Patryk Jaskowski Blog Assignment

Look at him ball.

[9ballin]

Team Fortress 2 and timeless design (until Valve let people abandon the artstyle)/

Some people have looked at TF2 and wondered "why, and more importantly, how is this game still alive). The simple answer is that it was made by Valve the, you know, Half-Life guys. The long answer on the other hand...

it's too long for this post, but I can certainly bullet-point an aspect of how this game has still trudged on for almost 17 years now. That being a consistent, and memorable, artstyle and well-thought-out art direction, with the greatest example of the simple ingenuity of the people behind bringing this game to life:

SILHOUETTES

Look at this image, intently I mean, if I were to put a random dude in you would recognise him, right? If were to put Goku Fortnite in you would immediately notice, and compared to each other you are not confusing these guys for anyone or anything else.

Even getting to the second part of the heading the second Valve let its grip on the artstyle loosen and crazier cosmetics started getting added, the very core of the character design is still there. Even when you see these things:

I at least hope you can recognise the class each of them is playing. Now of course thanks to this stuff being at least somewhat allowed (the more ridiculous cosmetics are still Halloween-restricted) this line has been muddled, but there are always other aspects to recognise classes by, like their overall stance or the weapons they use, and I feel any aspiring graphic designer can get an important lesson from analysing these character designs, so keep drawing, make me proud, and hopefully help me come out of my shell somewhat.

[9ballin]

BattleBit, again, but this time on artstyle.

I see that at least 5 people seem to enjoy my rambling, and I need this for an assignment, so I'm back to write about random things.

Today I want to write about that despite it being compared to Roblox BattleBit is a surprisingly nice-looking game. Like look at this screenshot:

Steam Community :: Screenshot :: Just look at it in all it's glory. Honestly though BattleBit is incredibly good. Buy this game.

Steam Community: BattleBit Remastered. Just look at it in all it's glory. Honestly though BattleBit is incredibly good. Buy this game.

The characters may look like they got stripped almost directly out of Phantom Forces but beyond that, the devs took care in ensuring that the environments look the best they could make it considering the graphic fidelity limitations they placed on themselves, from the ground below your feet, to the plants and trees, and the clusters of buildings dotting the landscape.

What I'm talking about is something that's becoming a common consensus around the internet, being that the quest for hyperrealistic graphics is a vain and conceited search for the nigh-impossible. Just look at my two favourite examples to use in these posts: the Armored Core and Devil May Cry Series.

I feel Devil May Cry 3 specifically stood the test of time surprisingly well despite its obvious age, as hopefully showcased here:

Steam Community :: Screenshot :: Devils Never Cry

Steam Community: Devil May Cry HD Collection. Devils Never Cry

I feel there is just something about these older games that has that charm that a modern game with hyperrealistic graphics never seem to be able to quite reach for me, and for anyone asking I don't count Armored Core VI as hyperrealistic. It has a realistic artstyle, but it's okay with using low-fidelity graphics to save space for better performance while still looking stunning with its style:

Steam Community :: Screenshot :: POV: you're getting your ass beat in the QT's

Steam Community: ARMORED CORE™ VI FIRES OF RUBICON™. POV: you're getting your ass beat in the QT's

So my message to everyone who reads this: I am going to unscrungle your cats if you don't abandon the never-ending quest for real-life 2 and return to late 20th century to early 2000s graphics.

[9ballin]

Why I hate the concept of Gacha gambling mechanics in games.

As far as I'm aware everyone and their parents are at least aware of Genshin Impact and other games with similar gambling mechanics like Fate: Grand Order and Raid: Shadow Legends.

You may read the title and think "Oh he hates gacha games." I can't blame you for thinking that, but that is incorrect, as some of the games with in my opinion incredibly captivating narratives, well-written characters and great gameplay, considering their platform of choice have the Gacha system. Genshin being made Mihoyo has a great writing team there to keep the game engaging, with most players managing to go from hating to being somewhat feral for Furina. Fate: G.O. from what I've watched is an RPG-style game that survived to this day simply due to the gameplay being engaging enough that the grind for your favourite history character turned waifu can be bearable.

I believe the issue comes from how the mobile game market is monetised: making people play a game far beyond any mental limit of average human beings to grind out currency to get a limited amount of shots at a character. One operator, servant or whatever out of rosters that tend to have hundreds of options, sometimes requiring additional items to be completed, most usually coming from limited-time events. So the marketing strategy can be summarised as such: starve the player of content and rush them to spend potentially ludicrous amounts of money to get anything substantial from the game.

