We’ve written so much here on Agoners about competitive gaming, as per our definitions, that I thought it might be useful to re-state a few things in a single article. A bit of a re-statement of our beliefs; a competitive gaming manifesto if you like. Gaming design for competitive gaming should always mean these three things: 1. As level a playing field as possible. This means that as much as possible everyone is playing the same game with potential access [...Full Story...]
(Continued from Part 1) Part 2: Variety, Viability and Balance Street Fighter IV is often said to have really good balance between characters. It’s current tier listing shows it isn’t too bad at least as fighting games go – 53 points between top and bottom, 25 characters (2.12 per character). Although HDR’s current tier listing shows the differences there are probably even less – 26.5 points between top and bottom, 16 characters (1.66 per character), however if you remove Dan, SFIV also [...Full Story...]
The cramp in my thumb is finally subsiding and my voice returning (after shouting abuse at all the scrubby Ryus) so I can now write a little about my first forays into the competitive world of Street Fighter II HD Remix Well let me give you a quick Navan Daughn history lesson of Street Fighters. I started back in the days of yore on my trusty Sinclair Spectrum 128k. I vaguely remember playing a poorman’s Street Fighter port but chose [...Full Story...]
“Been playing HL2 as I fancy going through it again. I’m enjoying it, but still find it weird on the XBOX controller. Things which are piss easy on the mouse can be a real bugger on the controller” – Navan Daughn When does a controller become part of the game? Pretty much always! However the degree to which it affects the game experience really varies wildly from case to case. I think Navan now understands some of my complaints with [...Full Story...]
“If you have something to confess, do it now. Give yourself some peace“. Last night I Achievement Whored. Well, sort of, as we’ll see… however more accurately I helped out a friend by setting up his attempt to ‘glitch’ Left 4 Dead to allow him to get an Achievement that is very difficult to unlock under normal play conditions. I actually only agreed to do this, because this particular glitch would only affect him – only he’d get the Achievement, and [...Full Story...]
I WIN!!!11! olol Far more fun than racking up a huge pointless gamerscore… This historic moment deserves to be captured for posterity: It doesn’t get much better than this in Gamerscore land. MA KU RO SU Special thanks go to an unlikely set of games that made this possible: Sonic the Hedgehog (original XBLA), Doritos Dash of Destruction – both of which I got free, and Senko No Ronde (Wartech) which I’m actually rather enjoying at my utter newbie level [...Full Story...]
I’m guessing that most readers of this blog will be familiar with a tier listing for a game with matchups and a choice of characters or races with different ability sets. Admittedly this is mainly only fighting games where I’ve seen this kind of thing happen, but it could be doable for other games too, for example, you could theoretically try to ‘tier’ the various different Civs for games of Civilization Revolutions, or tier the different characters in Sega Superstars [...Full Story...]