Tag Archive for 'games'

There are a lot of reasons why I’ve not updated the blog in the past few weeks, mostly because of work, but also mostly because I’ve spent every free moment playing Call of Duty: Black Ops. Because it’s awesome.

Except the darned AI.

The Lone Gunman

I lost count of the number of times I’d push forward through a level, having faith in my teammates to cover my advance, only to be shot repeatedly in the back.

As my blood splattered the screen, I’d turn in my last dying breath to see my ally standing beside my enemy as if plucking up the courage to ask them on a date after they’d finished pumping an entire clip into my corpse.

And it’s a real shame. I love the Call of Duty series because the tightly controlled events create a compelling narrative that manages to genuinely emotionally invest me in its story and characters. The dialog and voice acting are superb and the plots are as bravely political as we’ll probably see for a while in a genre where propaganda rather than commentary is the norm.

In a world that is so successful at evoking period and place, it’s frustrating to be taken out of the moment by playing the equivalent of whack-a-mole in a network of Vietnamese tunnels because the AI’s only function is to jump out at you from clearly defined spawn points.

What I’m trying to say is- I never feel like I’ve outwitted a soldier in Black Ops.

But I’ll forgive that, because even without the multiplayer it’s my game of the year, and apart from those annoying moments where your teammates and targets stop to have a chat, the way the game is structured actually turns the AI to its advantage. Mason in Black Ops is a man possessed, who is so obsessed with his overarching goals that of course everything inbetween is just an obstacle to overcome. He’s running on an adrenaline rush that gives him almost superhuman powers and the game’s canon-fodder soldiers enhance that.

If the world around them hadn’t been so immersive this effect could have fallen flat, but because you believe in the world and the story- the dodgy AI only serves to highlight the driven nature of your character. You still take as many hits as your enemies, but you’re faster, cleverer, more accurate and that’s what makes you the hero and your enemies mere cyphers.

Killzone 2 does exactly the opposite.

vs. Team Spirit

Now I don’t know whether it’s because I didn’t play the first one, or whether I was too busy wrestling with the treacle-controls on the flimsy PS3 controller to pay attention- but I never had a clue what I was doing on the planet of Helgath.

Also my viewpoint was a foot below every other character’s eye-level for some reason.

Despite the atmosphere and graphics, I never felt invested in the characters until right at the very end, and although they did try admirably hard to make me care during the cutscenes- they were just too gung-ho to be believable.

But blimey the AI was phenomenal.

The reason I noticed it was because the final battle took me longer to complete than almost the entire rest of the game put together and it took me a while to work out why- the enemies were just as vulnerable as ever, I had the best guns in the game to take them out with and some fairly good cover to shoot them from. They were just too clever for me, simple as that. When they dug into cover, they didn’t come out for love nor money- I had to go to them. When I found a good sniping spot they’d smoke me out with grenades- and they wouldn’t just do that for themselves, they’d smoke me out so their teammates could flank me.

I would spend literally minutes trying to take out a single soldier, and when I died I wasn’t frustrated because I’d been overwhelmed by numbers or because my enemies had x-ray vision in the back of their heads, I was frustrated with myself for not covering my back. This was the closest a single player game had come to being as unpredictable as an online match.

And it wasn’t just the enemy AI that was that good, the friendly AI was even better. They’d adapt to where you were, moving to cover exits you couldn’t, and if I’d taken out a large group of enemies I could trust them to mop up the remaining stragglers whilst I stocked up on ammunition.

So despite the fact that I couldn’t follow the plot and wasn’t hugely fussed about the characters, I found Killzone 2 engaging. In a game where you play as a grunt who happens to be in the right place at the right time to appear in the cutscenes, you need to have smart AI to feel part of a larger whole. When your commanding officer tells you to get up to the roof of a building to cover the advance of a tank you say ‘yes sir’ because you have faith that the soldiers on the ground will be doing their job just as well as you. The beauty of the AI is not so much that it makes your enemies more fun to fight, but that it makes you feel like a regular soldier- no more or less important than any other, just following orders.

It is surprising that, although the setting couldn’t be further removed from a ‘realistic modern-day shooter’, it is Killzone 2 that most effectively portrays the insignificance of the soldier compared to the world-spanning conflict that surrounds them.