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ESL Global Finals: Korean Team HON Wins Best WoW Tournament Game Ever

Tony Huynh — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:39:38 +0000

Posted by Tony Huynh.
Despite not having played World of Warcraft since the end of season 3 arena in Burning Crusade, I continue to follow PvP tournaments, events and forums. I spent most of yesterday watching the ESL WoW tournament.

Prior to the matches, the American teams were saying how they would beat the European teams and the European teams were saying that they could beat the Korean and American teams, while the Korean teams remained silent. The two Korean teams let their games do the talking and destroyed the 3 American team and 7 European team entrants to reach an all-Korean finals.

The tournament was chock full of very exciting matches, but none of them rival what the finals between the two Korean teams had in store.

I’ve included video of the match of the tournament. When I watched it I could not believe what I was seeing.

Team SK Gaming Asia (aka Council of Mages) is up 2 – 1 over team HON and only needs one more win to become the tournament champions and take home 30 thousand dollars in prize money.

Team SK Gaming had seemingly won the tournament when both the rogue and priest went down for team HON. The shoutcasters were already congratulating Team SK Gaming, but in an improbable turn of events OrangeMarmalade, the mage from team Hon, manages to kill the Mage from Team SK Gaming Asia despite facing a 1v2 (practically unheard of in WoW PvP) and runs out the 20 minute clock to secure the victory to tie up the match 2 –2. They then go on to win the final match and the tournament as Team SK Gaming Asia (COM) could not recover from such a spectacular defeat.

SK Gaming Asia vs. HON Round 4a Grand Final 2 – Global Finals

SK Gaming Asia vs. HON Round 4b Grand Final 2 – Global Finals

If you would like to read some more of my thoughts on the design of WoW PvP, you can read my article, Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PvP.

What Video Games Taught Me About Life

Tony Huynh — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:02:22 +0000

It seems like a week does not go by without the media putting out a report or hearing somebody say that video games are a waste of time and that there is very little value in spending time playing them. Despite what others think, I can personally say that video games have been hugely beneficial to both my social and professional life. I have learned first-hand many of life’s lessons from video games and I constantly draw upon my experience as a gamer to be successful in any goal or challenge that I face. Here are some of the life lessons that I have learned from playing video games.

Playing video games has taught me…

1: …to set goals and overcome challenges.
On the surface, the goals in most video games are clearly defined and easy to understand. When I first started playing video games, as I met the challenges of overcoming a level or a boss in a game my self-confidence grew. By setting goals to achieve and persevering to meet my goals I was learning the foundation of what it is to be successful in life. Just like in life, as your video game playing matures, the goals in games become more self-appointed, like climbing a competitive ladder or beating a game at its highest difficulty mode. With video games, I was given a safe place in which learn and grow and take on self-appointed challenges. I began to learn about self-reliance and being able to see the growth in my abilities and learning to trust in myself to accomplish my goals. The self-reliance and confidence in my abilities does not leave me when I turn off the game. It carries through as I set and meet goals in life as well.

2. …to fail your way to success.
Video games are unique in that they provide a safe environment in which to learn by making mistakes and failing. Thomas Watson once said, “The way to succeed is to double your error rate.” It is natural for people to learn by failing. In fact, people learn more from failing than being successful. In life you cannot be afraid of failing or making mistakes, otherwise you will never have the will to achieve anything.

Video games taught me that each time I failed, if I analyzed what the cause was and attacked the problem from a new angle, eventually I would succeed. Nearly every video game reinforces this valuable life lesson. Ninja Gaiden is a good example of this effect. Ninja Gaiden has relentlessly hard bosses and each time I failed and reloaded I tried something new and before long I started recognizing the weaknesses of the boss. What was happening was that I was learning by attempting over and over and formulating a strategy and executing it. I asked myself the question of “is my strategy or execution flawed?” If it is the strategy then I will have to change it, if it is the execution I will have to practice it until I can perform it sufficiently. In life when you fail it is possible that there are severe consequences, but in a game you can fail and the only thing that you have lost is a bit of time. The lesson is that if I have a goal, in this case defeating a boss and continue to learn from my mistakes and adjust my strategy accordingly I will eventually succeed. Life is no different, there will be setbacks and obstacles in any goal worth attaining, but if you learn from your mistakes and renew your efforts you will be able to accomplish your goal.

