Sunday, July 6, 2008

What's Your FPS Strategy?

In a first person shooter (FPS) video game, there are many playing styles favored by different people. Whatever style you choose to play with has its advantages and disadvantages. But all styles come down to two basic strategies, offense and defense. For offense you want to maximize your capabilities and for defense you want to minimize your vulnerabilities.

Run & Gun - This type of player usually favors rapid fire, highly effective weapons, maximizing their offensive capabilities. Not much is used for defense here, except the element of surprise. This type of player likes to spend their game constantly moving, relying on their quick reaction time to dominate any encounter they may face when running around a corner or into a room. For those players with great reflexes this can be a very effective style of play.

Stealth - This type of player favors silent weapons when available. They prefer not just to surprise their opponents, but to overcome them before they even know they've been attacked. This player uses as much defensive capability as possible to remain hidden and undetected. Many games offer this type of player the ability to mask themselves from opponents' detection using camouflage or radar jamming.

Sniper - This type of player prefers the long range encounter. This may be due to exceptional prowess with long range weapons or just because they like a slower paced game. This style of play also makes it very important to remain undetected, not by stealth, but by distance. This type of player can be easily overwhelmed by a 'Run & Gun' player if encountered in close quarters.

Camping - This type of player needs teamwork to be effective. In a FPS game, the matches are on a closed area. There is only so much space to work with. With all the obstacles on a game map, there arises natural choke points--common areas that players come through. This type of player prefers to find those locations and let their prey come to them. Camping doesn't require any specific type of weapon to be effective. You can camp with long, medium, or close range weapons, they all work. But this playing style does have the significant disadvantage of being very predictable. Once a camper is recognized, using longer range or explosive weapons should easily remove them from their campsite.

In my opinion, these are the four basic styles of game play exhibited by all gamers in one form or another. Some players prefer to use one style of play for an entire match, while others like to switch it around depending on their situation. No single playing style is better or worse than another. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages. The key is recognizing what style your opponent is using and what best to counter with.

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My FPS Gaming Style

Back when I was in high school I went to a basketball camp at a major university. The coach there made a statement that has stuck with me to this day. He said "I'll tell you the secret to winning every game you ever play in, against any team. Just score one more point than your opponent." That's it. That's all it takes. Sure, the coach was talking more about free throws than anything else, but that motto can be applied to any type of competition where score is kept, including video games.

My preferred style of gameplay, when I'm with the right teammates, is camping. Camping takes advantage of that simple strategy the coach laid out so long ago -- just score one more point than the other team. Almost every game nowadays has a time limit attached to it. There's nothing requiring me to reach the maximum kill limit in a game. I just have to have one more point than my opponents when time expires. When we have a good team that can communicate well, camping works best, especially when our opponents (almost always) fail to recognize that we are camping and don't use a different strategy to counter ours. All too often we find ourselves sitting in front of a doorway that our opponents repeatedly feel they need to run through, dying on our bullets over and over again.

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Saturday, June 28, 2008

Diablo 3 Announced!

So, I stayed up a bit late tonight playing video games, watching movies and television. Around 3 AM I was browsing online when I noticed that the Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational starts live broadcasting online at 3:45 AM (it's in Paris). This week there's been hype around some big announcement Blizzard is supposed to make at the event. I figured that if there's a big announcement it will likely come in the beginning, so I decided to stay up a bit longer and listen in.

4:00 am MST
Mike Morheim - President of Blizzard Entertainment
Opened up with a generic 'thank you for making this a great event' speech. Reminded us that last year they announced Starcraft 2 at the Worldwide Invitational. Proceeded to show us a cheesy video of last year's highlights in South Korea with reggae music, of all things, as the background soundtrack. With a little dramatic prelude, he then announced that Blizzard's newest game is, as many speculated, Diablo 3.



4:15 am MST
Diablo 3 Trailer shown.



4:30 am MST
Jay Wilson - Lead Designer on Diablo 3
Narrated Diablo 3 demo
Characters still say the cheesy lines when entering an area (Barbarian "The sun has never shown here"). The graphics look much improved. The general aerial view is maintained as it was in Diablo 2. Some previous characters from Diablo 2 show up in Diablo 3 (guess who). At least this time around your character is smart enough to tell him to just shut up.
Cain: "Stay awhile and ..." (interrupted)
You: "It is time for shedding our enemies blood, not time for idle talk."
Cain: "Oh, whatever"
During the demo he goes through different classes. One of the new ones is the witch doctor. One new skill (similar to fire wall or bone wall)...zombie wall. Also, classes can be either male or female.


Overall, it was a great presentation. The demo was awesome. This is probably the only game that will pull me away from console gaming for any significant period of time (only a few months or so). Sadly, no announcement was made regarding a release date. Considering that they had a working demo, I wouldn't be surprised if it was later this year.

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Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational

So, I stayed up a bit late tonight playing video games, watching movies and television. Around 3 AM I was browsing online when I noticed that the Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational starts live broadcasting online at 3:45 AM (it's in Paris). This week there's been hype around some big announcement Blizzard is supposed to make at the event. I figured that if there's a big announcement it will likely come in the beginning, so I decided to stay up a bit longer and listen in.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Finally....

When Microsoft first released the Xbox 360, it was plagued with problems. Something to do with overheating and faulty hardware. Whatever the problem was, it resulted in a lot of people having to return their gaming console to get it replaced. This was good in that the user now had a new console to play their games on. It also created new problems, in that online purchases made and licensed on the old console were not able to be used on the new console without repurchasing the downloads.

Microsoft finally released today a DRM (Digital Rights Management) transfer tool on Xbox.com that allows users to transfer their licenses to another console. This means you won't have to repurchase all those Rock Band tunes you downloaded. Even though this new tool leaves a lot to be desired in usability, the functionality is there. Oh well, I guess Microsoft can't get everything right on the first round (or second, third, ...).

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