Oddly enough, Far Cry 2 has nothing to do with the first Far Cry, save for the name. Crytek, the original game's developer, wasn't involved in the development of Far Cry 2, so I'm confused as to why this game is billed as the true sequel. Other than the standard first person shooter tropes, the two have very little (if anything) in common.

To me, Far Cry 2 resembles the Grand Theft Auto series more than any traditional first person shooter. The mission design feels similar, as do many of the game mechanics. But in the long run, how does the game fare? Here's my review.

The Good

Sandbox Style Gameplay

I'm a sucker for sandbox games, especially when it comes to the FPS genre. Being given the freedom to attack a problem in a number of ways opens the door for replayability, as well as adding a sense of realism to the game. Far Cry 2 provides that experience to a point, and I had fun exploiting it as much as I could.

African Milieu

To my knowledge, no other game has presented the player with a setting like this. Many of the locales feel authentic, and there are certain moments when you can seemingly feel the surroundings (sunrises and sunsets in this game are particularly well done). Kudos for whoever made the call to set the game in this part of the world. It's refreshing to see something new.

Attempt at Realism

I'll give credit to the game developers for trying to make the game a little more realistic than some similar titles. Weapons degrade over time (arguably too quickly). Vehicles need repair as they take damage. Your view is restricted while driving (i.e. you can't swivel your head around). And your character occasionally must perform first-aid on himself when he's taken too much damage.

Grenade Launchers == Fun

Of all the weapons in the game, my personal favorite has to be the grenade launcher. It feels tremendously powerful, especially when it's mounted on the back of an assault truck. Drive around with one of these things and you will own your surroundings. Just make sure not to aim too closely to where you are standing.

Excellent Fire Mechanic

Far Cry 2 is the first game I've ever seen that uses a fire propagation mechanic. Set fire to dry vegetation and it will spread in the direction the wind blows. This can be used in clever ways to hem in the enemy, though this tactic isn't exploited in the game as it should be. Some missions designed around this would have been fun.

The Bad

Repetitive Missions

Mission design in Far Cry 2 is as bland as it gets. All of the arms dealer missions are the exact same setup (destroy a convoy somewhere on the map). All of the assassination missions are (you guessed it) assassinations of a person in various locations. And the main missions aren't much different. It's all either fetch an item, kill a person, or destroy some object.

Simplistic Game Mechanics

The mechanics of this game are very simple and feel like a console GTA clone. Usable objects flash slowly in the game, and there are only a few of those: ammunition, weapons, health kits, and save points (the latter of which seems redundant, seeing as you can save anywhere in the PC edition of the game). Driving vehicles is simple, but for some reason enemies can drive faster than you possibly can. A lot of the game feels dumbed down which is a shame.

Drab Color Palette

The color palette used in this game could hardly be more boring. Each locale is either brown or green; if you've seen one location, you've seen them all. The HDR lighting doesn't help in this regard. Outdoor scenes feel flat due to the bright sunlight, and indoor scenes are dark and dank due to the lack of sunlight.

Nonexistent Stealth Mechanic

There are a few weapons in the game with silencers, and the player can also purchase a camouflaged "stealth suit." But none of these features seem to make your character more stealthy. Enemies always seem to know where you are and it's hard to 'lose' them once they've detected you. This removes an aspect of Far Cry and Crysis that I loved the most: being able to hide from your attackers, regroup, and attack again from a new location. An honest-to-God stealth element would have made this game so much more fun.

Bland Weapon and Vehicle Design

For the most part, the weapons and vehicles in Far Cry 2 all feel the same. Sure the weapons may sound a little different, but they rarely have a noticeable difference in handling. For example, every machine gun seems to do the same amount of damage as the others. With the amount of choice given to the player from a weapons standpoint (there are bunch of weapons to unlock), you'd think the developers would have made them feel different. To make matters worse, a few weapons are even nearly impossible to use. The mortar is a prime example of this; there's no clear way to aim the shells, so the weapon is quickly rendered useless.

Malaria

Your player contracts Malaria at the beginning of the game, and keeps it until the end. The sickness is manifested by random "hallucination" sequences, making it hard to do anything until you pop a few pills to stave off the attack. Getting sick in a game like this is an interesting idea, but this implementation is poorly done.

Weak Story, Ending, and Voice Acting

Weak stories are commonplace among FPS's, so it should come as no surprise that the Far Cry 2 story is very weak. The ending of the game is equally as bad, and a real let down after spending many hours in the game world. Voice acting was atrocious across the board (one of the worst efforts I've ever heard). I would have rather read the dialog than hear actors read it to me in monotone.