3: …to make quick and accurate decisions.
By playing a lot of games I am able to assess situations and make faster and more accurate decisions. This includes strategic and long-term decisions whose purpose becomes apparent multiple steps in the future. Video games challenge players to take into account the weaknesses and strengths of the tools that they have on hand and apply the correct tools to the varying problems. In the competitive team game of World of Warcraft arena, when multiple opponents simultaneously attack me (focus fire), I have to assess my surroundings and break their line of sight to prevent further damage, while staying close enough to my team’s healer to regain lost health. This positioning and awareness of my surroundings has to be coupled with choosing which defensive moves (cool downs) to use that will allow me to survive without going too far and putting my team in such a hole that we cannot later turn the tempo back against the opponent. The consequences for not making the correct decisions in a timely manner are dying and more than likely losing the match for my team. With the consequence of failing your teammates when not making the correct decisions, I quickly learned to improve my situational awareness and to make better decisions for each situation. In the workplace and in life, the fast data processing and quick and accurate decision-making abilities gained from video games are invaluable.

4: …that in life there are winners and losers.
Competitive games have taught me that not everybody wins and not everybody is entitled to winning, as most of the other coddled Gen Yers would have you believe. Winning in competitive games require hard work and practice. How badly you want to win and what hardships you are willing to put yourself through to win is a huge part of whether you win or lose. You have to persevere and put in the time and effort to continually self-improve to win any competition. As I previously mentioned, often you learn a great deal more by losing than winning.

Do not be a good loser. Be a bad loser. By this I do not mean be a poor sport when you lose, but when you lose it should hurt because it is the failure to achieve a goal. When this happens, do not just accept it. Take action by looking at what went wrong and analyze what could have been done differently to change the outcome and then figure out ways to get better from a strategy or execution standpoint, which leads me to my next point.

5: …that talent is overrated.
Talent can be overcome by hard work and deliberate practice.

Geoff Colvin details something he calls deliberate practice. This is different from regular practice in that it emphasizes relentlessly practicing what you are bad at instead what you are good at. I had unknowingly stumbled on this concept many years before reading Colvin’s article “Why Talent is Overrated” in the game Street Fighter II – The World Warrior. In my youth, I played Street Fighter II endlessly with a group of friends. Some of my friends picked up on the intricacies of the game much faster than I did. I was tired of being beaten at the hands of my friends and set about getting better at it. I practiced the game on my own time and refined my skills. I targeted the areas of my game that were the weakest. In Street Fighter II players would either start on the left side of the screen if they were the first player or the right side if they were the second player. The player on the left entered commands into the controller in the opposite direction as the player on the right. As I generally played the game as the first player, I could execute the moves very reliably when my character was on the left side of the screen. The problem was that on occasion the players would switch sides if your opponent jumped over you or threw you to the opposite side. When this happened I was a much less effective player as I could not reliably execute the reversed commands. I began only playing as the second player to practice the reversed commands over and over. By the next gaming session I was equally competent on either side of the screen and started to take advantage of my friends’ weakness in this area by purposely throwing or jumping over them to place them on the side they were less comfortable with. Through hard work and correctly applied practice I learned that I was able to overcome my group of friends’ greater natural talent at the game and that talent is indeed overrated.

6: …teamwork, communication and friendship.
For myself, gaming has always been a social activity to be enjoyed with friends. Cooperative and team objective based games cater to this almost exclusively. Competitive team based games, like first-person shooters and massively multiplayer online role-playing games place an emphasis on working with team members to accomplish team-oriented objectives. These games reward player teamwork, communication and cohesion and punish teams without these qualities. As a result, teams constantly work to refine not only their individual skills, but also team based strategies and communication. The lessons I have learned from playing team based games have translated directly into my team-oriented professional workplace. The ability to work in teams and producing at a high level in groups is something that holds true whether in a game or in life.

Even for single-player games, stories are shared between friends on how a specific scenario was tackled and defeated or recounting moments in a particular game that had left a lasting impression. Gaming as an experience begs to be shared. This is why every moderately successful game has a community of gamers who participate in message boards related to the game. In fact, the quality of the community surrounding a game greatly affects the players’ enjoyment of the game. One of the main reasons behind the success of World of Warcraft is the size and how enthusiastic the community for the game is.

I have had many strong friendships developed through gaming. All those hours of playing video games with my friends have solidified our friendships and we still retell stories about some of our greatest shared video game moments and continue to create new ones together.

