If you’ve played any recent videogames you’ve probably noticed that all, or nearly all of them have these things called “Achievements” or “Unlocks.”

Is it just me, or does the entire concept of achievements in a game generally deflate long-term interest in the game? I know it does for me. No matter how amazing a game experience may be, I really don’t want to have to do it 20 times so I can unlock the super-awesome-basically-required item. In fact, by setting up game experiences as predetermined units of “achievement” it pretty much sucks all of the life out of it.

For example, during the Christmas Steam Sale I purchased Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for about $6. I’d never played a Battlefield game before, and so I decided to pick it up. I finished the campaign in one day, then later on went to multiplayer. I actually kind of enjoyed the multiplayer experience, it’s got some interesting ideas that I think have merit (even if the overall gameplay is kind of lame / boring since all the weapons are bullet-based and the accuracy and damage on every weapon is so high that it’s easy to snipe players and kill them with 3-4 shots).
After a few days of playing I managed to unlock all the guns and equipment available in the game. But ever since I finished doing that I haven’t had any motivation to play the game. I essentially “beat” the multiplayer, and there’s nothing left except going for some of the in-game achievements, for example, “Play for a total of 48hrs” or “Kill 200 enemies with land mines” — Those are actually the most depressing, because then if I play the game the way I “want” to, I’m not progressing in most of the achievements that focus on arbitrary tasks. But if I’m playing the game to get the achievements and not how I “want” to, then I’m bored or frustrated.

If BC2 had set things up so most of the items in the game were available from the get-go, would I have remained interested in the game longer? It’s hard to say – To be honest it’s kind of a shallow gameplay experience. But I think if my focus in playing the game had been on intrinsic rewards rather than extrinsic rewards I may have stuck with it a bit longer. (Though honestly it’s difficult to say. Particularly because even as a player with ~20 or so hours of experience I often find myself at the top of the scoreboard for my team, just because I do basic things like dropping health packs, ammo boxes, or motion mines. I don’t know why but the average BC2 player is awful at doing anything other than sitting behind cover and taking potshots.)

In the end, when you go with achievements you’re wrapping up something which may seem like an amazing experience into a mechanistic and dull achievement mechanic. Either achievements are worth something, they grant an in-game advantage which makes them required grinding, or they are worth nothing and merely serve to devalue experiences by labeling and quantifying them.

I haven’t played Warcraft 3 since the year it came out, 2002. I have, however, occasionally played quite a few custom (or “use map settings”) maps for it. But the stock gameplay of Warcraft 3 never held me, probably because I’m not exceptionally good at it and therefore playing is an exercise in getting my butt handed to me in a hundred different ways.

I do enjoy the game, but I’m just not interested in learning the things that make good RTS players good RTS players – Build orders, timings, and extreme levels of unit micromanagement. In lieu of actually playing the game myself, though, one thing I really like to do is to be a game observer. In order to do this you create a “Custom Game” using a stock map and set it up to allow observers. Usually a bunch of people will join, then you have to work out who will actually play and who will observe, and then you’re set.

Observers can only talk with other observers, and cannot message people outside of the game at all (to prevent cheating). About all you can do is sit and watch the game and chat with other observers. But yet, I find it strangely appealing. Not only is it low-pressure, but you can enjoy a drink or a meal while watching. And although the average level is play is probably a bit under ranked matches, you still get some fairly entertaining matchups. The strategy becomes quickly apparent, and little nuances in play like positioning units, hero or skill choice, and so on start to take on more meaning.

The downside to observing matches is what I’ve already discussed — Setting one up. It’s a hassle to create matches specifically for observing, and it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense to force it to be that way when there are no doubt hundreds of ranked matches going on all the time. So why not just allow players to select or randomly observe ranked matches? Concerns over cheating potential could be mitigated by giving the actual players the option to allow observers or not — Basically set your game preference to private or public. You’ll definitely get people who just disallow observing in all their games, but most decent players play so much anyways it’s doubtful they care if anyone sees their games. Seeing it and beating it are two different things.

