Seal and the Shooter
by SealWyf, HSM Editor
You have to hand it to VEEMEE. They really know how to tick people off.
I’ve been in closed betas before. And there have been plenty of betas to which I wasn’t invited. The only way I knew I’d been left out was seeing my friends in a space marked “Beta”, where I could not go.
Being shut out hurt. We all want to be the cool kids in Home. So I can imagine how people felt this week when they opened the Navigator and found a tile for the “No Man’s Land” closed beta. It might as well have been labeled “This is where the party is. The one to which you haven’t been invited, loser!” Definitely a slap in the face.
I was one of the lucky ones. Twice lucky, in fact — I received the original email invitation, and scored a second code for being “press”. Which was pretty darned cool, although I’ll admit that, for me, a code to a closed beta of a shooter had all the emotional appeal of a crate of Brussels sprouts. Shooters simply aren’t my game.
To put it bluntly, I suck at shooters.
Still, free is free, and exclusive is exclusive. And I recognize a writing assignment when I receive it. Especially when it comes with a note from the Editor-In-Chief saying, “Here’s your promo code. Now go write something.” So I blocked out a chunk of Saturday and made a pot of tea while the 60MB space downloaded. And, was immediately faced with another load screen for the 90MB tutorial.
Tutorials are good, especially for a game genre in which I am, essentially, a virgin. It always helps to know your way around the controller. And this is a decent tutorial. You start out as a raw recruit in a cloth cap and tee shirt, carrying a rusty pistol. Things start slowly: here’s how you navigate, here’s how you read your heads-up display. Then you’re out in the open, and “targets” are shooting at you. Fortunately, they seem to be shooting blanks. They’re just there so you can learn how to shoot back. Things do get a little hairier as the tutorial progresses, but you still seem to be immortal. (Enjoy this while you can. It won’t last.)
Once you finish the tutorial, you’re dropped into the main game lobby and presented with free hoodies, male and female, that say “Beta Tester”. This amazed me — not only was this beta displayed on the Navigator, the testers were allowed to flaunt their status in the rest of Home. My previous Home betas had been all about discretion and NDA’s. Well, it’s a way to build up buzz for the game. Everyone is talking about it, in Home and on the Forums. But it still feels invidious.
The main game lobby, “The Drydocks”, is impressive. It’s huge and detailed, with a row of game launch points, a leaderboard, and prominent storefronts where you upgrade weapons and armor. Upgrades are free, and there seems to be no good reason not to get the most kick-ass field kit available. But I’m sure there will be some form of paid upgrade after the game opens. Pixels this good don’t come cheap.
Launching from The Drydocks moves you into a smaller lobby, an abandoned subway station, where you form teams and prepare to invade the mean streets above. There are more upgrade kiosks here, in case you need to adjust your equipment between sessions.
On my first visit, I ran into a pair of friendly HCV’s who had just finished a game, and were taking time off to report bugs on the private beta forum. When I confessed my utter ignorance of shooters, they talked me through upgrading my weapons and gave me a few strategy tips. Then they generously allowed me to play with them — even though, at my level of noobie ignorance, the only thing I could do was die. Repeatedly. With really great special effects, disturbing screams and outstandingly detailed pixels.
Have I mentioned that I suck at shooters? If I haven’t, I’ll say it now. This is simply not my game.
There are reasons for this, which have a lot to do with my being a female Baby Boomer who protested the Vietnam War in the 1960’s. For me, modern warfare, and things that look like it, awaken deep feelings of horror and pity and helpless rage.
I love John Keegan’s books on war, as experienced by real soldiers. (If you haven’t read The Face of Battle, I highly recommend it.) The poems of Wilfred Owen send shivers up my spine. A good war documentary reduces me to tears. I am fascinated and saddened by the real-life stories of my Homeling colleagues who were, or are, in the military. I sincerely believe that the best way to “support the troops” is not to send them into senseless conflicts.
In other words, I see war, and things that look like it, as serious and tragic. Not as fun. Cathartic, maybe, but not an amusing way to spend a Saturday on the PlayStation. Maybe that’s my X chromosomes talking. Or there may be something here I’m just not getting.
That said, I do understand the concept of “game”. And that death, in a game, is not like death in the real world. For one thing, you have extra lives. (I think I went through about 40 of them in my first foray into “No Man’s Land”.) In real wars, dead is dead. Game over. Thank you for playing. Goodbye.
Death in a game is not about real-world death. It’s a symbol, a shorthand for “You lose!” And a graphic on-screen death, with blood and flames and screaming, is just another way of tipping over a pawn on a chessboard. I totally get that. But, to be honest, I prefer the abstraction of tipping over the pawn. Chalk it up to my generation.
I will confess to taking an intense and guilty pleasure in role-playing games. There’s something deeply satisfying about whacking an imaginary dragon with an imaginary sword. And I spent much of “Oblivion” sneaking up on bandits and shooting them in the back, so I could steal their stuff. They died with satisfying screams, and a tasteful amount of blood. So, call me a hypocrite — I do like killing things in games, if I see them as imaginary. It’s just a difference of degree.
Differences of degree can be important. Sometimes the level of realism in a violent game is not just an aesthetic decision — it’s a moral one.
In the hours after my first experience with “No Man’s Land”, I was wracked with a moral revulsion so intense that I seriously considered giving up Home, the PSN, and console gaming in general. And all I have to say about that is, never make important life-decisions at four in the morning. Fortunately for my PSN career, I still needed some in-game photos for this article. And so I braced myself, loaded Home, and tried again.