Conclusion
I am not here to tell you that there are no differences in life and video games. I will be the first to admit that when taken too far, games can be a serious distraction from real world responsibilities. While I may be biased because I turned my favorite hobby into a career and I owe so much to games, I am relating my personal experience that there are some valuable life lessons that can be taken away from playing video games. The most important thing is to set the right goals. How do you know your goal is a worthwhile goal? Ask yourself the question of “why you want to achieve this goal.” If your answer is strong enough, then you know that you have a worthy goal.

Life is much more abstract than a game. There is no experience bar guiding and charting your success. Life is much less predictable and a definitive approach to success is not defined like in the game rules that are set down by a game designer. Setbacks in life and the consequences are much harsher, but games teach you to pick yourself up again and to strive for and to ultimately reach your goals by trying new strategies and having better execution. It provides you with a safe environment to experiment in which to fail and make mistakes. It allows you the ability to continually self-improve and to work together to accomplish what you could not do alone. These are lessons from games that translate into real life.

Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PVP

Tony Huynh — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:33:29 +0000

Wow is built and designed around the casual player
WoW is built from the ground up to be accessible to new players. Blizzard’s VP of game design Rob Pardo described the design philosophy of World of Warcraft as the “donut design.” This is where the outside of the donut consists of the casual players, while the center is where the hardcore players reside. WoW is a game built for casual players with enough depth to draw in the hardcore players. When Blizzard designed the Player-Versus-Player (PVP) system for WoW, this design philosophy carried over and resulted in the inclusion of the global cooldown and luck or random number generator (rng) as WoW players call it.

Neilyo 14.5 Part 1

Neilyo 14.5 Part 2

The global cooldown
While reaction times and the number of inputs does play a factor in World of Warcraft PVP, it is greatly limited by the built in one second global cooldown between inputs. This places a lowered skill cap on how fast a player needs to input commands to be competitive. There are exceptions to this as certain abilities are off the global cooldown, but for most cases this holds true. It does not matter if you have an amazing ability to input commands at a very fast pace, you are limited to the artificial limit imposed.

StarCraft is a good example of a game without such a skill cap. For elite StarCraft players the number of inputs per minute is something to brag about. Some of the players can consistently achieve as high as 500 inputs per minute. These players constantly practice and strive to improve their inputs per minute and their ability to micromanage multiple units.

The global cooldown also lessens the mistakes that players can make. Because a WoW player is limited by the global cooldown and can only input so many commands per minute they are less prone to make mistakes because there are simply fewer decisions and inputs necessary. This makes the game much more accessible to players who are simply incapable of entering 500 commands per minute. The global cooldown supports the casual player by making the game easier for them to be successful. The great advantage of this is that it makes World of Warcraft PVP much more popular and accessible to more people.

Luck gives PVP greater accessibility and helps turn the casual player into the hardcore player
Luck (rng) is a difficult balance in a game like WoW. Too little and the game becomes stale and inaccessible to novice players, too much luck and players become frustrated. However, luck supports the design tenant of the donut by giving less skilled or out-geared players a chance to win or at least make games close.

Luck is valuable because beginners will enjoy the game more when luck allows them to occasionally win against a more seasoned or better-geared opponent. Conversely, if WoW did not have a luck component, a less skill opponent would never win and this constant negative reinforcement will drive away many novice competitors. It is necessary to reward novice players occasionally to keep their participation and push them to get better at the game. For example, the poker variant Texas Hold’em is popular and maintains its popularity because the game rewards new players and keeps them interested in the game by allowing them to win on occasion through luck alone.

Neilyo Interview

Luck increases the skill cap
Without luck (RNG), WoW PVP involving two equally skilled opponents or teams would be a pre-scripted affair whose outcome would be predetermined from the start. The game would play out something like this. The attacker begins with an attack and from then on each player might as well read off of a script and perform the best possible move in succession until the conclusion of the match. While WoW gives players the illusion of a lot of options, there is almost always a best move or path at any given time. If both sides play “perfectly,” the race, class and spec of the characters or the teams’ combination of classes determine the game because certain classes or team matrixes simply outclass others. The only time this pattern can be broken is through human error. For all the negativity that luck in the game of WoW receives, the game without it would be a very straightforward experience without much deviation.

