Friday 12 January, 2007

The multiplayer part of 007 Nightfire also very solid, meaning that is a pretty good game that engages the player but it has no stand out features to single it out from other multiplayer, first person shooters. The game does deserve some praise, though. It has a few interesting weapons (the one that I really liked was the remote controlled rocket launcher) and it also incorporated the the possibility of non-player bots into the multiplayer game in case the player has neither online capabilities nor a plethora of friends. This makes the multiplayer game a little more interesting, but because the bots have the military acumen of a three month old gerbil victory is assured to one of the human players. Overall a good multiplayer experience but nowhere near as fun as I remembered Golden Eye being(Where are the proximity mines?).

Well, Golden Eye is always going to be a hell of a game to compete with. If I might be so brave, I'd also argue as far as bond goes it's a tough movie to compete with as well.

As for the bots. I'm going to be a bit of an ass and ask: How would you design them to make them better opponents? Bots and AI are always such a tricky topic because what people want is something that acts like a human being...and simulating 5-40 human brains isn't exactly something computers can really do...for the next few centuries anyway.

But, if you were designing some FPS bots, how would you do it? Where would you start? What would be the most important things to incorporate? How would you approach the questions of pathfinding, or target aquisition an retention? How omniscient would the bots be of the level's game state?