Lagumbay.com Reflections on Love, Rage, and Fear

“You stand in the line just to hit a new low
You’re faking a smile with the coffee to go
You tell me your life’s been way off line
You’re falling to pieces every time
And I don’t need no carryin’ on”

– Daniel Powter, “Bad Day”

The Killzone 3 experience truly shines in its multiplayer offering.  Campaign mode, while interesting, was definitely not the most memorable component of the game.  The real “war stories” are to be found from various skirmishes against real players: from holding a bridge to demolishing a structure and anywhere in between.  The stories are found in harnessing and relishing human psychology — the frustrations of defeat, the fatally flawed determination for vengeance, creating mistrust as well as predicting where an opposing player hides and greeting him there when he arrives.  These are your stories — the Tactician capturing a crucial spawn point, a Marksman taking out a machine gun, an Infiltrator planting explosives after methodically neutralizing three defenders, a Medic reviving himself to complete an objective when enemies have left him for dead.  I don’t have Engineer stories, I use one mainly to repair ammo boxes in order to benefit the other classes I favor.

That said, the multiplayer mode’s instability has weighed down on what otherwise would have been a lot of fun.  Too often, I found myself pleading with the game — “no, please don’t freeze, I was doing well!”  Why my gaming depends on a Session Host’s relationship status, I don’t really know.  So he’s no longer available, I’m happy for him, now let’s keep playing.  The game also completely freezes on occasion, requiring a hard reset, which is still inconvenient and annoying.  There may be additional issues with lag and hit-boxes but that might just actually be my horrible aim.  When I go Dick Cheney on someone from point blank, I don’t expect my opponent to be merely tickled, which seems to happen more often than I care for it to.

While I await the coming of various patches to improve stability and gameplay, I am left with a horrible sense of disappointment.  I liked Killzone 2 and I had many stories from its multiplayer mode.  I want to like Killzone 3 and I do like the game when I am able to play.  The instability, however, seems to overpower the positives.  So until those network errors go away, “please don’t freeze, Killzone 3.  You were doing so well!”

“And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can’t deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars”

– Guns N’ Roses, “Civil War”

Since the multiplayer was being a bit challenging, I decided to see how far I could go with campaign mode.  Apparently, far enough to finish the game.  SPOILER ALERT!  Shoot helghast, fly around shooting things, get big gun on the floor and shoot some cooling vents.  I admit it took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do since this gigantic monstrosity was shooting at me.  Get in vehicle, shoot it some more, go into space, kill more enemies.  Zero gravity was a nice touch.  Kill more things, eventual spaceship rails shooter, figure out how to shoot things, somehow succeed.  Bad dude tries to get away, pursue, shoot down incoming missiles, release nuke.  Yeah, release nuke.  Unstable Helghan planet goes dark.  I’m all for overkill and all, but going after just one dude with a nuclear bomb?  Worse yet, one of the ending cutscenes shows he survived!  How does that make you feel, Sevchenko?  I mean Rico took out Visari and that was bad.

I guess it’s up to Killzone 4 to tell me what happens next.  I’m guessing Helghan joins the ISA and we all end up laughing about the whole nuke thing.  Sev marries Visari’s daughter, and cake is served.  Yay!

Now if only the multiplayer gets more stable, I may be able to slog out a few more unlock points.

I haven’t touched Campaign mode in a day. From my last post, Sev got to do his stealth mission thing only to find out that the Helghast were going to invade and that any sort of surrender wouldn’t mean much. Higs show up and stealth be damned, it’s a shootout again. Kill enemies, move along, kill enemy machine, move along, kill another enemy machine, move along. Regroup with Narville, kill more things. I guess after trying to hold out, the position is overcome and both Sev and Narville surrender.

Six months after that, while Sev is being transported with memorable dialoge about Visari’s death, Rico comes in with a group of “Rogue” ISA to rescue him. They then try to spring Narville. Jetpack bit, big launcher type gun bit, long story short, Narville got moved or something. The story circles back to the initial “training mission” where Rico and Sev are Higs With Attitude. Spring Narville, fight through bad guys using bigger weapons (which I was always reluctant to use since I’m a stickler for ammo), chase Stahl in a snowmobile meets chainsaw vehicle.