For WoW, luck has the very strange property of actually increasing skill cap. Players need to be able to react to broken patterns not only from human error but also from bad luck. Players need to switch to a different track or branch in the previously mentioned script to adjust for attacks or defensive measures that fail due to bad luck. This keeps matches from degenerating into a stale affair. If a Rogue’s kidney shot (a move that stuns the opponent) fails due to being randomly dodged, he needs to adjust his next series of moves for his now interrupted stun lock. Another example, this time involving a team, is if a Druid’s cyclone, a spell that incapacitates another player, is resisted, the team must now communicate and coordinate another member to use a different ability to continue the incapacitate effect on the opponent. Luck forces teamwork and emphasizes adjustment to failed attacks.

Luck mitigates some of the balance issues
WoW is a far cry from being balanced and with so many abilities and classes and team combinations possible it likely never will be. Luck helps to mitigate some of these issues by giving lower tier classes or class combinations a chance against higher tier class or team combinations. Let’s say a Warrior, Warlock and Druid team dominates a Rogue, Mage and Priest team (whether it does or not is immaterial to this discussion) luck can help to turn the tide and the dominated team can actually pull off a win over the dominate team. When a weaker class matrix can occasionally overcome a dominant one, it helps to mask the fact that the game is not balanced.

WoW’s shift to the hardcore
Games over the course of time tend to eliminate luck and cater more and more towards the hardcore. WoW is not the exception to this rule. The shift to a lessened duration of stuns instead of an outright resist percentage and the removal of Mace induced random stuns are examples of this.

Conclusion
The World of Warcraft design philosophy of catering to the casual player is supported by the global cooldown and built in luck element of PVP combat. These pillars of the design keep the game popular and accessible to a wider audience and mask many of the balance issues in the game. Luck also has the effect of spicing up the game and increasing the skill cap as players and teammates must adjust to failed attacks. Lastly, if you are a hardcore player that does not like luck in your games, the World of Warcraft has already changed in your favor and over time will continue to move in this direction.

Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 2

Tony Huynh — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:34:16 +0000

These are the video games that have defined their genre. They are the standard by which all other games in their category are judged. This is part 2 of this list.

Click here to go back to Part 1 of this list.

Best RTS of All Time
StarCraft (1998)
Platform: PC
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Starcraft has withstood the test of time like no other game before or after it. It is a game that is easy to pick up, but is so deep that even after a decade, millions of players are still developing new strategies and continue to evolve the gameplay. The ability for players to easily save and share replays of games was instrumental in elevating the techniques and strategies being used. The replay feature allowed players to be able to study games and learn from their mistakes and even watch their opponent’s strategies and adopt or adapt to them.

Despite StarCraft’s three completely unique races, it is the most balanced RTS ever created. All three races had completely unique units and equally skilled opponents would have very even chances of winning and could employ numerous different strategies to do so. Countless tournaments in the decade since the game’s release have proven StarCraft’s balanced gameplay. Blizzard has the best track record of any developer to continue to support a game well after release and StarCraft is no exception. Blizzard continues to release occasional patches and balance tweaks that keep the game fresh. This has been necessary as players continually push the gameplay balance with the discovery of new strategies. Despite the evolving gameplay in StarCraft, the game continues to be remarkable in how balanced the three races are as new strategies for one race are countered by new strategies created for their opposing factions. Here is a site dedicated to Starcraft replays.

No entry about StarCraft can go without the mention of the South Korean attachment to the game. StarCraft is a televised national sport in South Korea. The game has corporate endorsed teams of professional players. The players are big personalities and celebrities who are recognized and worshiped by their huge following of adoring fans. StarCraft tournaments are nationally televised events with slick production values and play-by-play announcers or “shoutcasters” as they are called. Here are some of the GOMTV tournaments translated into English. They are very interesting to watch even if you only know the rudiments of the game.

StarCraft, in spite of its age, is the most relevant and popular RTS today. There can be no doubt that it is the greatest game of its genre.

Best Action-RPG of All Time
Diablo 2 (2000)
Platform: PC
Developer: Blizzard North
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 2: the Mouse Killer. Diablo 2 and its predecessor Diablo have likely destroyed more mice than any other game in existence. I owned an expensive gaming mouse and when Diablo’s million click gameplay destroyed it, I ran out to the store and quickly replaced it with a steady succession of $2 mice and kept my replacement expensive mouse well away from the game.