The Verdict

This game had a lot going for it, but in the end I was mostly let down. Thankfully, I only paid $20 for it.

The new Spy and Sniper class updates are coming today, with the following goodies:

• A bow and arrow for the Sniper
• The Razorback shield for the Sniper
• Jars of urine for the Sniper (can you believe they actually made this a real weapon?!?)
• Two brand new watches for the Spy
• The Ambassador pistol for the Spy
• Payload Race game type and two new Arena maps
• Meet the Spy video

To top it all off, Valve is opening Team Fortress 2 to everyone for free this weekend. So download Steam, pre-load the files, and join in the fun!

Not only are we getting a Sniper class update (with a bow and arrow and the Razorback shield), but it looks like Valve is shipping the Spy class update as well (with two new watches)! Let it be known that I officially love Valve and Team Fortress 2.

Coming along with these updates is a new game play type, Payload Race, which looks super fun, and two new arena maps (which I'm not too wild about). This massive update doesn't drop until next Thursday, so there are still some goodies to be unveiled. New hats are also going to be available in this update, which should provide some fun.

I'm really looking forward to this update, even though Spy and Sniper are my two least-played classes. Perhaps this will motivate me to spend more time in those roles.

The rather humorously titled Slashdot article Duke Nukem For Never, reports that 3D Realms, once among the brightest computer game developers, has closed for good. This is pretty sad for me, as I was once a major fan of the company's games. So big a fan, in fact, that I maintained a little Map Editing FAQ for the Build game engine. In essence, that document and those games are what got me publishing on the web in the first place. It's hard to believe that was 13 years ago.

I can't say I'm surprised that the company has gone out of business, however. They've made a bunch of poor choices over the past few years, and have essentially released no new self-developed titles since 1997's Shadow Warrior (which was a great game). It will be interesting to see what happens to whatever actually exists of Duke Nukem Forever.

It looks like I'll have a reason to get back into Team Fortress 2 next week: the official Scout update is nearly here! So far, Valve has released information on the following:

• The Sandman: A replacement weapon for the baseball bat that allows you to stun your opponents.
• Two new community maps (arena_watchtower and cp_junction)
• Energy drink (though I'm not sure which weapon this replaces; maybe the pistol?) and a list of the new achievements.
• Two more community maps (cp_egypt and an update to cp_fastlane)

There are still two days of updates left to be unveiled. One of them, if I recall correctly, is a new payload map, and the other is undoubtedly the new primary unlockable weapon (replacing the scatter gun). Very exciting!

As a part of its recent layoffs, Microsoft closed Aces Studio, the team behind Microsoft's stalwart Flight Simulator line of games, and the upcoming Train Simulator 2. According to the report, Train Simulator 2 is officially dead, and will not be revived. The Flight Simulator counterpart may be brought back at some point, but even its fate is undetermined at the moment.

I know I'm one of the only people on the planet who cares about it, but I was looking forward to Train Sim 2. The graphics looked great, and I was really looking forward to the migration to the Flight-Sim game engine. But, alas, it's not to be.

Onward and upward, I suppose.

I recently ran across an interesting implementation of the classic Arkanoid game. The game is coded completely in object-oriented JavaScript / DHTML. I'm really impressed with what the author was able to do. The game has all kinds of features: a level editor, power ups, decent sound effects, and more.

I found this via a handy list of other JavaScript Games. What a good way to waste some time!

I've recently been looking for a few new computer games to play. Seeing as there's nothing on the immediate horizon that suits my fancy, I decided to dig into my existing computer game collection for something I hadn't played in a while. The first title that popped up was Microsoft's Rise of Nations, the one and only real-time strategy (RTS) game that I own. I'm not a big fan of the RTS genre, mostly because I'm really terrible at those types of games, and the only reason I own one is because my dad got it for free at a Microsoft conference. Surprisingly to me, it's a fun little game. As I've already said, I stink at RTS games, so even playing on the 2nd (of 7) difficulty levels still presents quite a challenge. But I have fun playing the game, and that's what matters.

As much fun as I was having, there was still an itch that I couldn't scratch. Thanks to some recent Diablo III screenshots I found via a news posting on Blue's News, it occurred to me: I needed a good-ol' role-playing game (RPG) to play. So I dug through my still-boxed computer games (which I never unpacked), and found my old copy of Sacred. It's a Diablo-like RPG and was just what I was looking for. While perusing the Wikipedia article on the game, I noted that an expansion pack had been released, something that I originally had not picked up. A 'gold' edition of the game had later been released, including the original game along with the expansion. I saw it for sale on Amazon for $25.99, which seemed a little high, considering I already owned the base game. Thankfully, the game is also available on Steam for a paltry $9.99. I was sold, immediately bought the game, and I'm already having a blast (and I'm looking forward to all the new content).