Why not just watch replays on YouTube, such as HDStarcraft, HuskyStarcraft, or Crota? Well, I enjoy doing that too but a replay is quite a bit different than actually being in the game. Recorded replays are only going to show you what the commentator is looking at, while in an observer game YOU control what you’re looking at. YOU comment on the game, along with other players observing, making it a much more active and social experience than passively sitting down and starting up a replay. That’s both good and bad: If you’re new, you may not understand the strategy. But if you’re an experienced observer you’ll tend to understand what’s going on. And if you don’t — you’ll learn. It can definitely beat hearing a commentator interject their own opinions into the game — There’ve been many, many occasions where I’ve been watching a replay and found myself disagreeing with a commentator and wishing I could voice my thoughts. Well, with observer games you’re totally free to.

This is a response to Shamus’ post here, this was originally meant to be a comment but it kind of grew and I felt guilty at neglecting this place when I actually wrote something fairly substantive.

It’s pretty undeniable that there’s significant market forces at work in [causing game developers to minimize investment in the PC]. But I think the bigger factor is just the structure of the studios / game market as a whole.

The console/games market these days seems to be in a trend towards monopolization. You just can’t create big budget titles and play with the big boys without being one of them. At the same time, the gamer demographic these games are all going after is the same, so there can only be so many “winners” even in the remote chance that all games in a given set are good. It really is a winner-takes-all kind of situation because games just take up a lot of time and those of us with jobs and families only have so much time to spare.

I’ve been saying this for years now, but the trend towards making every game into a movie-like cinematographic experience is really contrary to games-as-games. The games that I still play 10 or 15 years after their release don’t need to feel like a movie, they just need good, solid gameplay. Unfortunately this doesn’t quite jive with the lowest-common denominator games-as-junk-food mentality we see taking hold in an industry that needs to encourage gamers-as-gluttons in order to be able to sustain its own massive bloat.

When I first started noticing and complaining about games turning into longer, poorly written and acted direct-to-video movies I felt like I was out on a limb. Yet every year the new game releases get less and less actual gameplay and more and more like a semi-passive movie experience.* With Halo “ODST” or COD6 the singleplayer is going to last you four hours — That’s about the length of Return of the King extended cut.

*Ironically, we are also seeing movies now moving closer to videogames as well. Can anyone deny that Transformers series is hilarious mess whose entire terrible existence is predicated on the acceptance of cringe-inducing filmmaking by the videogame-addicted teen/twenteen boy segment of the population?

And, not to put too fine a point on it, how much work does multiplayer take when most are just recycling mechanics from SP/previous games? Sure, it’s not trivial, but I am surely not impressed when Halo releases a new game with the same set of weapons with maybe tweaks and new bling mapping on the SPNKR’s rocket tubes. And don’t get me started on all of these WW2 or modern combat games that endlessly recycle the same set of bullet-spraying weapons whose only significant differences are in rate of fire and spread. Do we really need another AK-47 or M-16 in a game in order to feel fulfilled?

I really feel like this trend is unsustainable. There really aren’t any huge graphics jumps on the horizon, yet graphics is what has been driving the last couple generations of games. For a long time now, there hasn’t been anyone making the games I really want to play. And I think that is going to get worse before it gets better, because the bigger the game studios get, the more and more they will focus-group their games into targeting the subhuman pleasure centers of the average consumer drone. Those of us who are not content to mindlessly buy whatever has the biggest explosions will be underserved for quite some time — Unless the indie games market can reach us.

Fortunately, with all the distribution platforms these days … Maybe they can?
And that gives me hope. Heck, maybe we’ll see a resurgence of gameplay instead of this constant graphics overload coupled to the same stale game ideas that were cliche even a decade ago. Or maybe some of these companies will realize that cultivating an enduring game community & experience for many years can be as profitable, or maybe even more profitable over the long haul, than releasing sequels every two years and then leaving everyone in the lurch.

Despite being underwhelmed with the amount of content in L4D, I went ahead and pre-ordered L4D2. What can I say, the game cost $30 and at that price point it’s hard for me to pass up a AAA title that I know I’m going to like.

My first impressions with L4D2.

Do not buy this game unless you enjoy L4D1.

My second impressions with L4D2.

Do not buy this game unless you can get it at a $30 or less pricepoint.