Diablo and its successor single-handedly invented the action-RPG genre. Dozens of “Diablo” clones continue to be produced, but to this day none can match up to Diablo 2. The randomly generated dungeons, loot, and monsters in Diablo 2 keep the game fresh even after dozens of play-throughs. Diablo 2 remains popular on Blizzards free online service Battle.net because of its addictive easy to pickup gameplay, randomly generated content and Blizzard’s patented brand of long-lasting support and updates to the title.

In many ways, Diablo 2 laid down the groundwork for World of Warcraft. From the branching tiered tree of talents, the UI, to the randomly generated set of colored loot, World of Warcraft owes much of its success to Diablo 2.

Best 3D Fighter of All Time
SoulCalibur (1999)
Platform: DreamCast
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

There was some internal debate between this game and Virtual Fighter 2, but in the end I have to give it to SoulCalibur for the following reasons.

SoulCalibur introduced three revolutionary gameplay mechanics.
1. Eight-Way-Run
The introduction of the eight-way-run gave very intuitive control over the player characters. It is a feature that truly opened up the 3D fighter to the third dimension. Whereas previous games functioned for the most part in 2D, with the only lateral movement coming from a short sidestep, SoulCalibur allowed the player to circle, or continuously move in any of the eight directions. The game controlled how you would expect and was incredibly intuitive.

2. Increased Move buffer
The move buffer is the window of timing that a player had while executing a move before the next controller input was accepted and executed. In both Virtual Fighter and Tekken, while a character is performing a move, the player needed to wait until a move had finished before inputting another move, otherwise the command input would not be accepted. This forced players to be very exact with the timing and execution of moves. SoulCalibur’s increased move buffer allowed players to input and string their attacks without waiting for a move to finish. The command would be accepted and after a move completes the next inputted player command would be executed. The move buffer coupled with the eight-way-run gave new players responsive controls and maneuvers that were simple to execute and impressive to behold. The mechanics of SoulCalibur opened a traditionally hardcore genre to a much wider audience.

3. Guard Impact
SoulCalibur is a part of a rare collection of games that opened the genre up to a less hardcore audience, while still maintaining all of the deep gameplay that a hardcore player expects. Each of SoulCalibur’s characters had deep move sets, air juggles and combos that allowed the expert player to easily set them apart from the novice player. The inclusion of the Guard Impact counter put SoulCalibur well out of the reach of its competition. The Guard Impact is performed either high or low and deflects incoming attacks. If the opponent performs a high attack at the same time that you perform a high Guard Impact it would deflect the attack while at the same time stunning the attacker and not allowing them to perform any other moves besides a counter guard impact for a short period of time. This would allow for really ridiculous strings of Guard Impacts as the attacker would try to mix up their angles of attacks and add delays before executing an attack in an effort to breach the defender’s Guard Impact defenses.

No other fighter encompasses the ebb and flow of combat like SoulCalibur. No words can fully describe the feeling of a long string of guard impact reversals between two good players. While SoulCalibur did not invent the 3D fighter, its mechanics made it truly 3D and introduced the genre to many new players. SoulCalibur was so far ahead of its time that in four iterations and nearly ten years the gameplay has remained nearly identical to the original with only a few minor tweaks.

Best RPG of All Time
Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
Platform: PC
Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Black Isle Studios, Interplay

Baldur’s Gate II is an epic, timeless masterpiece that marks the last of the truly great RPGs. It sort of makes me sad going back and revisiting this game, because this game book ended a great style of games that developers today will likely never return to. They really do not makes games like this anymore.

Baldur’s Gate II is the last title to use the AD&D second edition rule set and was so accurate that I found the AD&D Player’s Handbook indispensable and constantly open and on my lap as I pored over it to find the best way to min/max my characters.

The story and writing for the game really shines. There is a great deal of text in the game, however it is really well written and the story plays out as if you are reading a great novel. The storyline is so good that even this game’s epic side quests easily outclass most other full RPGs’ main story lines.

The decisions players made in Baldur’s Gate II carried real weight and affected the outcome of future events. Many modern day RPGs distill choice down to good or evil. The player in Baldur’s Gate II had to make decisions that were often gray. The complex characters would support your decisions, offer their advice and even discuss events amongst themselves. With the numerous combinations of characters that the player could select to be apart of their party, this attention to detail was amazing. The player could choose to start up romantic relationships with members of the opposite sex with many of the characters in their party. The writing for these segments were very well done and often memorable. Baldur’s Gate II is one of those few titles that kept you up and playing until 4AM because you had to find out what happened next.

