Gaming Log - April 21st, 2008
Wow, I’ve been playing some serious variety during the last week:
I got into GTA San Andreas Multiplayer, a mod created for the PC version that turns SA into a multiplayer game (SA:MP as it’s known in the community). After listening to last weeks 1UP Yours podcast (podtrac beware!), Shawn Elliott’s recommendation to check it out led me to do just that. SA:MP is the most impressive 3rd-party mod I’ve ever seen. It’s got pretty impressive network performance, on nearly every server I joined. You can get anywhere up to 200 people in a game at once. During my hundreds of hours with the past GTA titles, I’ve always wondered what this looks like… now I know. And just like any typical online PC game, there are hundreds of servers run by admins with a pool of thousands of players at any given time. Servers contain an enormous range of game types, including deathmatch, racing, stunts, minigames, and the most ridiculous: role playing. People run entire RPG servers, and they’re some of the most popular ones. The admins are the cops, people role play taxi drivers, prostitutes, ANYTHING. Pretty insane. Rockstar could definitely learn something from what’s going on with SA:MP. Just go watch some Youtube clips of gameplay to get a good picture of what this is all about.
After my previous post, I was inspired to reinstall the original Fallout. Not much to be said here, as I’m only about an hour in. I’ve recruited Dogmeat to hang out with me and completed a few minor quests in Shady Sands and Junktown.
Burnout Paradise has been in my 360 for over a week now (except for a brief stint with Bully: Scholarship edition, which I’ll get to in a minute). This game has so much potential it’s ridiculous. With Criterion’s upcoming updates, this game seriously will become the “driving MMO.” I mean, if they added a couple more islands, Crash mode, more cars, bikes and planes, new game types, car customization, this game would be the only place you need to go to get an arcade-style driving experience. Period. There’d still be room for the technical sim driving games like Forza and Gran Turismo, but the arcade driving game market would belong to Criterion. They’ll become the Blizzard of online racing.
Now Bully is a game I need to spend some quality time with. I only played an hour or so into it, but I feel like I want to give it a real commitment this weekend. I hadn’t played anything by Rockstar since San Andreas, and the maturation of their open-world game design from that to Bully is incredible. Bodes well for GTA IV next week.
Tags: bully, burnout paradise, criterion, Fallout, interplay, Rockstar Games, sa:mp
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I don’t know how I missed the multiplayer mod for San Andreas, but I’m glad you pointed me to it. Wow. I agree it’s one of the most impressive player-created mods I’ve ever seen. I’ve only dipped into it a bit, but enough to see the enormous open-ended role-playing opportunities that are possible. Thanks for the heads-up!
By the way, I was initially turned off by Burnout Paradise after a few hours of play, but now that I see what Criterion is doing with this game and where they’re clearly taking it, I’m significantly more interested. As you say, the potential is unlimited.
Thanks, also, for the link to my RPG syllabus project. Much appreciated.