Zombie Column: A Great Run

It's another zombie column! World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria comes out in a few days, and I think it caps off a great run. It's also fitting, because the run started with World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. But let me start from the beginning.

I play video games. They're my hobby. Imagine the time you spend on your hobby - running, biking, quilting, reading, programming, stop-motion animation, whatever - and I probably spend that amount of time (well, maybe a bit more) on video games. I don't let it interfere with work, and most of the time I'll choose hanging out with friends over World of Warcraft (most of the time).

I play mostly on my computer. It's an HP Media Centre. For most games, you don't want a Mac. Yes, lots of games have Mac ports, but they're lower in priority than pushing out a product to 90% of the market. You'll get your game, just ... later. I also own a Wii (currently collecting dust) and a Playstation 2 (bought cheaply a few years after the Playstation 3 came out, and currently collecting more dust than my Wii).

I'm not big on strategy games. I've tried, actually, but I'm just not that good at them. I want to play through the Warcraft games because a lot of the lore in World of Warcraft comes from its strategy predecessors, but I can't get through them without using cheats. Same thing with Command & Conquer. I actually own a few of those games, and wouldn't mind playing through all of them to get Kane's complete story, but I know that I'll never be able to beat those last few missions without ... help.

I'm not big into sims either. Sure, I logged a few dozen hours in Sim City back when I was twelve and it was the only game we had. Well, that and the fun of having Godzilla ravage my city was pretty cool. I wasn't very good at it, though, and most of my cities wound up broke. Or dead. So sort of like real life today. I haven't touched the Sims franchise, but that's mostly because I already take care of a virtual me already. He just happens to be a level 85 Paladin in World of Warcraft, and can smote you with nothing but a thought and a righteous stare. Flying sims never did it for me because if I wanted to look at dials and whatnot, I'd actually have trained to become a pilot. Or a power plant employee. Somewhere with buttons and knobs that I could twist and push to great disaster elsewhere. So it's probably a good thing I don't enjoy that.

Sports game are alright, but a bit too complicated for me these days, especially Madden football. I had Madden '93 for my Super Nintendo, and all I had to do was call plays and pray. Occasionally, I would mash buttons when making a tackle. That's about it. But nowadays, you're the player, the coach, the general manager, and the owner. You have to scout players, draft well, bribe agents, pay off the commissioner, find the right steroids. It's endless, and that's not even stepping on the football field. I just stay away.

Well, racing games are about the only sports games I play, but that's because the ones I like are as unrealistic as possible. I had Wipeout 2097 (XL on the Playstation) and enjoyed the heck out of it. I got really good at it, but that's probably because it only had 6 tracks (two more could be unlocked) and after enough time on those, anyone would be good.

I remember point and click adventure games. King's Quest V and onwards. The previous ones where text parsers, and I wasn't very good at either, but that might just be because Sierra made their games devilishly tricky. Again, guide-books were the norm for me.

First person shooter are edging closer into my territory. I thoroughly enjoyed Halo, and own Max Payne I and II. I've beaten Borderlands and am currently working my way through the DLC. I'll probably wait to get the sequel until it's on sale. If I wait long enough, I can get it and its DLC all as one package for one great price (insert Steam fawning here).

I don't have a whole lot of experience with Platform or Adventure games. I've certainly put hours into each Super Mario, but that was many years ago, and I've barely touched Zelda except for Twilight Princess. Mind you, I really enjoyed it, so I've been thinking about picking up Skyward Sword.

However, my favourite genre in the whole gaming industry is the good ole' RPG. Role Playing Game, for you unlearned people. RPG's started out a very long time ago, outside of the video games. Dungeons and Dragons (invented by the late, great, Gary Gygax). probably started off the whole thing. Nerds, shunned in school, played in mothers' basements. Led by a Game Master, they slew countless monsters, ogres, armies, and jocks.

Eventually, the video game industry started, and someone had the bright idea of having the computer GM a dungeon or two. A lot of the mechanics from Dungeons and Dragons stayed the same, only the story was controlled by a computer instead of a dude with a guidebook.

Progress was made, chips became more powerful, graphics were upgraded, iterations were done, advancements and improvements were added, negatives were removed or glossed over, and the RPG continued to evolve.