Score another win for the Steam platform.

The Team Fortress 2 Blog has a really insightful article on the design process behind the demoman class. Most interesting is the fact that the demoman started out as a red-haired Caucasian which, in the author's words was "perhaps a little too much like a groundskeeper in Springfield." These behind-the-scenes looks at the game design process are really interesting to read, making the TF2 blog a worthy bookmark.

The new arena game type in Team Fortress 2 is a strange beast. Players are given one life per round, and there's essentially no health to be had in each map. Rounds are played until either an entire team has been killed off, or a team captures the one and only capture point (which becomes active after 60 seconds). If a team wins 5 rounds in a row, the teams are scrambled and play begins again. I like this feature, but I think the limit should be lowered to 3 rounds in a row.

I've been playing this game type each night since its release on Tuesday, and I have to admit that I don't really like it. This most likely stems from the fact that I'm no good at arena mode; I'm often the first to be killed, and standard Team Fortress 2 tactics don't apply. Arena feels nothing like the game I've come to love, and I'm rather disappointed that Valve has expanded the game in this direction. A 'last man standing' approach doesn't yield for great team play, which is the entire point of the game. For now, I'll be sticking to the classics: payload, control point, and capture the flag.

The official Team Fortress 2 blog has word of the upcoming update to the heavy class. There are tons of additions in the pipeline:

• New game type (as yet unannounced) with five new maps
• New payload map
• New community made map
• Three unlockable weapons
• Thirty-five new achievements

An official heavy update site is revealing new information each day this week, as well as Monday and Tuesday of next week. So far, they've revealed the new community map (cp_steel), one of the new unlockable weapons (a pair of boxing gloves), and the list of achievements (though none of them have descriptions yet). As before, a free weekend will be held for folks new to the game. I'm looking forward to this update; it'll give me a reason to jump back into TF2.

I just finished reading an excellent article on how to fix pathfinding in games. The author presents a number of excellent examples of how today's pathfinding can break (with examples from legendary games like Oblivion and Half Life 2), and offers a great solution: use a navigation mesh instead of a waypoint graph. Genius.

I'm not exactly sure when Valve made them available, but player statistics are now publicly viewable on the web. You can keep tabs on my stats as I make progress on the various achievements recently added for the Medic and Pyro classes. If you click the "Return to jgbCodeMonkey's Steam ID" link, you can view stats for a few other games (though not all games report stats).

In other related news, Valve has recently put up an official Team Fortress 2 Blog. Lots of behind-the-scenes artwork is being shown, and some explanations for decisions they've made are presented. While the blog isn't the most active in the world, the nuggets of information they have provided so far are quite intriguing. Definitely a recommended read for fans of the game.

On Saturday, Blizzard officially announced Diablo III, the next in the highly popular role-playing game series. Although the first Diablo was fun, it was Diablo II that put the series into the upper echelons of gaming. It has been over 7 years since the one and only expansion pack for Diablo II was released, enabling the game to run at 800x600 instead of a paltry 640x480 (those were the days).

I highly recommend the game play trailer on the official website (linked above). One of Blizzard's employees shows a number of new game mechanics (destructible environments that you can use to your advantage), as well as one of the new playable classes (the witch doctor, which looks super cool). I am super excited about this title, and I'll definitely be picking it up once it's released. Blizzard, like Valve, seldom disappoints with their releases, and this is one to definitely watch.

The fine folks at Valve have updated Team Fortress 2 once again, bringing new achievements, unlockable weapons, and a core change to the Pyro class. Along with all of these changes come two new community maps: one control point map and one capture the flag map. If you're interested in checking out the new content for free, you can do so this weekend, from June 20 to June 22. As always, friend me up if you jump into a game; my nickname is jgbCodeMonkey.

I completed Crysis yesterday, so I thought I would post a few quick thoughts on my experience:

What I Liked

• As can be expected, the graphics in this game are insane. The jungle atmosphere is spot-on, physics are incredible, lighting is superb, and character modeling is excellent. Visually, this game is a real treat to play.
• The nano-suit which the player wears is an interesting game play mechanic. 'Health' is handled via the nano-suit, and the abilities which the suit provides (speed, strength, armor, and cloak) are fun to play with.
• Level design is excellent. All of the locations feel incredibly realistic, and there's a ton to explore. I'll probably play through the game once more just to fully explore each map, because I know there's a ton of stuff I missed.