Back when I purchased L4D1, I was pretty disappointed with the game because it was shockingly lacking in content. Although L4D ended up being a good game a couple months after release once Valve finished the game and added in melee cooldown to prevent it from becoming entirely about tedious corner camping, it was still a shallow and flawed game. Anyone who paid full price for it (like me) probably felt a little bit ripped off (especially when the day after you purchased it for $50 Valve decided to offer it for $25, which is more along the lines of its actual value).

Could L4D have been a great game? Sure, if Valve had decided to continue to support it in meaningful ways. Instead, they decided to make L4D2. Is L4D2 worth it? That’s the question we all want answered. From what I’ve seen in the L4D2 demo, it’s more of L4D1.3 than L4D2. If an incremental upgrade is what you seek, then you may be willing put put down the money for this expansion pack. If you wanted some real improvements and not just finishing touches that should’ve been in L4D1, then you might want to keep waiting.*

* Note that the biggest changes to the game are going to be a result of how the new maps and new SI work. Neither of these are really displayed in the demo, I am just talking about what I have seen from that.

L4D2 incorporates some new gameplay elements:

Pros:

• A couple of new weapons. Many of the old weapons have been reskinned.
• You can now carry a medpack or a revival pack
• In addition to pipe bombs and molotovs you now can pick up and throw vials of boomer bile. These work exactly as you’d expect.
• Instead of pain pills you can now carry Adrenaline Shots, though the function of these is not obvious (presumably you perform certain actions faster)
• In lieu of pistols, you can now carry a melee weapon.
• There are some other upgrades like laser sights, incendiary and explosive ammo.

Counterpoints

• Basically, all of the guns feel more similar to each other than ever. It’s not even clear which guns are supposed to be superior to other guns.
• Almost all of the guns feel much weaker, both in look and feel, and in functionality, than their L4D1 counterparts.
• In addition, there have been some questionable balancing changes. For example, the T1 pump shotgun in L4D1 had 128 + 8 ammo, yet was certainly not overpowered. The T1 pump shotgun in L4D2 has a whole 56 + 8 ammo, which means one of the weakest weapons in the game lost over 50% of its ammo carrying capacity.
• The revival pack, boomer bile, adrenaline shots, laser sights, and ammo upgrades are gimmicky additions, most of which exist currently in L4D1 as mods. I expected something more from a commercial product than a mod.
• The melee weapons are a big gimmick that I never understood at all. Melee combat in FPS games almost always comes down to mashing down the LMB, I don’t expect anything different here.

Some additional observations:

• The UI for L4D2 is almost as bad as the Epic failure of UT3′s interface. It’s that bad.
• The new characters, from what we have seen, are nowhere near as interesting or entertaining as the original characters. Ellis is the only character who seems to have a distinct personality, and it’s one I dislike strongly.
• In the demo, the FOV and positioning of the weapons on the screen is terrible. I hope they return to L4D1 style.
• The maps displayed in the demo are during the daytime. And while L4D has never been a “horror” game, more of an arcade shoot-em-up, it just loses a lot of its charm and atmosphere when it’s set during the day and you realize that the only thing you do [in Campaign mode] is run around and gun down tons of helpless, braindead AI opponents.
• The new style of crescendo event is a dramatic improvement over corner camping, but I’m also concerned they are going to be consistently too difficult when it comes to expert campaigns and particularly Vs. mode. This is especially tricky because campaign mode now has melee cooldown.
• The charger and the spitter are really powerful. The spitter is probably too powerful, as she can easily dish out 20 damage in a second or so with no assistance from other SI and at seemingly low risk to herself.

In summation, a lot of L4D2 seems to be gimmicks, and improvements that are going to mostly improve the singleplayer / co-op experience. And while Co-op is fun, the meat of the game is in Vs. mode. Since Vs. mode is not available in the demo I can’t comment on much beyond the new maps and SI impacting that. I am really hoping that they improve the Vs. experience by completely changing the scoring mechanic or at least offering a new mechanic. The scoring in L4D1 is such that you can basically wipe out the entire enemy team down to 1 hp, but that doesn’t impact their (or your) score at all if they find a couple of medpacks before the end of the level. A scoring system that valued good play and not semi-random health pack spawning would drastically improve the game. Some kind of system to discourage or penalize rage quitting and griefing wouldn’t be bad either (or maybe, encourage good play instead of penalizing the jerks).