Now, I wouldn't like to nail down any dates, but I'd have to say that World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria marks the end of one of the greatest runs of Computer RPG's of all time. Fitting that it started with World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Let's have a look, shall we? Keep in mind, these are only my views, so they'll be a lot of omissions. I'll try to get to those later.

December, 2010 - World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. The third expansion for World of Warcraft shakes up the virtual world, allowing designers to redo almost all the original content. This vastly improved both the storylines and gameplay experience, as the designers could use all the lessons they had learned from previous expansions (as well as any other game). Most opinions were good, although a number of players complained (partly because of the nostalgia filter, and partly because epic loot was marginally more difficult to acquire at first than in the previous expansion). Blizzard learned that a percentage of their playerbase is dumb. They won't forget it.

March 2011 - Dragon Age II. Released to rave reviews and disappointed fans. I've played it through six times, and have come to the conclusion that players are dumb. The story line has ambiguity to it and many shades of grey. No major villain is truly bad. No major hero is truly good (except the player, should he or she choose to play that way). The designers tried to make a game in which the primary antagonist was the circumstance, forcing two good but flawed factions into war. I loved it. Other players wanted a major villain to beat the tar out of, and have a happy ending. Again, other players are dumb. The main criticism is that a lot of the environments are recycled. Having to search the same nooks and crannies over and over again is a huge pain in the neck. Luckily, the DLC averts this, and has unique environments for all of its gameplay.

August 2011 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The original Deus Ex was released in 2000, back when technology wasn't really up to the concept of what it tried to do. Based in a world where major conspiracies are true, each goal in the game had multiple ways of achieving it. There's a guard in your way? Bribe him. Charm him. Sneak past him. Haul off and cold-cock him. Hack a gun turret to kill him. Kill him yourself, but avoid the turret. The game suffered slightly from the high ideals it intended, but most were willing to overlook the flaws for the game it aspired to be. Well, most critics did. Gamers never really took to it, though it has a small and dedicated fanbase. And that fanbase nearly blew its top when the prequel, Human Revolution was announced. "A new game?" They cried. "Never!" And then a beta copy was leaked, and all was well. In fact, it was better than well. With technology better capable of keeping up with some slightly scaled down ideas, the concept of multiple paths to the same goal was maintained. And it was awesome! I'm more of a shooty-shooty guy, so I let bullets solve most of my problems, with the occasional foray into hacking and sneaking when ammunition was low. High reviews and sales followed, and now we all hope that Eidos Montreal makes another Deus Ex game.

November 2011 - The Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim. The long awaited sequel to Oblivion's game of the year. An open world where you slay dragons? What's not to like? Critics thought there was nothing not to like, and gave it several game of the year awards. PS3 owners thought the game breaking bugs were not to like, and we've all had to endure numerous patches while Bethesda has struggled to keep the game playable. It's much better now, but I remember two dragon skeletons dipping into and out of the ground outside my virtual house. I didn't mind, because on a PC, the bugs were mostly entertaining. I've gotten through the main quest, but am certainly not done with the world.

December 2011 - Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's an MMO, basically World of Warcraft wrapped in Star Wars skin. And made by my favourite game company, Bioware. I loved it. Of course I did. I knew I would love it, and I did. Other people did not, and enough of them stopped paying that Bioware (or possibly EA) has announced they'll be taking it free to play. I'm not sure what to make of that. I think I'm just not over the western stigma of free to play meaning crap. But free to play is becoming a hugely profitable switch for other MMO's, so it'll work as long as they can make the switch work, as well as make compelling gameplay worth playing for. Me, I'll probably get through all the stories on my characters. They're all pretty good so for, and I have several more to go.

March 2012 - Mass Effect 3. Long awaited cap to the Mass Effect trilogy. It's fantastic. I love it. The ending was a little off (as many, many fanboys have raged all over the internet), but they updated it, released a slew of multiplayer maps, and a single player DLC. I'm playing it through for the third time, and enjoying it just as much as before. I'm not sure I'll be able to play the previous games after this. They might just be too lame.

September 2012 - World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. Fourth expansion for the money machine. Promises to have even more max-level content than before. I can't wait, and have been busy filling my time with old game until this comes out and I disappear for a month.

Of course, this doesn't count games I haven't even bought. April of 2011 brought The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. It had the same grimness and ambiguity of the Dragon Age universe. It followed a flawed predecessor with a vastly improved game and got fantastic reviews. If I see it on sale, I'll definitely pick it up.

