The Chokepoint. Almost every game I've played has one. It can be at the beginning, like Driver, or at the end, like Metroid Prime. Heck, Viewtiful Joe is one long chokepoint. If a game lacks one I feel cheated. The game was too easy. But when I encounter one, I curse the game's creator to the 12 trials of Hercules (or at least great bodily harm). How dare he/she put me through this crap, I'm just trying to have fun here. The severity of the chokepoint is directly proportional to the amount yelling I do. I try to control myself, but somehow I firmly believe that my anger, my brief journey to the Dark Side, gives me strength to persevere. That, and what prize is on the other side. For, truly, the chokepoint is an obstacle to a greater goal; getting the next super-weapon, saving another princess, collecting a star/coin/triforce/bunny, finishing the game. And by chokepoint (CP), I mean an area or puzzle that just defies difficulty. Suddenly every Nazi on the planet knows you're hiding in that forest and shoot every square pixel of your body, exposed or not. I've seen some puzzles that require a Nobel Prize in physics, not to mention a new kind of calculus, to solve. I then ask myself, when I've calmed down with a beer, is this game worth it? I may blow the next hour trying desperately to memorize every move (ie Dragon's Lair) for a better suit of armor or a guardian fairy. Most of the time you have to beat the CP to continue, so if the game has been fun, most likely I'll continue, but if not, I'll loose interest immediately. Thanks to Achievements and Gamescore, if I get through a CP I'll get more points.
I am not unique in this, and I'm also a hypocrite. I need CPs but I hate them, because I feel cheated without them. They are like the green veggies of video gaming. However, a game needs to balance this. If passing through a CP gets me more of the same, I'm just grinding my enjoyment to a bloody, hatefilled, pulp. Another thing to consider is if there is a save point nearby or did you have to play a marathon before the CP, therefore negating all sorts of play time if you fail. This probably goes for everyone who plays, is this game worth the crap I'm about to go through. Half-Life 2 is definately that game, as are Halo, Call Of Duty, Medal Of Honor (usually) and Gears Of War. Where I have had trouble is with Fighting Games. Once you face the "Boss" in Dead Or Alive I can say I completed it. But there are all sorts of Achievements that require me to defeat the "Boss" with everyone multiple times. That's a CP I have to face 30 times. Not worth it. Fighting games are a different style of play, and I tend to prefer to play against real people, anyway. Chokepoints, you can't live with them, but you can usually shoot the hell out of everything in sight and move on to the next one. I hate Chokepoints. Apparently I'm a virtual masochist.
Digging around on the Internetwebs today I came across some interesting tidbits. Since I've been analyzing the issues of the PS3, I was interested to read about the console sales figures in September. Everyone else is selling almost 4 to 5 times as many units as the PS3 is able to sell. The Nintendo DS totally outsold PS3, not to mention PS2 and the PSP.
I miss Judgment Day on G4TV, and Tommy Tallarico's critical wit as he steered us clear of trivial nonsense and showed us a truer path to gaming goodness. He's no longer on TV but I found the next best thing. Yahtzee/Zero Punctuation game reviews by web video at this site, where he reviews MOH Airborne. He seems to hate everything, and half the time I can't really argue with him. Bloody brilliant.
Halo 3 and I are breaking up for a while, have gained everything I can out of her multiplayer experience. I've gone about as far as I can with her, and I see no reason to waste more time trying to gain rank and not Gamescore. I'm a Gamescore Whore after all and I can't be tied down to one game for too long. Wow, that got weird for a second. Anyway, someone else began to have the similar problems with online play and wrote this article on suicide bombers in Halo. I have a life, too, really.
The SR-71 Blackbird is the proof of concept that engineers are the coolest geeks on the planet, and not just because my grandpa used to work with them. The reason this aircraft's top speed is classified is that it was never found. Everytime the Russians flew something faster, we just stepped on the peddle a little harder. The design was ahead of its time and now its been retired. So, once again the name has surfaced, this time controlled by Voodoo. The Voodoo Blackbird is quite possibly the most advanced gaming computer built to date. And it plays the latest Graphic-Crunching, Physics-Bending, Frame-Frate hogging game, Crysis, with ease. And, of course, being the gamer I am, I want Crysis, but I basically have to buy a $5,500 Voodoo Blackbird console for a $50 game. Or wait five years and home computers will be just as good, with Windows Vista XP 2K10 Pro or some such and 5 TB RAID harddrives to match 60 GB of MagnoNeuroRAM. If you pre-order Crysis before next week, at a Gamestop, you can get a nifty toy tank thing that reminds me of the APC from Aliens. See you next broadcast.
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Sigh, well I'm here, bored, so I might as well proofread. Please fix the following grammatical and spelling errors from 11/6:
- "amount of yelling a do"
- "hypocrit" sigh
- "despirate" siiiiiggggghhhh
Dictionaries help. But I guess not at 2am after a few beers. :)
Chokepoint...hmmmm...unfortunately through general old osmosis, I am learning "geekspeek".
I'll try not to look around any further.
Thanx, Debi. My blogging obviously needs a First Mech round before production. Pretty good though for not having an active spellcheck. Geekspeek rules.
Ok as to grammatical errors, this is a blog, not a nationalized political essay. But you never know, one day this whole thing will be featured on the nightly news and a driver's photo of james from 1992 will be on tv.
