Saying “If you like Call of Duty 4, then you’ll love Modern Warfare 2” is a little redundant. In fact saying anything about Modern Warfare 2 is fairly redundant seeing as it is probably the most talked about game at the moment. Rather than jump on the bandwagon of a straight review, I’ll talk more about the specifics, if you want a more general review then head over to somewhere like Gamespot where people are paid to spend hours glued to the screen.
First up I’d like to talk about Special Ops. Special Ops adds a whole new dimension to the game. If there was anything wrong with Call of Duty 4 then it would have to be the unbelievably short campaign, and Modern Warfare 2 continues this trend. That said, the campaign is anything but bad. I would guess that the reason for the length would be the amount of time they took up paying attention to each detail because just like CoD4, each level is brilliantly crafted and designed to be immersive. The voice acting is great, the dialogue isn’t cheesy, the story is engaging and it retains that filmlike quality. But it eventually ends, which is where Special Ops comes in. Whilst Special Ops was considered more an extra, I see it as where the game really is. Special Ops contains a load of extra missions for you to complete on your own or with a friend and it really adds to the replayability factor of the game, making it less of a game played only for its multiplayer value.
Within Special Ops there are a variety of game modes. One of which stretches the whole FPS genre slightly with a race. Racing snowmobiles to be exact, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. It is by no means a polished competitor to specialised racing games, rather it is a simple matter of accelerate, brake and reverse. It is more akin to go-kart racing that racing racing. Which in my opinion where the fun really is. Other modes involve the simple task of releasing that murderer we all have within us and just killing wave after wave of enemies. Or sneaking past enemy lines without being detected. And of course the dreaded escort missions. Why any developer thinks escort missions are a good idea is completely beyond me, they are freaking irritating.
As for general gameplay, several tweaks have been made to the overall feel of combat. A graphically realistic yet irritating and scientifically unsound watered down blood effect is used when hurt, replacing the old red around the sides look of CoD4 and 5. As Sandmonkey said at the time “Why would you have blood on your eyes?”, a good question, and why does it fade? Personally, I find it very annoying as it distorts your field of view, which makes it very difficult when surrounded on a hard level when your vision is constantly blurred. On a good note, Last Stand has been replaced with Final Stand, which varies from gametype to gametype. In Co-op, you first collapse and you are given a pistol to shoot bad guys whilst crawling around. This lasts until you’re shot again, at which time you lose the pistol and you crawl around very slowly waiting to be revived by your partner. You cannot die in Special Ops unless both participants are in final stand or the one in final stand is left for two minutes to bleed on the ground. In head-to-head game types final stand involves collapsing and crawling as usual, but you can use your primary weapon to fend off attackers, albeit with very slow aiming. If you survive in this state for a certain amount of time, you just get back up and resume fighting rather than dying. I think this is a good upgrade. The addition of crawling and the use of a weapon other than a pistol that you probably didn’t have two seconds ago actually makes the last stand make more sense, at least to me anyway.
If you have a (real) console or a PC then you would be stupid to buy another game over this one. If you are a PC user you should know about the lack of dedicated servers which means you will be the victims of some really really painful connections. Oh and you’re capped at 8 vs 8, which is nice. But still, the rest makes it worth it.
Sandmonkey is back! I bet you missed me. Yes you. Anyway, Renegade and I have finished exams now so we should be posting here more regularly.
So I've been staying at friend's place for the last few days and we have been playing co-op Borderlands. I did a preview of this game a few months ago and mentioned that I was a bit disappointed that the developers planned to make it cell shaded. After playing the game I can say that my opinion on it is the same and I think that cell shading looks like a cheap way to get away with being too lazy to actually develop decent graphics. Although I know many people don't mind too much about the quality of graphics and some even like cell shaded graphics. Just not me.
Graphics aside the game is a solid FPS with well implemented RPG elements. And there are very few bugs that we encountered while playing the game. Although there was one point where we were looking for an object to complete the mission, the object turned out to be nowhere near the marking on the map.
After playing the game for a while you are given a vehicle that you can use to get places a lot more quickly. Unfortunately it can be difficult to drive and can get stuck between objects quite easily.
The levelling system is fair and balanced. So there is not too much to comment on here. Killing people = XP = upgrades. Missions = money = new equipment. Pretty simple. The upgrades differ depending on what class you choose to go as (soldier, siren, hunter & berserker). The equipment you buy includes: weapons, ammo & shields. You can also pick up equipment from dead enemies.
If you finish doing missions and stuff then invite a friend over. The characters can jump so high that playing leapfrog with a friend could be considered an "exclusive additional feature". And if your friend is too n00bish and doesn't want to play leapfrog, you have the ability to challenge your teammate to a duel in which you fight each other one to one. Then you slaughter them and force them to play leapfrog.