What I Didn't Like

• Crysis isn't near as long as Far Cry, which really disappointed me. Likewise, the maps in Crysis aren't as large either.
• Crysis has an incredibly weak story line, much like Far Cry did. This comes as no surprise, especially in the FPS genre, but I was hoping for a little more meat than what I was given.
• Again, just like Far Cry, the game turns into a battle against alien forces. I really enjoyed battling the human forces in the early parts of this game, and I wish Crytek had stuck to that theme. The later alien-based levels are, for the most part, not very fun. Why can't we get a game that uses this style engine and doesn't devolve into a 'save-the-world-from-alien-attack' kind of story? Perhaps Far Cry 2 will provide the kind of experience I'm looking for.
• Difficulty is really uneven. I played through on the 'Normal' difficulty, and found myself stuck at a few places (though I never got stuck permanently). Some battles are surprisingly easy, while others are incredibly hard to survive.
• Some of the vehicles the player gets to drive are woefully difficult to maneuver, which is frustrating. I'm not entirely sure why this is, because the vehicles in Far Cry were a pleasure to drive.
• This game is a system hog. I played at 1280x1024 on the High setting (no anti-aliasing or anything fancy), and there were still a few moments where things really chugged (entering and exiting buildings especially). Overall my experience was smooth, but these moments of stuttering killed some of the immersion factor.

I'm not sure if I can recommend this game or not. It's worth playing through for the eye candy, but some of the game's frustrations cancel out that fun. My final verdict for Crysis? C+

I just finished Half-Life 2: Episode Two again. Playing it through on my new computer was a real treat, and the ending of this episode still brings a tear to my eye. One thing jumped out at me for the first time on this play-through: the end credits. Valve has chosen to present the end credits in a short, yet elegant way. Every contributor is listed in alphabetical order by last name, with only a few notable exceptions (all the voice talent is singled out, for example). The result is a short, concise credits sequence that isn't a bore to sit through. Compare this with the end credits for Call of Duty 4, which go on for so long that a rap song is performed to break the monotony (I believe the end credits are on the order of 3 or 4 minutes long in that particular title).

I'd really like to see more end credit sequences patterned after Valve's design. Others may disagree, but knowing who did what on a project isn't very important. Listing each contributor in a single group levels the playing field and gives everyone an equal measure of thanks.

The long-awaited update to Team Fortress 2 was released Tuesday evening, so I've only had a brief amount of time to play around with Gold Rush, the map showcasing the new payload game type. In a word, the new game play theme is awesome. Gold Rush is much more enjoyable than Dustbowl (which I love, by the way), and I really hope more maps of this type are released over time.

Here's how Gold Rush works. A mine cart, carrying a Fat Man style bomb, must be moved from point A to point B through 3 different stages. The attacking team (BLU) moves the cart simply by standing near it; the more team members surround the cart, the faster it moves. If the cart is left unattended for 30 seconds, it begins to move backwards towards the starting point. The map is played just like Dustbowl; there are a total of 3 stages in which BLU attacks and RED defends. Once either BLU successfully attacks all stages, or RED successfully defends a stage, the teams swap sides and the stages are played again.

Gold Rush is definitely a tough map. The defending team almost always has a height advantage, making it difficult to make quick progress. A number of choke points slow things down even more. But like every other map in Team Fortress 2, things are very well balanced.

The other major change to the game comes through the new unlockable weapons and achievements. Medic is the only player class that currently supports these new features, so everyone is inevitably playing as a Medic. A total of 36 new achievements are available, and for every 12 that you unlock, a new weapon option becomes available. First up is "The Blutsauger," a syringe gun mod that leeches health from each enemy you hit. Next is "The Kritzkrieg," a medi-gun mod that gives the person you use it on a 100% chance of firing critical damage (instead of the standard Ubercharge). Finally, "The Ubersaw" bone-saw mod provides a 25% charge to your Ubercharge meter for every hit you make on an enemy. I've only gotten 4 out of the 36 achievements so far (Surgical Prep, Trauma Queen, Intern, and Group Health), so I've got quite a ways to go. Some of the achievements look impossible to get, so I doubt I'll make it all the way.

If you'd like to try out Team Fortress 2, along with the new updates, Valve is offering a free weekend this weekend (May 5-6). I can't recommend this game highly enough, and the Steam service is great, so check it out. If you do check it out, look for me; my username is jgbCodeMonkey.

There's a great article over at ShackNews offering a preview of the new Team Fortress 2 updates coming in the next week or two. In addition to discussing the new Goldrush game type, they also take a look at the brand new unlockable weapons for the Medic class. Some of the new weapons really sound exciting, and I'm really looking forward to this update.