Baldur’s Gate II’s countless optional side quests, different combinations of characters and meaningful decision-making created almost unlimited replay value.

This is the definitive role-playing experience.

Click here to go back to Part 1 of this list.

My Student Films 2: EverQuest Documentary and Guilty Gear Isuka Trailer

Tony Huynh — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:18:46 +0000

As promised in my first “My Student Films” entry here are some more of my student films.

This EverQuest documentary was created about a friend of mine a number of years ago. This video was originally shot right after the release of the first expansion for EverQuest, Ruins of Kunark, which places it around September of 2000. He is a charismatic and very intelligent guy (these qualities come across on the screen), who dropped out of high school due to his addiction to the MMORPG Everquest. Please forgive the awful camera work. This was one of my first videos that I had ever shot. I learned a lot in its creation.

Land of EverQuest – Student Film MMORPG documentary

This is a video that I worked on along with a few others while at Sammy Studios for the Guilty Gear Isuka game for the PS2.

Guilty Gear Isuka PS2 Trailer – Sammy Studios

Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 1

Tony Huynh — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:26:02 +0000

These are the video games that have defined their genre. They are the standard by which all other games in their category are judged.

Best Flight Combat Game of All Time
Wing Commander 3 (1994)
Platform: PC
Developer: Origin Systems
Publisher: Origin Systems

The popular vote here is of course Tie Fighter. While great, Tie Fighter did not measure up to Wing Commander 3. Keep reading because I am going to convince you why.

Wing Commander 3’s impact on games is still felt very clearly even today. Wing Commander 3 is what I like to call the Star Wars of video games. This goes a lot further than just having Mark Hamill star as the protagonist. Like Star Wars did for movies, Wing Commander 3 literally invented the big-budget blockbluster style of games. Costing a then unheard of 4 million dollars to create and packed into 4 CD-ROMs (when CD-ROMs had just come out), Wing Commander was unabashedly pushing the envelope and spared no expense in doing so. Marketed as the world’s first interactive movie, Wing Commander 3 broke new ground by using an enormous amount of full motion videos to tell a branching story through and included the use of CGI backgrounds and greenscreens. This was technology that was not even broadly in use for films at the time.

Behind the ground-breaking wrapper of Wing Commander 3 there was an amazing core game. Wing Commander 3 brought the Wing Commander series into polygonal 3D for the first time. The game was among the first to use full motion video to not only tell the story, but in-game as well. Right out the gate, Wing Commander 3 blew minds its technology by having your wingman communicate and respond to orders through full video on the bottom of your HUD. During the game the other crewmembers’ disposition towards you and the mission selection were influenced by conversation trees as well as how well you performed on previous missions.

To sum up Wing Commander 3, it married great mission design, the ability to select your fighter, select your armaments, select your wingman, branching missions and a branching storyline told through hours of full motion video into one of the most insanely fun packages ever put onto a disc. This game from top to bottom was every gamer’s wet dream.

Best Turn Based Tactical Game of All Time
X-COM: UFO Defense (1993)
Platform: PC
Developer: Mythos Games
Publisher: Microprose

Incredibly deep, X-COM has still never been matched as a strategy role-playing game. X-COM’s two distinct gameplay phases placed you in charge of Earth’s defense against an alien invasion.

The first phase was the world map. This is where the player first chooses a spot for their base and where the player would manage their funding to recruit, research technology and equip their soldiers. Financial resources came through successfully repelling aliens and earning the approval of a ten-nation league. If the player is not active or effective in combating the alien threat funding would dry up and even result in some of the nations signing treaties with the invaders and completely yanking any financial support for the player.

Each member of your squad could be named, leveled up and equipped like an RPG and this really helped you grow attached to them. Interceptor planes could be placed on patrol to defend the skies and shoot down alien craft. Alien ships could also land and it was up to you to send out small squads of soldiers to kill the aliens at these sites and bring back their artifacts and bodies for the research. Research of these alien artifacts unlocked new equipment and weapons to give you an edge on your next encounter. Once the player landed their squad at the crash or landing sites the game would shift to the second phase.

The second phase consisted of turn-based tactical squad gameplay. This gameplay phase was incredibly well executed and introduced such tactical staples as line-of-sight and opportunity attacks. Even the time of day would be taken into account and affect your soldiers’ vision. One of the greatest moments in gaming history was moving your solider around a corner and having an alien pop into view right in front of you and not having the action points to respond.