Smoker – The Smoker is the odd man out of the special Infected. When I first began playing L4D, the Smoker was by far my favorite Special Infected. These days it is my least favorite. The Smoker’s main role seems to be to incapacitate and separate the Survivor group.

Basic Gameplay:
Left Mouse Button (LMB): Tongue lasso. Pressing LMB by default will cause the Smoker to “shoot” out his tongue at the crosshair location. Note that the actual tongue attack only occurs if the Smoker’s crosshair is hovering over a Survivor (this will be indicated by the crosshair turning red).

The tongue lasso is dead-simple, but there are a few things that bear mentioning:
First, the crosshair will light up within say 15%screen of any Survivor. This means that closely packed Survivors mostly cannot be individually targeted. Whoever you grab is up to the pseudorandom computer algorithm to determine.
Second, Survivors can continue to move for the first second or two of being hit with the tongue. If you try and grab someone as they run past an obstacle the chances of your tongue breaking on that obstacle are very high. Additionaly, Survivors can shoot at you during this period, often allowing them to kill you.
Third, there are two types of cooldowns for the Smoker tongue. The first is the “miss” cooldown. This takes approximately ~3-5 seconds. The second is the “tongue broke” cooldown, which is ~15-20 seconds. If you experience the latter in an intense situation you may decide it’s better to run in and attempt to claw the Survivors since dishing out 10 claw damage now is probably going to be more useful than waiting 20 seconds to dish out 6 more tongue damage (in addition to being out of position). The context is important though, you don’t want to die as the Smoker in a critical area.

The damage done by the tongue itself seems to be 3 per second. This increases to 6 per second at the point where the Smoker begins clawing the Survivor. Overally his damage output is quite low by Special Infected standards, so if you are playing as the Smoker do not expect to do major damage unless you are in very specific environments (certain map segments) or the rest of the Survivor team is entirely occupied with other Special Infected. Your main goals in almost every situation should be attempting to separate one lone survivor from the group, or to create a distraction for a Boomer or Hunter (however the Smoker is quite weak at doing this since his tongue can easily be melee’d off or shot, so use at your own risk!).

Right Mouse Button (RMB): Claw attack. Negligible damage (~4-6 damage).
Hit Points: 250. You can take a few bullets, but you will be killed outright by a shotgun blast or sustained automatic fire.
Sound Cues: The Smoker makes a loud hacking cough when he is spawned in the game. The location of the cough itself can be somewhat difficult to pinpoint, but don’t expect to sneak up on any Survivors. There is a delay between coughs that you can use strategically to maneuver, but overall you should expect Survivors to have a good idea where you are. The one exception is when a Tank is in play, as his footsteps and grunting can disguise your own sound cues.

Advanced Properties:
Body Blocking: This is a fairly basic tactic but many people do not understand it. When a Survivor is disabled by the Smoker tongue their body itself can serve as a shield to protect you from a shot or two. This is most effective when the other Survivors are otherwise tied up (such as by a Boomer horde) and cannot close on you. Unfortunately, the Survivor will not take friendly fire damage, so sadly you cannot use this tactic to force Survivors into a choice between freeing their comrade and damaging their comrade.

Tongue Noose: When a player is suspended by a Smoker tongue they take marginally more damage than they otherwise would. The damage seems to increase from a terrible 3 per second to a tolerable 6 per second. Use this to your advantage when you can, but also keep in mind that smoking Survivors from elevated positions often makes you an extremely easy target.

Falling Damage: Your most signficant chance for damage as a Smoker is to utilize falling damage to your advantage to severely damage Survivors. One key example is the scissor lift in No Mercy 3 by the gas station. The Survivors must all run along a roof of a warehouse building. This is the quintessential Smoker location, and it is very nearly your only chance of doing anything productive in this level. Your one goal here is to snag one of the last Survivors and drag him off the roof and down to the ground. Doing this is important not only because it deals additional damage and exposes the Survivor down below to the horde triggered by the crescendo event, but it also separates the group and usually forces a difficult choice: Survivors can either defend the grounded Survivor from their location, risking further attacks by SI as the lone Survivor attempts to make his way back to the group, or the Survivors can rush forward and attempt to open the warehouse door. All in all, this is a win-win situation for Special Infected if executed properly.