It's an aspect of these games that I always disliked that made me leave mobile games. Hence I choose to enjoy these games by watching people tossing their money instead of me. To top it off games like Armored Core VI or Devil May Cry 5 exist and come as complete packages (hell, Vergil is even free DLC on PC and mods brought in the rest). I guess I'm trying to say that I'm disappointed this is the only stable source of income for these games.

[9ballin]

BattleBit: Remastered vs the state of monetisation in video games.

BattleBit: Remastered is an anomaly in the current landscape of video game monetisation, made as a love-letter to the Battlefield series as well as seemingly an attempt to fix everything wrong with the current games and provide a true to the core experience for any player to be able to experience a taste of the glory days of the series.

The gameplay principles are pretty much the same as most of the Battlefield games in the series: you have classes that have different roles, you are slotted into a squad you need to co-operate within huge battles up to 127 vs 127 people, but there is a glaring difference between this and most recent EA games in one key aspect: there is no store, everything is unlocked by playing the game well rather than buying anything, including weapon skins.

I personally think this is a great victory against predatory monetisation in video games, considering it still has roughly three times the player-count than Battlefield 2042 (if I remember correctly), and it's an interesting lesson on the true importance of monetising games in this day and age. That also includes the many other hit games being released by both indie and commercial developers with little to no microtransactions or quality-of-life purchases that are border-line required.

In the end I do believe that the Pandora's Box has already long been opened, but that doesn't mean we can mitigate the damage caused or try to reverse-engineer the effects to our advantage. And so, as my parting words all I will say is this: play Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon and the Devil May Cry series, and Furina Genshin Impact is a good character and one of the best goobers to bless our generation.

[9ballin]

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is rad (repost)

Armored Core VI is a sudden return to form for a franchise that hasn’t been seen in the mainstream in a long time (roughly 15 years), announced to the surprise of everyone in the gaming community.

The general gist of the game is that you are an augmented mercenary who had their brain basically ‘fried’ by their augments, sold to what basically is the slave market and bought by a man named Walter to infiltrate the planet Rubicon 1 for a valuable resource named Coral. To do so you need to take flight in an advanced weapon system called an Armored Core (woah title drop) in order to infiltrate the conflict brewing between corporations and the indigenous population of the planet as a hired mercenary.

The core gameplay loop is generally smooth and satisfying, and goes as such: do missions, get credits, buy parts, make a new robot, do more missions, repeat. The game encourages experimentation at all times: whether it be changing your loadout or switching up the way you play in the middle of a mission to adapt to new scenarios you are required to stay on your toes, and as far as the series is concerned the item economy has been the most lax out of all the games highlighting the dev’s wishes for the players to play around with the parts they were given.

Additional notes: the game requires a minimum of 3 to 4 playthroughs to get full completion, each one taking me very roughly 3 to 5 days, has online multiplayer to get your shit rocked by people who have been playing the series day one and has one of the most in-depth customization systems in a video game in a long time, including an in-game decal editor for all your decal needs.

Overall: 9/10 should have gotten more game award nominations and I nominated it for almost every category in the Steam Awards

[9ballin]

Armored Core 6, and the art of the tutorial (repost)

For anyone not aware Armored Core 6 is From Software’s newest release and a return to one of their oldest IPs, now spanning 16 games. The game itself is an action combat mecha game centered on building and piloting an Armored Core (AC) (10-meter-tall robot) to complete missions, but I wish to talk about the one mission where you cannot do that: the tutorial. 

The main tutorial section takes up the first half of the level and does all the basic things of introducing the movement and controls using the level design and popups to try to ensure that the player gets the intended lessons. The sandbox section takes up the next half of the level, it gives three waypoints which can be approached from any order to let the player get further get used to the movement of your AC. Finally, The Great Filter, the first boss you fight and one that quickly became infamous within the player base as a major roadblock for new arrivals. The enemy is quite simple: an incredibly large helicopter with twin gatling guns and explosive ordinance of varying degrees of destructiveness, only significant weakness being a blind spot underneath the craft which can be used to wail on it mostly undisturbed until it moves. 

It may sound simple on paper but here is the catch: first, you have to figure this all out for yourself (or search up a guide), second is that you are a “fast as fuck boi”, with 3 in this case distinct weapons that can all be in theory be used near simultaneously which proved to be overwhelming for some. 

But personally, I wish to praise Fromsoft for their continued confidence in challenging the player, which at least to me seems to be less common nowadays.