X-COM is a game with so such depth and when taken as a whole is so much more than a sum of its parts. It is the title that invented the modern turn-based tactical game and has yet to be equaled since.

Best MMO of All Time
World of Warcraft (2004)
Platform: PC, Mac
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

When the topic of MMOs comes up, what game immediately pops up?

World of Warcraft was created from the ground up using what Blizzard calls the “donut design.” This is where outside of the donut consists of the casual players while the center is where the hardcore players reside. WoW is a game built for casual players with enough depth to draw in the hardcore players. This philosophy is easier said than done. Through expert design choices and more layers of polish than the MMO space had ever seen before, WoW revolutionized the MMO genre. The more than 10 million active players speaks to the successful execution of Blizzard’s donut design.

As with most MMO’s they continue to evolve and World of Warcraft is no exception. Not content with the donut, Blizzard has created a new category of user, dubbed the casual-hardcore. With the introduction of the arena system and invention of separate branches of gear optimized specifically for Player-Versus-Player (PVP) as well as for Player-Versus-Environment (PVE), Blizzard has separated their users and allowed the creation a new audience entirely in the casual-hardcore player. This is a player who wishes to only play PVP and not be hamstrung by the need for gear obtainable only through PVE raiding. The PVP gear is entirely optimized for PVP while the PVE gear is optimized for PVE. For the PVP specialist (myself counted in their number), who can climb the arena ratings ladder, they have the ability to maintain the best (or near best) PVP gear in the game by only devoting a few hours a week to WoW.

Blizzard has been so successful; many believe (including myself) that it is stifling the entire genre as newer titles in this category continue to fail to break through World of Warcraft’s stranglehold on this market. Can a game be too successful?

Best 2D Fighter of All Time
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core (2007)
Platform: Arcade, PS2, Wii
Developer: Arc System Works
Publisher: Sammy Studios

The most balanced 2D fighter in existence. Nearly every character can be played at a tournament level and has a chance of winning.

Let’s run through this game’s new and creative mechanics that developer Arc System Works has introduced. The gameplay is incredibly fast. Most of the characters can, double jump, dash in the air or run along the ground. Low air dash attacking is a common strategy. This makes for lots of action and a frantic pace.

Custom Combos: An endless variety of custom combos can be created by a mechanic called the Roman Cancel, which ends the animation frame of an attack as soon as you press the button, allowing you to chain any move you wish.

A Tension Gauge limits the use of Roman Cancels. This bar fills up as you move towards the enemy, inflict damage or receive damage. A Roman Cancel would take 50% of the Tension bar and an exactly timed False Roman Cancels on specific attacks take 25% of the tension bar.

Fortress Defense: An impenetrable defense that uses up the Tension Gauge to block both high and low attacks and nullifies special move blocking damage.

Burst Gauge: This bar fills up as you receive or inflict damage and serves two uses. If being attacked, it can be used to break out of any combo or it can be used offensively to refill the Tension Gauge.

Guard Gauge: Another common problem with fighting games is the turtle (ultra-defensive) strategy, which leads to boredom and little action. Guilty Gear has largely alleviated this issue and keeps the game’s frantic pace by introducing a penalty for employing this strategy in the form of the Guard Gauge. The Guard Gauge begins a fight half-filled. As the player blocks, the Guard Gauge increases and as you takes damage the gauge empties. If the player neither blocks nor takes damage, the gauge returns to the middle. The emptier the gauge is, the less damage you take. Therefore, if you continue to turtle you will take more damage when you do get hit. Also if the player refuses to attack, they are warned and then hit with a complete reduction of their tension gauge, a 20 percent fill-rate of tension for 10 seconds and suffer an increased likelihood of becoming dizzy when hit.

Since the number of hits received drains your Guard Gauge, attacks had a built in diminishing damage return. So the subsequent hits in a combo do less damage than the previous hit. This forces combo creators to frontload the heaviest damaging attacks at the beginning of the combo string for maximum efficiency.

When you look at all the innovative fighting systems in place coupled with really crazy character design and finely balanced characters, Guilty Gear is the pinnacle of all 2D fighting.

Best Survival Horror of All Time
Silent Hill 2 (2001)
Platform: PS2, Xbox, PC
Developer: Team Silent
Publisher: Konami

Despite my review of Dead Space, on the topic of survival horror games, I simply do not feel qualified. It is simply a genre that I do not seek out. While I have played quite a few survival horrors, I have too many holes in my experience and missed too many of the widely lauded titles to feel comfortable giving an answer to this one. If pressed I would give it to Resident Evil 4. However, I will defer to my good friend and survival horror specialist Jared King.

On the subject of Survival Horrors, I have to go with Silent Hill 2. Basically, my theory of how good a survival horror is depends on the level of fear or anxiety you have while playing the game. SH2 creates this feeling in several ways.

One, limited save points. Obviously the more you are afraid of dying and going all the way back to a save point, the more anxious or fearful you will feel.

Two, limited visibility. There is a fog in all of the open areas of the game (attributed mostly to the PS2’s limitations), which obfuscates everything. The things that you can seem especially when you travel to the otherworld, are freaky as fuck.

Three: The enemies, especially the invincible Pyramidhead, are difficult and your weapons limited.

Four, for a lot of the game, you must protect your female companion from harm, always difficult.

Five, and most importantly, the game is FUCKING FREAKY. It is psychological horror at it’s best. The endings and meaning of the game have been written on in the form of a psychological analysis. I personally, had several moments when I figured out what was going on and said OMGWTFBBQ!!!!11!!.

Anyhoo, this thing is kinda rambling, so I’ll sum up with this: SH2 is (so far) the pinnacle of the survival horror genre. And until I play Dead Space, it doesn’t seem like anything has come close. Because I know you’re wondering, Resident Evil was a different animal. I don’t know if my soft spot for the original RE has more to do with zombies or because it was a good game that came along at a very impressionable point in my life. However, even despite the advantages RE has, SH2 is STILL a better survival horror game.

Best Mech Game of All Time
MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995)
Platform: PC
Developer: Activision
Publisher: Activision

MechWarrior 2 is one of, if not my favorite game of all time and going back to play it today reinforces why. It is a great game that holds up incredibly well. Being of the first CD-ROM games ever made, MechWarrior changed what I thought games were capable of. It featured two full campaigns as either Clan Wolf or Clan Jade Falcon, which followed along faithfully an epic storyline written by Michael A. Stackpole.

The game was deep and complex. The controls promoted fast reflexes and the ability to pay attention to a lot of things happening simultaneously. MechWarrior 2 had dozens of mechs to choose from and they could be completely customized from their armaments, engine, armor and ammo. Location based damage rewarded skill and even influenced the player to allocated weapons and ammo on hard to hit areas on the mech’s chassis to prevent damage to them.

Activision nailed what it is to be a mech pilot. MechWarrior 2 realized what every BattleTech tabletop player ever dreamed piloting a mech could be. The BattleMechs had real weight to them. The audio was perfect. The necessity to juggle different weapons to manage heat was the exact mechanic described in all of the novelizations of the series.

MechWarrior 2 was also one of the first games to ever have a CD audio soundtrack. The soundtrack featured Jeehun Hwang’s electronic music, which is so good I still occasionally listen to it.

There are few things more fun than marching your fully-customized mech around to an amazing soundtrack. I just had this grin from ear to ear plastered across my face the entire time I played this game.

Best FPS of All Time
Halo: Combat Evolved 2001
Platform: Xbox
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft

If I let my game designer in me write this section, I would have given the honor to the brilliant Half-Life 2. The only problem is that when I analyze this category from a personal-had-fun-playing-the-game standpoint, Halo wins out over Half-Life 2, no contest.

Say what you will about Halo, but when this game came out it changed the FPS genre forever. It popularized the “Halo” control scheme, invented the 2 weapon limit, recharging shield, split screen co-op, vehicles, a dedicated button for grenades, had insanely good multiplayer and was blessed with AI that was smart, but more importantly made the player feel smarter for outwitting them. Halo came along at a time when I had forgotten what the magic of games could do. Halo came together and was just fun. Simple as that. Luke Smith said that Halo was his Mario. That line to me summed up Halo. It is that, when you are kid on Christmas day feeling. The Gregorian chanting when the game boots up still sends chills down my spine. That’s how good this game is.

Without this title it is my belief that the Xbox would not have been able to survive, Xbox Live would never come to be and the Xbox 360 would never have been created. Microsoft would not even be in the console game space anymore. The gaming landscape has been changed forever because of Halo: Combat Evolved.

I hope you enjoyed part 1 of this list.

Click here to see part 2 of this list.