But again with the digressing. Chokepoints in games would be what most people call the interesting sections of the game. Funny enough, chokepoints are either designed that way or are a function of the player themselves. Many a times, i have gone through levels with ease that a lot of people have difficulty with gripping, a funky jump, an insanely hard boss, an arrow through an eye statue, most notably found by yours truly because i just shot arrows at everything, certain spots in walls to place bombs (ok, yes i am referring to something that is like 20 years old but it is a classic). Also, who thought to steal a car, run over 145 pedestrians, and if you have $2500 in cash and 1 police star you can get a hooker that does you in the coffee shop up above it all their pixaltion glory? But that's not a chokepoint. Every game has a patience limit on how many times you are willing to try something before giving the screen the finger and moving on to senseless gore FPS or Skinamax. It also relates to the time frame, which Fox has mentioned, of moving from point a to the said aforementioned chokepoint. For instance in WOW (don't worry FOX, i shall teach you the ways) if you die and have to spend 15 minutes running back to your body, it is frustrating, especially when you get back to your body you find it surrounded by things you killed previously, but have come back because you had to travel the world to get back there. FRUSTRATING. Or that one STUPID jump/fire combination that you just can't pull off, or because your console is laughing at you because you spent the last 45 minutes replaying a level to get a certain amount of points to continue. I swear to god the PS2 extends songs like "heart shaped box" just wear out my fingers.
Interesting on the console sales. I heard that Wii is the leader now, and i truly think it isn't the WOW factor but the pricepoint. Think of it. PRICEPOINT of original PS2 (about) - which inflation in the last 10 years has been very low, and in game prices it has been almost non-existent... so when Sony comes out and goes "HOLY CRAP look at this" (for $600) people were like - psssht, we just complained that $400 for a XboX360 was insane, but bought it because they had games. And now you have crappy games and want us to pay more because you want us to buy non-existent (at the time) HD dvd's? CUT THE (insert explediative here).
I do try to trim my blog for the future generations who will read/mindscan these writings. My thought process this gaming season with CPs is that there are too many good games to get hung up on one for too long. I finished all Half-Life 2 (and Ep1 and Ep2) last night but I'm going to try for a couple more achievements (the game is so addictive) then go full blown in Ace Combat 6 and knock it out of the box. I know I'm missing Call Of Duty 4, but there's always retirement. The stupid jump/fire platforming combo CP ended me on Ninja Gaiden for NES (all three versions had the same CP at one point), and I've never played any Ninja Gaiden since.
Maybe it's Sony's turn to slide downhill on the market. We do have a lot of competing consoles, and that's only good for us. The cream floats to the top, and the top of my cream floats an Xbox 360. Sorry, that didn't come out right.
Well done, Fox – I have never really given a name or complete thought to CP’s. I always referred to CP’s as ‘this part in…’, at which point I go on and describe my woes in great vulgar-laced detail. Generally I don’t think CP’s are player based – in my experience passing them is some hybrid of luck and skill. Sometimes you are hitting the right buttons and you walk away going ‘how the hell did I manage that?”, and sometimes you walk away going “its this goddamned shoddy A button!”. There have only been a few games where its innate difficulty has been the main hurdle. And then there is Ninja Gaiden, which is so hard one has trouble defeating the start button.
But in the ever-expanding worlds I find myself immersed in, I think CP’s have evolved considerably. When it use to be as simple as punching a guy till his pants fell down and then uppercutting him, CP’s have become obstacles of a more liquid nature. Entire worlds of options have turned the challenging events into scenarios that require of strategy and planning. We still have the twitch-based horrors of viewtiful joe and ninja gaiden: black; but more and more we find ourselves concerned with the shortest route, which guards to distract, or best use of potions and spells. Long after the game has been turned off we burn with these problems. The scale and complexity of environments have themselves become another blessing or curse.
MGS:Snake Eater is a higher profile example; there are almost too many different kinds of camouflage you must collect and wear, and an entire jungle to hide in. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of easily dispatched enemies. The real difference in this generations CP’s is that you are allowed to overcome them however you see fit. You can sneak around breaking necks, you can raise hell and thrill in silencing alarms, or you can go completely silent and not take one life – todays games don’t chastise you for finding your own methods. We’ve come a long way from sharing the single secret to defeating the boss – Nowadays we collaborate on strategies. Of course, then there is the first metal gear, which returned to the classic “how do I beat so-and-so” where you were required to plug your controller into port two so the boss couldn’t read your mind. Psychomantis, if your out there: fuck you.
But this talk of CP’s and expansions and achievements forced me to make a slightly retro purchase. How come whenever a console comes to an end, one looks towards the past to recapture games that might have been skipped over in the moment? Whatever the reason, it is why I purchased Tony Hawks Underground for the bargain basement price of $7, shipped. Guitar Hero 3 has been almost completely exhausted by my prodigious fingers. This new challenge will be taken up with earnest gusto, or ‘gearnusto’.
On a different note, I’m not sure price point is the main motivation behind the Wii’s success. The John Lennon in me wants to believe its because people demand a change from standard consoles, which are often more concerned with ‘megabits’ and ‘jorgenthreads’, and less concerned with presenting something truly different and entertaining. Video games use to be something different, they were video-based games in a world of monopoly and boggle. Now they are the standard currency when it comes to games. So while I like to think the Wii success has something to do with a widely embraced and long past due evolution…I doubt its the main reason. However, it may be a significant contributor. Ive listened to too many rich teenagers tell me of countless nights spent wii bowling (a simplistic, pack-in game) to believe that price point is a major factor.
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