Good afternoon to all four of you that are still with us after around two weeks of no posting. I apologise, but life is being nasty and busy again, taking us away from our beloved computers and internet. Its not going to get too much easier, my posts will be fairly erratic for the next couple of months, and we’re not likely to see Sandmonkey again this side of December. I’ll try and keep a minimum of a post a week up just so the website doesn’t completely die, but come December we both should be back up to our usual rants about Apple and things that generally annoy.
Speaking of Apple. This week marks the launch of the iPod Touch 3G and iTunes 9. For both of these I have to wonder why they bothered. The iPod Touch 3G is apparently a bit faster than the 2G, other than that it is essentially the same thing. I think Apple is taking the gaming angle a bit more seriously now, but other than that I haven’t heard of a newsworthy difference. My first reaction was to expect a camera, but they dashed that illusion too. In a way I’m glad that my iPod hasn’t been superseded by something amazingly better, but I’m sure there are people who have gone out and bought their iPod Touch replacement, being the dogmatic Apple fanboys that they are.
iTunes 9, yet again, why did they bother? If you haven’t had the chance to download and install this yet, don’t worry, you’re not missing anything. Basically this is iTunes 8 with a slightly lighter glossier GUI. There are a few changes in the syncing process and they made the iTunes Store look uglier. And there is apparently social networking integration, because who needs web browsers right? Who doesn’t want to use iTunes to update Facebook and Twitter with the song they’ve just bought? Other than that, this is a pretty poor excuse for an entirely new version number.
And on to the good news.
I got a chance to download the Lost Planet 2 demo. I played it, and I should inform you that the game oozes awesomeness. Not your average awesomeness, but I’m talking thick creamy awesomeness. To give a comparison, lets cast our minds back to the river of slime in Ghostbusters 2. Sort of like that form of awesomeness. Its a step above the bog standard liquid awesomeness that oozes from stuff like i7s and giant subwoofers, yet one step below the gaseous awesomeness that Sandmonkey and I exhale. It’s roughly in the middle there.
Just quickly, I should give a quick rundown of the series. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition was one of the first games to utilise the next-gen graphics on the Xbox 360 and on the PC. It was fairly revolutionary but I think it was also quite underrated. Its a third person shooter set on a far off freezing cold colonised planet inhabited by a violent insectoid species called the Akrid, who don’t like humans, especially as we keep killing them and harvesting them for thermal energy (I call it “orange stuff”) to power our cities and weapons. The signature tools of the game are the grappler, allowing you to climb up steep hills, and the various types of Vital Suits (VS), giant mechanised suits that allow you to crush gratuitous amounts of face.
This next instalment is set on the same planet after a fairly radical climate change. We say goodbye to the arctic temperatures of the first game and say hello to the temperate jungles of the new game. However, the Akrid are still here, as you realise fairly quickly in the demo as you are confronted with a giant (really giant) creature that sees you as a really tasty piece of popcorn with a gun. Then you realise your objective is to kill this creature. Which is a lot more fun that you’d think. If you think it you can pretty much do it in this game. You can shoot at its legs repeatedly to decapitate it. You can use the grappler to try and climb on to it, where you can try and stay on its back whilst you shoot its head from behind (try being the key word, harder than it sounds). You can pick up big rocket launchers and attach it to Vital Suits which you can then use them to blow limbs off that thing. And finally my favourite is you can climb in to its mouth and travel inside of it. If you can survive the currents and the little Akrid creatures inside of him, then you can start killing the creature from the inside before being…well…excreted.
Other than amazing open-ended gameplay, the game has also embraced the magic of online co-op for both the Xbox 360 and the PC. Basically this means you can team up with a bunch of friends to take this thing down. That sounds so much more fun, but I’m stuck on my Silver Live Membership at the moment and am being denied my god-given right to online play.
Anyhow, that game is a definite “buy” on my list so I’m starting to save for it. If you haven’t played the demo yet, I recommend it. The PC demo is coming out soon…ish.
So that’s all for today. Please share your experiences with the game or any of Apple’s super-fun products below, I’ll do my best to keep up with posting over the coming months.
A solid gold Xbox 360 faceplate: $44,000 + $500 for the Xbox 360 Elite
A diamond crusted Apple iPhone: $40,000 + $70 a month for two years
A diamond covered 16GB USB stick: $18,000 multiplied by however many times it breaks
The look on your friends face when he realises what an over pretentious, snobby douchebag you are: Priceless…?
These things, along with hundreds of other ridiculous gadgets, including the gold plated, diamond encrusted PSP and the carbon fibre mouse mat (in case your heavy gold mouse breaks normal mouse mats), are probably the best way to open up and tell the world that you are a self-obsessed, snobbish idiot who has a brain cell count equivalent to that of a rabid chipmunk.
I am finding it difficult to understand the mentality of those who want buy one of these ridiculously unnecessary gadgets. Sure, I don’t have the kind of money to even contemplate buying one of these, but even if I did I can think of a lot better ways to use that money. For instance, rather than enlarge my social ego and “impress” people with my ability to waste vast amounts of cash, I could have donated the same amount of money to a worthy cause. If I was less compassionate, I could have used the money that I would normally so willingly throw away to invest in a flourishing corporation and get a larger return. Hell, I could have burnt the money in a futile attempt to combat inflation and it would still have made a bigger impact to society than fitting out my Xbox with jewellery.