Hard Separations: Hard separations is a natural tactic that arises due to the environments in some maps where a Survivor who falls behind literally cannot catch up with the rest of the Survivors. A hard separation is a guaranteed, or mostly-guaranteed kill. For example, in No Mercy 3 the Survivors must drop into the sewer, but there is no way out of the sewer to save a teammate who gets smoked at the last instant before dropping inside. Similarly, there is a small cliff in Blood Harvest 5 that requires all the Survivors to jump down, but offers no way back up. Hard separations are places where the Smoker can really do some good, so always try to maximize them.

Witch Hookups: A witch hookup is another natural tactic that arises with fortuitous positioning of a witch in a level. The Smoker can pull a Survivor into the witch, disturbing her and potentially allowing her to do something useful other than die instantly. If you hear a witch and you are the Smoker you should always plan on attempting to take advantage of her, as the Smoker-Witch synergy can be uniquely effective. One thing to keep in mind though is players will also expect you to attempt to drag into the witch, so at times it can be useful to drag the last person away from the group (which, in effect splits the group into 3, and can be quite powerful if a horde is triggered by the Boomer and the Common Infected spawn in the right locations).

Hunter Setups: Another good trick that you might be able to use with some coordination is that of setting up Hunter pounces. A high-damage pounce by a Hunter can be difficult to pull off, but is much easier when the Survivor is stationary and being attacked by the Smoker. At the same time, a Hunter is a much more efficient damage dealer than a Smoker, so Smokers should usually be willing to give up their prey to Hunters. In short, if you have managed to drag a Survivor away and a nearby Hunter can instantly deal a good 20-25 damage with a pounce, this should generally be encouraged. This also frees up the Smoker to attempt to grab another Survivor, although you will have the long tongue cooldown, so you may be better served rushing and attempting to claw.

Horde Blocking and Horde Assists: When you have Smoked a Survivor, the Survivor must pass through both the world geometry and any zombies that intervene if you want to execute a full tongue-to-claw drag. This is something you must be aware of when playing as the Smoker, as you should always try to drag away from a Horde if possible (although you rarely have much control over this, and less time to react). Doing so ensures the smoked Survivor is separated as much as possible from the rest of the group. However, one slightly good thing about intervening Common Infected is they will give you assists if you have smoked a Survivor and they begin attacking him – Good for your score, and adds a slight bit of DPS, but it’s usually nothing to get excited over unless you’ve got a huge swarm on the guy you smoked and the other Survivors are somehow out of the picture unless you’ve already won.

Play Tips and Tricks:

The Smoker is by far the easiest Special Infected to begin playing as, and in my opinion the Smoker often contributes very little to the Special Infected team. If it weren’t for certain key map locations where Smokers can utilize fall damage or hard separations to their advantage, Smokers would be almost useless. Three well-coordinated Hunters and a Boomer will frequently be more effective than the typical 2-Hunter-1-Smoker and Boomer combo.

The Smoker, like the other Special Infected, will benefit from the Survivors being in open “risk zones.” However he receives the least amount of benefit of all from these locations. The Smoker’s true utility comes in areas where he can drag Survivors down heights, off buildings, into fire, or hard separate a Survivor. A typical risk zone will be more effective than an indoor corridor for all the usual reasons, more attacks from more angles, easier to separate Survivors and keep them tied down with Common Infected, but since the Smoker’s damage is so low and Common Infected have a penchant for getting in the way you will rarely capitalize much on the damage potential offered by these areas.

In many ways, risk zones for the Smoker must have a certain level of obstruction within them that will allow the Smoker to drag the Survivor out of immediate line-of-fire of other Survivors. So overall he probably requires general risk zones the least, but also benefits from them the least. You can expect the Smoker to perform mediocre across the board, except in key areas. Learning these spots is pretty quick once you have played through a couple matches, and there really aren’t a lot of successful ways to handle them, so once you’ve played a few public games you’ll probably quickly plateau as the Smoker.