Something else happens with Narville’s crew stuck in a “Don’t anybody move” moment which meant Sev and Rico (I think Rico was there) had to commandeer this Heeeuge vehicle. Kill enemies, move on, kill enemies, move on, get to control room, then cutscene. I think that’s as far as I’ve gone.

Next I would have written about how the REAL story of Killzone is the multiplayer and all the little skirmishes I’ve gone through.  The story would have been how for the past couple of days, playing the Field Medic, Marksman, and Infiltrator classes have been a lot of fun.  That fun seems to have stopped today with network-related issues ruining every other match.  No exaggeration, EVERY-OTHER-MATCH.  The multiplayer beta was unstable, but it was just beta so I cut them some slack.  This kind of stuff happened in Killzone 2 early on and the dev team managed to fix it and made the game run nicely.  Maybe KZ3 will get things done eventually, too, but  I was really hoping they had learned from the previous experience, or maybe even pinned things down after the beta.

I’m lame enough at the game as it is, I really don’t like losing what XP I had accumulated in a match to some “Session Master Not Available” error.

“I recommend biting off more than you can chew to anyone. I certainly do” — Alanis Morissette, “You Learn”

My horrendous kill-death ratio in the Killzone 3 multiplayer made me contemplate my approach to video game combat. With the pre-order bonus ticking down the 24-hours of having all skills unlocked, my objective had been to amass as many experience points as I could, which, in turn, granted me “unlock points” for use when the 24 hour skill smorgasbord ended. In gaming terms, I was XP-whoring, and I will probably be XP-whoring until I eventually unlock everything. Due to my lame skill level, that means putting my medic character in harm’s way for the potential chance of gaining more points than I could if I had been, say, a more cautious marksman.

From a broader perspective, I wondered if my reckless abandon was due to the knowledge that my character would respawn after death. In Killzone, there doesn’t seem to be a penalty for dying except for maybe having to walk through the map again. In the game, death is nothing to fear, knowing that reincarnation is only a few seconds away.

Come to think of it, the one main threat deterring a person from dying in a video game is having to start over. In the GTA series, getting “Busted” or “Wasted” cost you either money or weapons, but the ability to reload a saved game nullified that consequence. During the longer missions, however, the idea of having to start over made me not want to “die.” Having to once more drive through half the game map, fight through the same grunts for another chance of getting things right seemed like something to strive against. I always thought it best to succeed on the first try. In LittleBigPlanet, pressure always mounted when I was down to my last “life.” I was more cautious, often standing still in order to assess the situation, understand patterns, and plan my course of action. Reaching the next checkpoint came with a sigh of relief, knowing that one wrong step into a fiery pit would only be a minor inconvenience again. In the God of War series, as with most platformers and brawlers, dying led to having to start a section over, which meant possibly having to re-acquire power-ups and fighting through hordes of monsters again. These are minor, and sometimes fun, inconveniences.

There are games out there that have a “hardcore” mode which makes death more consequential. Demon’s Souls penalizes death by making reincarnation difficult. One can keep on playing as a ghost with diminished “health points” and an ethereal look in the game world. Dying in Demon’s Souls also meant losing all the XP and gold you had gained with a chance to recover some of it if you make it back to your corpse. The game provided no checkpoints and as such, made having to start over with less health a horribly frustrating proposition.

There is a “Hardcore Mode” in Fallout New Vegas in which hunger and fatigue factored in more heavily to the character’s health. Still, death was only a minor inconvenience since one can reload a previously saved game. Dying while playing Diablo II’s hardcore mode, however, meant that you character, along with his or her acquired skills and equipment, could not be accessed again. The only way to play again was to start a completely new character from the beginning.

The idea of respawning is part of the appeal of video games. Players are allowed to explore, make fatal errors, and try again. The way a game deals with “death” ultimately determines the approach a player takes. I never tried Diablo II’s hardcore mode because the thought of losing many hours of hard work to a stray thrown spear did not sound appealing at all. My horrendous kill-death ratio in Killzone 3 illustrates the other end of the spectrum, as death is only a minor inconvenience. If Alanis Morissette were singing about video games, she could have added “You die, you learn.”