September 2014 was the showdown between two new IPs in the fall 2014 game lineup, Destiny and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Due to unexpected good fortune, I own both games. In both games I "lose" often. How I lose has made the biggest difference on what disc gets loaded in my console.
Every single captain and war chief in Sauron's army has a list of combat oriented personality traits. Some are uglier than others but all are ugly.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its famed Nemesis system is a new experience. There isn't traditional respawning (except for a few in early story missions that are teaching players the controls) for a redo which makes the game a horror for perfectionists. Every death is meaningful which allows minion Orcs, lesser Ghuls, and Mordor's roaming monsters to "reset" the game by killing Talion, the protagonist. Talion's death changes the location of Uruk captains as the captains move about the world and gives Sauron's army the opportunity to resolve conflicts (duels!) and interact socially (feasting!) in order for the captains to become more powerful (or die). More powerful captains are harder to kill and dead captains opens spots for unknown Uruks that requires collecting intel.
I've died. Many times. Sometimes over my own mistake of alerting the nearby orcs with a bad button press which causes a not so small army to converge on my location as I search for intel or an artifact. My favorite death was in a battle with a captain and his surrounding minions. I was overwhelmed but strategizing to kill the captain and run away. Suddenly, a caragor, a vicious beast, appeared and dealt me the killing blow. The captain increased in power due to surviving our encounter and his status changed to state that he wished he had been the reason for my death. My death didn't set me back at the last checkpoint to try the encounter again but inserted me into a world that continued living after my demise. Yes, a few deaths left me frustrated. But every time I revived at a forge tower I reviewed the changes in Mordor and adjusted my tactics as I set out again.
A team of 3 made of one of each class is best. Without matchmaking it's difficult to get such a team.
Conversely, I haven't booted up Destiny since mid-September when the DDoS attacks by Lizard Squad shut down the servers and thus the online-only game. I've struggled with Destiny. The DDoS shutdown is memorable for me because my gaming time is limited, sometimes severely so. I had a precious hour to play but after multiple failed log-in attempts, troubleshooting, and locating the culprit of my inability to play 45 minutes of my 60 minutes were gone.
This isn't anger that Destiny is online only or against its content. Rather it's about my in-game deaths that determine how often I am willing to come back and how hard I am willing to work to overcome obstacles to access the game. All of Destiny's content is meant to played with others but I don't have real world friends to play with which makes matchmaking for most of the co-op content difficult. The bosses are bullet sponges requiring two others for a full fireteam or a minimum half hour on my own of hiding and shooting. I've tried to meet others. I've sent out in-game "Join My Fireteam" requests and joined clans out of game on Destiny's website. But finding likeminded players who are playing at the same time on my own is a major obstacle.
True to its MMO type gameplay, the content from levels 1-20 are considered a given with the focus on the endgame content for players level 20+. Getting to level 20 takes time but finding other players below level 20 feels impossible. Everywhere - the Tower (the social hub), players nearby in-game, and the Crucible - are all players level 20+ and me (an embarrassing level 9). Finding others most likely to team up with me is a long process and many "Join My Fireteam" requests go unanswered.
Fun impromptu experiences have come most from public events.
I have had good co-op experiences. Stumbling into public events is fun as impromptu teamwork of all nearby Guardians against a boss with extremely high hit points. After one public event as the Guardians departed the site I fumbled with the emote commands trying to catch any other player's attention and hit the "point" command. One Guardian stopped, turned around, and bowed to me. Or one morning a similarly leveled player teamed up with me and a level 20+ player joined in. We beat the story content in what felt like seconds and the 20+ player sat down during the mission completed countdown while us lower level Guardians searched for any dropped loot. These moments are quite fun but rare amidst longer time periods of feeling isolated in a game designed for social interactions.
Painful deaths against bosses that requires replaying lengthy sequences because I am on my own or finishing Crucible matches with zero kills just kept me from having fun. The new content, the Vault of Glass and the Iron Banner, are endgame content meant for 20+ level Guardians who have exhausted the base gameplay. With my limited gaming time, I can't simply speed run through the initial 20 levels. The Crucible may be more skill based than direct gear/stat transfers but without friends or at least friendly teammates I am not remotely competitive and that's not fun.
Having a bad Titanfall match? Just position a Titan with nuclear ejection in a dense firefight.
I considered that the Crucible is simply my failure at player versus player competitive multiplayer. After all, I enjoyed Call of Duty: Ghosts last fall but after the winter holidays the overall skill level of the PvP multiplayer was too high for me to compete or to have fun and I traded the game in. But Titanfall is a PvP multiplayer game that gives me the opportunity to play competitively at all times. For the first time in PvP multiplayer I became a 2nd generation Pilot (or Prestige-ed). When I started anew on the Xbox One I could revert to AI bot kills as I learned again how to play and then just stomp on a Pilot or two when my Titan fell. In Titanfall, I still die and respawn often but I have fun.
The in-game story of magic functioned as a checkpoint system that prevented redoing long segments of platforming.
A couple of months' ago during a particularly busy schedule I played 2008's Prince of Persia (the franchise entry with cell shaded art). The Prince was accompanied by Elika, a princess, who with her magic functioned as a seamless save system. The majority of the game is platforming and a missed jump resulting in a plummeting death leads to Elika saving the Prince by setting him back on the platform for another try. Respawns didn't remove the player from the world for a redo of a lengthy series of jumps based on the last checkpoint. Instead, the player remained in-game and simply retried the missed jump. The system required the player to successfully complete the platforming but not by replaying elongated jump sequences due to one missed leap which all occurred within the gameplay, no menus required.
In short, I don't want games made easier. But how consequences are dealt to the players impacts the enjoyment of the game. Games can require the player to master the game before progressing without resulting in raging frustration or feelings of pointlessness by repeating the exact same sequence over and over again or acting as cannon fodder until the fun is gone.
One unsung aspect of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is it's amazing decapitation animations that includes heads rolling down the terrain.
How a player comes by death is a major factor of how enjoyable the game is especially with the trend towards multiplayer whether co-op or PvP. Not that the kill/death ratio is the barometer of gaming fun but rather how those deaths happen.
I have Sunset Overdrive preordered which is single player and co-op multiplayer in a world run amuck by an energy drink that is full of such crazy mutants that PvP multiplayer can't be balanced. How sustainable and long term a game clearly meant to be shared insanity remains to be seen. In February 2015 Evolve is coming which rocked the Electronic Entertainment Expo last June and was originally expected to establish the next console generation this fall until its delay into next year. The competitive multiplayer allows a monster to evolve into more powerful forms while pursued relentlessly by four hunters. Whether Evolve's asymmetrical PvP provides a new experience that remains fun over time is an open question until its release.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor has begun the reinvention of deaths and save systems. The single player game gives players a living world while the multiplayer focused Destiny struggles with breathing life into its barren planets. Checkpoints and respawns may be a thing of the past as our gaming worlds become more alive and aware of what we've done and games may be more fun as a result.
What is your favorite multiplayer or save system?
Have you been slaying the Fallen and/or Orcs this past month? How are enjoying the slaughter?
Do you expect Evolve (or any other particular game) to change the gaming landscape?