February of 2012 saw the release of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. It was supposed to be one game set in the Kingdoms of Amalur (Project Copernicus was a cancelled MMO set there as well), but with 38 Studios shut down, it looks to be the only entrant. It supposedly combined God of War gameplay with a Skyrim-like talent system. And of course, the world was crated in part by R.A. Salvator, whom you may recognize because his name is on half the spines in every bookstore fantasy section.

May of 2012: Diablo 3. Possibly even more anticipated (at least on PC) than Mass Effect 3, it's the sequel (though not necessarily the last entry) to the incredibly addictive Diablo 2. Click-click-click-click-click-loot. Rinse, Repeat. I tried it with Torchlight (the sequel to that comes out in September of this year) and didn't really like it, so I'll probably stay away from that formula. Fanboys cried foul at the constant internet connection required and some initial server difficulties, but it's been fantastic ever since.

Three other MMORPG's have also been released recently that have caught critics' eyes, if not the general population. Firstly, Rift was released in March of 2011. It has a unique talent system that lets players mix and match classes to suit playstyle. It also has the titular Rifts, which I imagine would get tiring after seeing them all over, again and again and again and again. But I wouldn't know, as I skipped it. I've already got enough MMO for me, thanks. Next, The Secret World was released in July of 2012. It's set here in on the real Earth, only it turns out that most conspiracy theories are true. Other than that, I don't know much about it. Maybe it's all secret. Lastly, Guild Wars 2 was released in August 2012. Its big draw is that you buy the game, and then you get everything subsequently for free (well, some optional things you can purchase). Every patch is free, there's no subscription, nothing locked out for poor players. You get it all with the box. And it's supposedly really good. Again, I haven't picked it up, because frankly, I have enough games.

This list also doesn't count RPG's released for other systems. Two games - Xenoblade and The Last Story - have been released this past summer. Well, released here, at least. They were big in Japan, but didn't get a North American release because a lot of those types of games do poorly here. Final Fantasy is about the only series to do well. Dragon Quest? Not so much. However, a devoted fanbase pushed (and pushed, and pushed) for a release, and so the companies made one. I'm not sure if Europe got a release beforehand or not, but North America got the British version of Xenoblade. Which is alright, because the accents class it up a bit. I haven't picked up The Last Story yet, but I'm awfully tempted.

And finally, my list doesn't have any games of any other genres on it. April of 2011 had the release of Portal 2. Lots of fun, darkly humorous. Explained the back-story for some characters involved, and introduced us to Wheatley, one of the better robots in video games.

Duke Nukem Forever (after years of Development Hell) finally appeared to middling reviews in June of last year. Up-to-date gameplay with a throwback attitude didn't mesh well with some of the other ideas Gearbox had. And there was also lots and lots of loading. I wouldn't know, though. I skipped it.

However, one of the biggest games on the PC was again from Blizzard (seriously, they must have all the money right now. All of it). Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (part one of a massive trilogy) came out last year, to much fanfare and e-sports in parts of Asia I don't understand. They go a bit overboard for things I could care less about, and remain totally blasé about the best. stuff. evar!

Oh yeah, I forgot to include the innumerable content patches and DLC for the above games, as well as other ones as well. Just to name a few, Mass Effect 2 had The Arrival, a DLC pack that set up Mass Effect 3. Fallout: New Vegas had four DLC packs that added many hours of extra playtime (in fact, Fallout: New Vegas was released only a month before Cataclysm, so I probably should have kicked of the list with it, but I thought World of Warcraft expansions made better bookends). Cataclysm had patches 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3, all of which introduced new storylines, dungeons, or Raids, and usually more than one. Dragon Age 2 had two DLC packs, Legacy and Mark of the Assassin. Human Revolution had the DLC pack The Missing Link. Skyrim has Dawnguard, a DLC pack which I have not gotten to, but plan on playing intently. The Old Republic has had patches 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, which introduced either more content, or more game features (hi, group finder. Why weren't you in the original product?) And Mass Effect 3 has Leviathan, a DLC pack that help explain the back-story of the antagonists of the entire series.

I'm not sure what the future holds for RPG's, but I doubt we'll ever see a run of fantastic games like we've seen in the past two years. And while I'm somewhat sad to see them go, they have so much replayable value that we'll never really have to say good-bye.