When your phone or games console costs more than a decent car or a hospital life support machine, there is something seriously wrong with your priorities.
I turned on my Xbox 360 yesterday to find a new update to Xbox Live. I was quite curious to what this could be. Would it be bug fixes? Or maybe a new feature? Well it turned out to the latter, as many of you gamers will know by now. Welcome world…to the avatar marketplace.
Yes. The day has finally come. You can now dress up your avatar in a variety of game-related clothes available to download instantaneously. Congratulations Microsoft, you’ve introduced another feature that is specifically designed to waste people’s money. You found a weakness in your consumer market and you struck, multiple times until you managed to make a big enough dent to dig down and set up a money mine.
This weakness of course is the millions of people who think buying a Bioshock 2 t-shirt for their avatar is a great idea. I don’t know what goes through these people’s heads.
“I know! I’m going to pay Microsoft and 2K Games for the right to advertise their console and game on my profile!”
I don’t blame Microsoft too much. They’re a business, they’re out to make money, and they’re very good at it. I blame the general public for letting this happen. Do you people realise that your strange cravings to enlarge your e-penis by buying a lightsaber for your avatar has made Microsoft work on this useless rubbish rather than something else worthwhile? The only time I ever see my avatar is when I turn on my Xbox, and the only time I see anyone else's avatar is when I look at my friends list. Why would you blow 400MP on a Splinter Cell themed costume that hardly anyone looks at or even cares about?
As I speak, thousands of costumes are being downloaded a second, proving to Gates and Ballmer that they did the right thing. That is the wrong message to be giving. Stop being satisfied with half a year of wasted development on this. If you raise your expectations of your console, then the companies will have to keep up by developing things to exceed them. Project Natal is a great example of that. Xbox 360 gamers want something Wii-like, but not a Wii. Microsoft announced Natal, the first ever commercial full body motion capture camera. But if all you want is to pay through the nose to play dress-up with a digital doll, then that’s all they’ll give you.
Whilst trawling the internet for something to write about today, I came across something that filled me with an unusual mix of nostalgia and excitement. News of Tropico 3.
Tropico is not a particularly well known game series, so for those unfamiliar I will attempt to fill you in on the background. Tropico is a government simulator, a bit like Sim City however with one fundamental twist: Instead of being a democratic mayor with freakish God-like powers, you are ‘El Presidente’, a corrupt ruthless dictator of a tropical island nation. Whilst I use words like “corrupt” and “ruthless”, I should stress that these are not predefined at the beginning at the game, its just the way that everyone plays it.
My memories of Tropico include those of creating my island nation with the best of intentions. My goal was to create an island paradise, where everyone would live in a dreamlike utopia. It would be a wonderful place, where people of all backgrounds and beliefs would live in harmony, and tourists would come far and wide to gasp at it’s splendour.
Two hours in to the game I distinctly remember demolishing a square kilometre of shanty town to make way for a new palace to be built in my honour. I raised a few taxes so I could afford a coal power plant to provide electricity to my new barracks. I had a few uprisings, but nothing a little martial law and 5pm curfew wouldn’t fix. I had run out of prison cells for all the revolutionaries and protesters, so I was forced to systematically execute the known registered communists on grounds of ‘treason’. After around the third hour I realised I had made too many enemies. The new 5-star hotel I built on top of some slums may have had something to do with it. I quickly raided the treasury and secured it all in an offshore bank account whilst my presidential aide found the dinghy. We rowed away from the island before the solid gold statue of me in the courtyard was torn down by rebels.
It is by no stretch of the definition a game that should be taken seriously. It is not like Sim City where you try to and make the perfect haven. It is a game where you extort, exploit and embezzle until you have made your own personal wealth at the expense of the poor hapless islanders. If there were more games like this, then people like Mugabe may have stayed indoors playing video games rather than screw up entire countries. Another reason why games are essential for the strive toward world peace.
Anyhow, I never played Tropico 2. Apparently it was about pirates, which means it must have been good. Tropico 3 goes back to its roots in the original with our good friend El Presidente, so its all the fun with an new enhanced 3D engine.
Its set to be released in September on the PC and surprisingly for the Xbox 360. Can’t wait to see how this turns out.
The new Wolfenstein is coming up soon in about seven days. Whilst I’ve never played any of the older games, this game looks like it could be interesting. It looks a bit cheesy, which is brilliant. I wholeheartedly believe that games should not be taken seriously, especially with a ridiculous storyline about Nazi zombies.
Yep. Nazi zombies. Ubersoldier style. Whilst not terribly brilliant at level design and original gameplay, the Doom and Quake series also developed by id Software have always been known for the fun factor, however the series have sort of died out towards the present. Hence id’s attempt at a comeback with ‘Rage’ some time in the future. It’s been co-developed with Raven Software, which is a good sign in a way. