Sicarius

Nintendo Wii

Artikel, Englisch, GamersGlobal, Hard- und Software, Podcast, Spiele

In 24 Stunden wird die Welt untergehen. Warum? Weil dann die Server von StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty live gehen. Ihr solltet also mit der verbleibenden Zeit so viel sinnvolles wie möglich anfangen. Mein Vorschlag: Hört euch die neue Folge des Podcasts an ->

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (30.6MB)

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Wenn es eine Konsole gibt, die nicht nur hier auf Bagdadsoftware zu kurz kommt, dann ist es wohl die Nintendo Wii. Vollkommen unverdient, wie ich finde, obwohl ich gar keine besitze. Deshalb habe ich mir mal wieder Philipp geschnappt. Als Wii-Spieletester kann er sich schließlich zu Recht als Experte auf diesem Gebiet bezeichnen. In der aktuellen Folge rede ich mit ihm fast 45 Minuten lang über die Entwicklung der Wii seit ihrer Veröffentlichung, analysiere mit ihm ihre Stärke und Schwächen und lasse ihn natürlich auch ein paar Kaufempfehlung abseits von Mario, Zelda & Co. aussprechen, um euch zu einem Kauf zu überreden. Ob wir das tatsächlich schaffen, weiß ich nicht. Aber ihr hört den Podcast selbstverständlich wie immer auf eigene Gefahr. Wir sind nicht dafür verantwortlich, wenn ihr nach dem Genuss einen starken Drang verspürt, der euch in die Wii-Ecke des nächstgelegenen Online- oder Offlineshops führt.
Abseits vom Podcast, ging gestern auch der neunte Teil meines umfangreichen Speedrun-Specials online. Dieses Mal habe ich mich mit Thomas “Lord_Tom” Seufert unterhalten, der zusammen mit TASer Mijitsu den aktuellen TAS-Rekord in Super Mario Bros. 3 hält. Ein sehr interessantes und aufschlussreiches Gespräch, wenn ich das so sagen darf. Und der Run selbst ist sowieso Kult. Warum das so ist, erfahrt ihr natürlich auch im Interview. Nächstes Wochenende, wenn endlich der ganze StarCraft II-Hype abgeklungen ist, wird voraussichtlich der zehnte und vorerst letzte Teil des Specials online gehen.

For our foreign visitors: The interview with Thomas “Lord_Tom” Seufert is also available here on Bagdadsoftware in its original, English form but of course not with such a nice-looking layout.

In diesem Zusammenhang auch noch einmal ein Dank an JakillSlavik, der dieses Mal wieder das Teaserbild zum Artikel gebastelt hat. Geht am besten rüber zu seinem deviantART-Profil und “favet” das Bild. Verdient hat es das schließlich!

Am Donnerstag wird euch an dieser Stelle hingegen Rondrer begrüßen, da auch ich vor lauter StarCraft II keine Zeit haben werde einen zu verfassen. Mich lest ihr stattdessen drüben bei GamersGlobal. Nun verabschiede ich mich aber für heute mit den Details zur 24. Folge:

Zu Wort kommen: Christoph “Sicarius” Hofmann und Philipp “Knurrunkulus” Spilker.

Technische Daten: 44:31 min lang; 96kbit Qualität; 30,57 MB groß; Aufnahme mit Skype und Pamela for Skype; Editierung mit Adobe Soundbooth CS4

Musikcredits nach Reihenfolge:
Brian Conrad, Sue Kasper, Justin McCormick – SimCity 2000 – Track 47 (Komplett)
Brian Conrad, Sue Kasper, Justin McCormick – SimCity 2000 – Track 31 (Auszug)
Frank Klepacki – The Legend of Kyrandia – Pool Of Sorrow (Komplett)

Weiterführende Links:
Generation BLOG – Philipps persönlicher Blog

Wie im Podcast erwähnt, erscheint Folge 25 des Podcasts am 23. August und wird selbstverständlich die gamescom 2010 zum Thema haben. Da wir die Folge zudem direkt vor Ort aufzeichnen, habt ihr vielleicht sogar die Chance mal kurz reinzuschreien. Wann und wo wir die Aufnahme in Köln machen, werde ich natürlich kurzfristig hier bekannt geben.

Sicarius

Speedrunners

Artikel, Englisch, Spiele

Better late than never, I guess. What am I talking about? Some of you may remember my 7-part-special about speedruns over at GamersGlobal which was published at the end of July 2009. Besides a report and a top10-list, it also featured five interviews with speedrunners and admins from the Speed Demos Archive. Sadly they and most other SDA-visitors had to rely on Google Translate in order to be able to read them. You know, because they were published in German. The results were – well, you’ve probably laughed about the results yourself. So it came to no big surprise for me that there was more than one request for a proper translation:

Of course these aren’t really translations – the German versions are. The English releases above on the other hand are the originals. I fixed some spelling and grammatical errors but otherwise the rest is the uncut version of my questions and their answers in full length without any streamlining or other changes to the content which were needed for the GamersGlobal-release. I did only check before-hand if any of the details had changed but the records and videos are still current. So there was no need for me to intervene here either.

You could ask why it took a year to put these up especially considering they haven’t changed so much from what I had on my HDD all the time. The truth is: I don’t know. I guess laziness was a big factor. But why live in the past? As I said at the start: Better late than never. While the report probably will never see an English translation, at least the far more interesting interviews are finally accessible for our international audience.

I can however tell you that I’m currently working on part 8 to 10 of the special. This time it will all be about Tool-Assisted Speedruns and the corresponding website TASVideos.org. And since I’m already in the middle of conducting the interviews, you can expect the release once again mid to end of July – first in German of course but perhaps this time around it won’t take me a year to publish the originals.

PS: Blur, SBK X: Superbike World Championship (doesn’t look that good but still is the best motorcycle-game out there at the moment) and the very unusual Way of the Samurai 3 (GTA is basically a totally linear experience in comparison) have finally found their way into the MobyGames-database. So go over there and take a look. The Blur-entry is especially interesting as most of the 21 screenshots currently online are from the infamous 4-player-tournament between JakillSlavik, Rondrer, an unimportant third player and myself.

Sicarius

Ramblings

Englisch, Gespielt, Spiele

Snow. Frozen water. Gift of the heavens. Curse of the workers. Probably even more poisoned than normal rain – so have fun anyone who likes to eat it. Chernobyl, normal pollution and guys who take a piss in it made sure that I would need to be almost dead before putting some in my mouth. Luckily I don’t care for snow so much anyway. Yeah, it looks nice and all but mainly from behind the window. Otherwise it’s just cold, wet and blinding if the sun shines.

Personally I like my snow more in form of 0s and 1s. Ski or Die – that’s the way to have fun in the snow without getting cold hands. It’s still one of the only games to date which actually featured a decent snowball-fight. Most winter-games don’t even bother with putting them in. And even last year’s Shaun White’s Snowboarding only made a half-ass attempt on simulating the satisfaction of hitting someone straight in the face. But I’ve to admit: it was fun for a while. I mean throwing snowballs. Doing tricks on the board still is fun with that game.

Today’s winter-games mostly concentrate on the simulation of Olympic disciplines. Honestly – where’s the fun in that? Even back in the day with the one and only Wintergames I didn’t bother with most of the disciplines. “TLDNP” would be the appropriate acronym for most of them (Too Long Did Not Play). I mean running 1.000 meters was already a chore in Summergames and killed more than one joystick – but doing a full langlauf? Even biathlon was only fun because of the shooting part. Yes, I know – there are more. But without house-rules I’m one of those people that just aren’t interested.

Not really a surprise considering I ignore most sport titles except for snooker/billiard- and ice-hockey-simulations as well as racing games. Only fun titles like said Shaun White’s Snowboarding peak my interest – but they are almost all console-exclusive. Even Shaun White Snowboarding – World Stage will only be released on Wii because no-one cared for the PC-version of the original game (for understandable reasons). What do we get instead? The next 10.000 winter-olympics-based titles from RTL Games with only marginal upgrades since last year’s version. I guess at least someone did learn from EA Sports…

But what am I moaning about? The death of the PC? No, not really. If I turn my head left, I see the Tower of Babel made out of decent games released in the last three month for the PC alone. Perhaps if there were really less games for the PC, I would have more time playing them. The reality is that there’s enough material left for the Bagdadsoftware NOCAs. The nominees will be made public soon by the way. This year they may include one or two console-titles too for obvious reasons. I already have five games for the Xbox 360 after all and Brütal Legend has more than a decent chance of winning a category this year. Not enough for their own “Console game of the year”-category though But all in good time – first I need to get two more articles for GamersGlobal out the door this week.

One game that certainly won’t make the Top 3 of “Best First Person Shooter” of the year 2009 is Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter. I mean I love Serious Sam even more than the Duke. But the remake is terribly lacking in many departments – including the most important part of the game: multiplayer.

Pings from hell, lags and crashes (in single-player too) aren’t my idea of fun. It’s especially sad if you look at how awesome the originals ran. No strain on the hardware and a network-code-quality still unreached by 90% of the games out there. Even Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has its quirks and I mean that game has been polished to hell. Still much fun though. The whole leveling system, earning rewards and all never gets old. Thanks to Mosh-Pit-mode even the maps and game-modes stay somewhat fresh. Singleplayer? Not so much. But I already talked about it when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was released. Constantly respawning enemies just aren’t fun. I’m always running through the levels in the search for the next checkpoint/cutscene/scriptsequence. You can’t stay at a point for five seconds without grenades raining down on you forcing you to move on.

What were we talking about? Ah, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter. That the graphical overhaul isn’t that big and the cooperative-mode runs like shit is a real shame. Serious Sam’s one-liners are still funny and killing hundreds and hundreds of enemies never gets old. But if I’ve to reset my graphics driver sometimes every two minutes in order to continue gaming – I won’t bother anymore till a second patch hits. Let’s hope they learn from this experience for the already announced Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter. I wonder if we will see a new Duke-game until then. I mean the game came out in 2001 and the jokes are STILL valid and funny.

At least there’s a good chance for a second patch to be released. The waiting period for that all-fixing Red Faction: Guerilla on the other hand just keeps getting longer and longer. A release in 2009? Becoming more and more unlikely as we speak. And the famous S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl-patch 1.1? Well, we don’t really talk about that anymore. Just go and buy S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat…

Sicarius

We were right!

Englisch, Unterhaltungsbranche

“I think that we traditionally thought that people only buy games at Christmas or around holiday time, and now we’re looking back and going, ‘You know what, GTA launched in May; Resident Evil comes out in March’.”
– Glen Schofield (General Manager of EA Redwood Shores Studio)

When I read this statement my first reaction was literally a facepalm. Don’t get me wrong: It is great that someone finally openly acknowledges that they were wrong all these years, but still I can’t help but feel a sense of “Isn’t that what customers and media alike were saying all the time?”. Didn’t we moan year after year when October came and the three month release frenzy began? Didn’t we say that good games will always sell no matter the season? Yes, we did but it seems like no one was listening.

The more Electronic Arts finally is coming to its more customer-focused senses since CEO Jon Riccitiello took the helm, the more I think that the execs not only of that company but also all the other bigwigs out there lived under a rock all these years. It’s very shocking to see how surprised they were that new IP (Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge) actually sold as well or even better than last years crapccessors Need for Speed, FIFA and whatever although the reasons are obvious to almost every serious gamer.

These games sold well because of two things: They were relatively new and featured some innovation and were not just the predecessor in a new box and the package one got when he/she bought the games was really polished. Of course there were still some issues like the fighting in Mirror’s Edge but most of them were purely because of decisions made during the design process and not because the controller wasn’t recognized, the game’s performance was shit or bugs seriously inhibited gameplay. But will EA or any other company really learn from this experience? My answer is a yes and a no.

The big players like Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard or even Ubisoft Entertainment are indeed finally recognizing that quality not only sells better but keeps the customer looking forward to releases from the company and that it, the most important argument for company executives and investors, reduces operating costs in the long run. The initial bigger investment done into a proper quality assurance process saves a ton of money after release. You don’t need to pay for additional patches, you don’t need such a big customer support department and you don’t need to do an image campaign because no one wants to buy your crappy products anymore.

On the other hand there is still the issue of milking successful franchises. An aspect Electronic Arts excelled at in the past but is now seriously challenged by the newly-formed giant Activision Blizzard.

Activision-Blizzard even openly admitted to investors that they want to milk their franchises by releasing every year at least one new installment of every major brand. This means each year a new Call of Duty and each year at least one new Guitar Hero if not more (there were four new releases with that name in 2008!). The only comfort is that opposed to Electronic Arts, where each new installment was made only by one studio, Activision Blizzard at least tries to make the development cycle as long as possible. In case of Call of Duty this means that one year Infinity Ward releases a major new installment of the series, the next year it’s Treyarch Invention turn to use the technology and release a game while in the background Infinity Ward has already put one year worth of work in the next version.

The really sad aspect of this strategy isn’t that the customer still receives only marginally improved sequels every other year but also that hundreds of creative people are damned to work on the same IP year after year without a real option to break the cycle other than leaving the company or getting fired. Until then they can only do their best while hoping that the one year when the cow is finally dry and no matter how good the game may be no one really wants it, is still far away. Luckily, the mass market needs a long time to notice a decline in quality. Enough time for the parent company to buy a studio with a new, promising IP and start the cycle again…

Sicarius

Games Convention 2008

Artikel, Englisch, Gespielt, Podcast, Spiele, Unterhaltungsbranche

Today’s entry will be short in terms of content and, as you will have noticed by now, in English. The reason is simple: I told a few people that they can access the article about their game from here – and most of them neither speak nor read German. But the reports themselves are of course still in German. It was already enough work writing them up without translating them. So here is everything I wrote for JörgSpielt (Jörg has deleted his website in the meantime) as a GC-Reporter:

Microsoft Sidewinder X5 (was sadly deleted with the website)
Burnout Paradise (PC)
Zweiklassengesellschaft (Kommentar)
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. (PC)
Mirror’s Edge (PS3)
Vertigo (Xbox 360)
Red Faction: Guerilla (Xbox 360)
Moviesandbox
Palladion (PC)
Moviestorm

That is almost double the amount of articles I wrote last year and I hope I didn’t leave quality on the street for quantity. And on that note I would also like to thank Azzkickr, Rondrer and Daiah for reading over some of the stuff.
I’m also looking into the possibility of adding all these articles somehow to the Bagdadsoftware-Database but I’m still unclear on how I will do it. For now they will remain solely on JoergSpielt.de.

Besides all the written stuff, I also recorded the promised third episode of the UCF Podcast:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:30 — 9.6MB)

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As the name suggests, it is all about the Games Convention. And besides a few reports on games I played, I also interviewed JakillSlavik, Miles, Rondrer und Jahn. That’s why the beginning and the end sound worse than the middle part, as they were recorded in Leipzig with my voice recorder. But as always everything should be understandable.

Speakers (sorted by appearance): Sicarius, Rondrer, Jahn, JakillSlavik, Miles

Technical Details: 10:29min long; 128kbit quality (but some of the initial recordings were in 96kbit); 9,61MB big; Recorded with the voice recorder Olympus VN-2100PC and Audacity

Music credits (sorted by appearance):
Brian Conrad, Sue Kasper, Justin McCormick – SimCity 2000 – Track 47 (Complete)
Brian Conrad, Sue Kasper, Justin McCormick – SimCity 2000 – Track 31 (Parts)
Alexander Brandon – Deus Ex – DuClare Chateau (Parts)

And last but not least, the overview of our – well this year more my day at the Games Convention:

Games Convention 2008

Pünktlich um vier Uhr fuhr vergangen Donnerstag also der silberne Peugeot mit JakillSlavik und Sicarius Richtung Leipzig. Nein, das ist nicht ganz korrekt. Eigentlich fuhr er erst zu Rondrer und Jahn, um diese auch noch ins Auto zu packen. Aber der Weg ist sowieso der gleiche. Die Fahrt lief auch insgesamt ganz gut. Abgesehen von ein paar LKWs, die uns notorisch vor der Nase hingen und ein Navigationsgerät von Falk, welches sturer als ein Bock war.

All in all more than enough to keep you busy until Thursday and the release of the next entry. But before I finish: Here is the proof that I really was at the Games Convention and didn’t just fake everything:

Marc, Jörg und Christoph auf der GC
(Marc “Varloris” Fouquet, Jörg Langer and Christoph “Sicarius” Hofmann)

And you can also find my face on this website (deleted in the meantime).

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