My Games Of The Year 2009 - Part 5

I’m revisiting some of my favourite games of the year. Here's part 4 and part 3 and  part 2 and part 1...

 
I admit that I am tired of multiplayer shooters. I’ve been playing them for nearly 15 years now. One look at the multiplayer of Modern Warfare 2 makes me sigh a little – for all the new bells and whistles it is essentially the same game I’ve been playing since Counter-Strike in 1999, and debatably is the same dodge and shoot mechanic from Space Invaders in 1978. Essentially I am an old cynic about multiplayer shooters, and Fat Princess made me love the genre all over again.

What it does is take away all the nonsense that I feel has bogged down the genre. No unlockables, no snipers, no obsessive hours working on my aim just to keep up, no griefing over the mics, and no individuals acting like pricks ruining the experience for the rest. This is a fun game that works great whether you’re working with your team, but also works fine if you just want to loosely feel part of a pitch battle in a fantasy land.

But that’s not to say that it is simple – what I love about it is that it emphasises group tactics, simply by taking away the usual diversions. If you want to win, you have to work together with the other players, and if they want to win they have to work with you. Workers need to collect the resources and build the improvements. Healers have to back up the others. Archers have to back up the warriors at range. It’s the raid group lifted out of WOW and put in a more manageable battlefield with clear objectives and a level playing field.

And in this setting, you could write books on the tactics for each map alone. It’s actually most closer to the Counter-Strike clan match than any multiplayer game since. Of course some matches are one-sided, some are unfocussed and frustrating, and that cannot be avoided in any multiplayer game. But when it works you get that same feeling of community with your fellow players. One of my best gaming experiences this year was with one other human player fending off the opposition so long that they had to kick us out of the game in frustration.

THE GAME’S LEGACY

I think Fat Princess successfully reclaims the basics of multiplayer gaming, and reminds us what was great about it in the first place. It shows that we don’t have to plough the same furrow for decades, but that with new settings, attractive graphics, and humour, that the stalest genres can be totally refreshed and given a whole new emphasis. 

I’m revisiting some of my favourite games of the year. Here's part 4 and part 3 and  part 2 and part 1...

 
I admit that I am tired of multiplayer shooters. I’ve been playing them for nearly 15 years now. One look at the multiplayer of Modern Warfare 2 makes me sigh a little – for all the new bells and whistles it is essentially the same game I’ve been playing since Counter-Strike in 1999, and debatably is the same dodge and shoot mechanic from Space Invaders in 1978. Essentially I am an old cynic about multiplayer shooters, and Fat Princess made me love the genre all over again.

What it does is take away all the nonsense that I feel has bogged down the genre. No unlockables, no snipers, no obsessive hours working on my aim just to keep up, no griefing over the mics, and no individuals acting like pricks ruining the experience for the rest. This is a fun game that works great whether you’re working with your team, but also works fine if you just want to loosely feel part of a pitch battle in a fantasy land.

But that’s not to say that it is simple – what I love about it is that it emphasises group tactics, simply by taking away the usual diversions. If you want to win, you have to work together with the other players, and if they want to win they have to work with you. Workers need to collect the resources and build the improvements. Healers have to back up the others. Archers have to back up the warriors at range. It’s the raid group lifted out of WOW and put in a more manageable battlefield with clear objectives and a level playing field.

And in this setting, you could write books on the tactics for each map alone. It’s actually most closer to the Counter-Strike clan match than any multiplayer game since. Of course some matches are one-sided, some are unfocussed and frustrating, and that cannot be avoided in any multiplayer game. But when it works you get that same feeling of community with your fellow players. One of my best gaming experiences this year was with one other human player fending off the opposition so long that they had to kick us out of the game in frustration.

THE GAME’S LEGACY

I think Fat Princess successfully reclaims the basics of multiplayer gaming, and reminds us what was great about it in the first place. It shows that we don’t have to plough the same furrow for decades, but that with new settings, attractive graphics, and humour, that the stalest genres can be totally refreshed and given a whole new emphasis.