We all learn from experience. And emotional responses can change. For me, the change began when I read the draft of Norse’s review of “No Man’s Land”, and realized that, despite appearances, it’s not a realistic battle simulator. The Home platform simply can’t support a free-roaming shooter, so movement in the game is limited to specific destinations. The animations that accompany movement give the illusion of freedom, but you are actually playing on a game board with a limited set of “squares” and terrific scenery. This means that “No Man’s Land” is really about strategy. It’s chess, with blood and screaming.
Another change came when I hooked up with a group of Home friends (and some sympathetic strangers) for my second gaming session. We had a great time running around killing each other. And, although I still did most of the dying, I managed to get in a few good shots. I can see now that if I continue, I might actually be able to build up a few game chops. Those sniper rifles look promising. They’re the modern equivalent of sneaking around Oblivion with a bow.
As a computer professional, I totally appreciate what VEEMEE has done with “No Man’s Land”. They have embedded what feels like a real-time combat game in the Home platform, without much lag. Even my pathetic DSL connection can handle it. Home can support this because at heart it’s a board game, like the “Uncharted” semi-shooter that inaugurated the Adventure District. But “No Man’s Land” is a vastly more complex game, and introduces a PvP element — no mean technical achievement.
It’s hard to remember that the intricately-detailed world around you is just scenery, and you can’t run off and explore it. All you can do is jump from square to protected square on the game board, then stand and shoot at enemy players. At that point, you’re vulnerable, and they can shoot at you. This is where “collision detection” comes in. In my experience, it works very well. The game detected every single bullet that collided with me, as well as a few grenades.
“No Man’s Land” is already a good addition to the Home game collection. And it will become better, as the remaining glitches are patched. This is going to be huge. A lot of people will be playing it.
Will I be one of them? I’ll have to think about it. I can see that with the right teammates and plenty of practice, I might learn to enjoy this shooter. But I still feel iffy about it. It feels too much like what we see on the nightly news, from places like Homs and Beirut. I like a hefty dose of unreality with my fantasy. And I don’t think moral revulsion is a necessarily bad thing. It’s a whole lot better than the casual acceptance of evil.
Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to Lockwood’s promised in-Home role-playing game, “Mercia”. I hope they have swords. And elves. And lots and lots of dragons.
June 20th, 2012 by SealWyf_ | 6 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer, who has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is obsessed with creating new aesthetic experiences in PlayStation Home.
Nice take on the game there. You mentioned Mercia at the end; did you get into the very short demo at E3? I can say that so far, it feels rather clunky and unrefined, but isn’t the final product so I’m still looking forward to it. As for this thing, No Man’s Land well, ugh. Don’t get me wrong, when it’s done right (like Fallout3/New Vegas) post-apocalyptia can be a great place! But I tend to stay away from FPSes that pit you against other people rather than an A.I because real people are cheaters, sore losers and scatty. I hate (I’ll emphasize that), HATE campers. It’s what stopped me playing CoD online and even things like Warhawk. Starhawk looks amazing, but I’ll never touch that either, or this No Man’s Land.
Being a fairly new player to this kinda game I’d imagine you’ve not really bumped into a camper yet Seal, trust me, keep playing this and you will. And you’ll see why I gave up on these games. It’s not the boring ‘run, run, shoot’ that gets me most of the time, it’s other people and their obsession with kill/death ratios and stats that make me hate this genre.
I’d recommend trying Scavenger mode in No Man’s Land — it more or less forces you to move around the map, picking up salvage, returning it to your base, and trying to steal from the enemy. Scavenger plays extremely well into the cover-based mechanics of this game, and limits the effectiveness of camping.
The first battlefield map really only has one near-perfect spot for camping (it’s a doozy, but it’s not infallible); the rest of the map is actually quite well-designed to limit the firing angles a camper might try to take advantage of.
Even though I’ve played my share of shooter games, I’m by no means an avid fan of the genre. That said, VEEMEE’s managed to create one that’s surprisingly a lot more addictive than I initially though it would be.
Thank you for this article Sea- I have never played the game nor will I ever- why? Well because itjust doesn’t sound fun to me at all -not even a little. No amount of scavenger advice is going to make it any more appealing to me. When I think of camping I am thinking of my recent three day hiking excision in the north coast’s redwood forest where I was SHOOTING animals with a camera. Now that was fun. The real violence occurred when we caught a fish -- and Woot! did that taste good !
Great article! I really enjoyed your perspectives. It is fun to see the same game from another point of view.
I have been playing shooters for a while. I recently had stopped just because they got too hard and weren’t at all interesting.
This strange hybrid between “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Dragon’s Lair” has not peaked my interest. I played the Uncharted 3 demo enough to figure out how to win, then quit. I was curious if there was a surprise, but there wasn’t.
I hope this game does well. Home needs good games.
Thanks, deuce. As you have probably guessed, this was the article I mentioned in my rather odd rant in reply to yours the other week. (I was in a weird mood that day. What can I say, except sometimes “cooling off periods” are desirable for comments, as well as firearms purchases.)
As for the game itself — sometimes the Homelings hold a Sodium 2 tournament, in which we require all players use standard Level 1 racers to even the playing field. I think that would be the only way I could get into this game: a group of friends, who aren’t going to “camp out” and snipe, all using default gear. That might actually be fun, and would allow enough time between dying to build up some skills. I’ll have to see if I can find seven friends with the same attitude. “Pacifists’ NML Team”, FTW!