Game Retreat Recap

After much planning, coordinating, and several schedule changes we finally had our annual gaming retreat two weekends ago. I am including links to many of the games so you can check them out.

Wednesday The posse arrived and we started to get things rolling. We played Citadels (http://fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=31) . Citadels was very fun and easy to play. It's a card game with some interesting choosing mechanics similar to Puerto Rico or Twilight Imperium.

Then we played Wasabi (http://www.zmangames.com/boardgames/wasabi.htm). It was a complete beatdown, but I wrote a session report about it anyway, here -http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/510287/two-first-timers-new-strategy-attempted.

After that, we wrapped it up with some Castle Panic, which we won of course (http://www.firesidegames.com/castlepanic.html).

Thursday We started by making characters for Mutants and Masterminds. The character creation process was massive. M&M is by design very open and allows for an infinite number of super heroes, but at the expense of it being new user friendly. We spent too much time making characters, and still didn't finish by the self imposed deadline of 5:30.

Then I think we played Smallworld that night. I thought it was going to be a very boring game based on the description on the back. It ended up being our most enjoyable board game of the entire weekend. We craved to play it each day. I highly recommend it! http://www.daysofwonder.com/smallworld/en/

Friday We started the morning off by attempting to make it through level 50 on Gears of War 2. Last year we made it to level 49, but never made it to the final level. We tried for several hours last year, but failed each and every time. To re-familiarize ourselves with the game we tried waves 1-26, then jumped to level 40. The monkey finally was off our back as we worked solidly as a team and the four of us trounced level 50. http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/AgeGate.htm

We played M&M for a few hours after completing our characters. http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/

Saturday We played some various rock band games. Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero Van Halen, and finally a lot of songs on Rock Band 2.

After that it was time for Pandemic, which we ended up losing (http://www.zmangames.com/boardgames/pandemic.htm).

We played Small World one more time. After that we went to my place and had a large dinner. We played Wits and Wagers and Formula D afterwords with about 10 people.

(http://www.northstargames.com/ and http://www.asmodee-us.com/index.html). Update - formula D might have issues at the website, try this BGG entry instead - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37904/formula-d


Sunday I decided that since one of our participants had never had me as a DM before I wanted to run a quick game for him and the others. We played the Goodman Games Zero level module, "Heroes are made, not born." http://www.goodman-games.com/5100preview.html I modified the module to end at the boss fight at the Ogre. I never liked the last part of the module and we only had 3 players so it made sense. The players had a highly effective tactic for taking out the Ogre. It worked perfectly with some excellent die rolling and just by its sheer design. After being beaten by Pandemic days before, we vowed a rematch, which we won soundly.

All in all pretty successful weekend. I am missing quite a bit of the things we did, but memory isn't as clear as it once was. :-)

Modern Warfare 2 Letdown

It's been just over 3 months since the highly anticipated release of Modern Warfare 2 (called MW2 for short). In this sequel Infinity Ward (IW) decided to not have a public beta test as they did in the first game. The reasoning was that they wouldn't need to do a tiresome public beta if an internal "professional tester" beta was deemed sufficient.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/101/1015777p1.html

Within a few short weeks issues started arising at an alarming rate. The host issue that plagued the first modern warfare was more apparent than ever. Unlike many other multiplayer games, Infinity Ward goes the less expensive route and does not have their own servers for players. As such, a certain Xbox live subscriber will be given host rights and therefore also given about a 2 second lead time ahead of everyone else.

This issue wasn't addressed and still plagues the game to this day. It's openly known that the host gets superior reaction times, damage output, wins in all tiebreakers, etc.

Even more troubling, players were only using certain equipment loadouts even though there are hundreds if not thousands of options. This points to an unbalanced game. First came the Dual 1887 shotguns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2IZd26F43I

Observe how the person doesn't even have to aim the guns in order to score instant kills. Just point in the general area and boom.

It's funny to think that not only could the Terminator not reload as fast as these guys are reloading two guns at the same time, but also humorous that in over 120 years of gun making technological improvements, the 1887 shotgun is better than any gun ever created in history.

After this slipped through the professional testing at IW, the cheaters stepped in. The first widely spread cheat was the javelin glitch. Essentially a player would arm himself like a suicide bomber and run around the board. When he would die a massive explosive would happen, killing people in a wide area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-nYVHyQWc

After a few weeks of this glitch ruining the integrity of the game, and a complete embarrassment for the quality control process at Infinity Ward, they managed to rush a patch through Microsoft.

Let's give IW a get out of jail free card for that, sometimes a few bugs make it through no matter what the testing process.

However, more cheats followed. Specifically the one that has ruined more games for more people is the care package glitch. With no one way to find out specifically who is actually performing the cheat, it is a major game changer the likes that has never been seen in multiplayer games before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Y6kuRHAqY

You can't tell who is performing it unless you see it for yourself, so reporting it is very difficult.

You might be able to tell by stats, but if the player is sharing all his care packages with his teammates, their stats go up and his do not. So, merely picking who is in first place doesn't really say who is cheating for certain. He could share some, and not others, and keep everyone relatively equal on the stats.

The other cheat is the unlimited emergency airdrop, which is also referenced on Youtube above. Four care packages at once, for as long as the match lasts.

The third cheat is the speed glitch when using certain care packages. This isn't the best video to show how fast you run, but it will do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQMNzTkw_vE

Notice at the 1:45 mark that not only does it make you run faster, you also are hunched over, making targeting you that much harder. Most users of this cheat will add commando pro and start the killing spree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxtXK6sYBcA

I am glad that IW is at least willing to address these issues with a patch. But after 90+ days of allowing cheaters to destroy the credibility of their game, stating that their QA process was superior to the previous testing methods, and much more, I have to admit I am done with this game. While I am a huge fan of IW and the Modern Warfare series, something has changed at Infinity Ward for the worse.

Apparently I am told a patch was pushed out today that addresses some but not all of these issues. For me, 3 months to fix obvious blatant cheating is too long for a game that sold 7 million copies its first day.

Modern Warfare 2 was widely successful because of the game play balance, graphics, pacing, and wealth of options from MW one (COD4). I won't be as naive for MW3. Infinity Ward is obviously a company that now has turned to making more of a profit from its fans at the expense of making quality games that are fair and balanced.

Lets say that even with all the various options chosen for MW2, night vision goggles, new Xboxes, etc, that there were "just" 60 a copy in revenue from MW2.

Before costs, sales of Modern Warfare 2 at that price accoung for 720,000,000. That's right, 720 million dollars. A company with that kind of revenue stream has no excuse to allow these types of cheats in their game, let alone have a quality control department that allowed them to slip through testing in the first place.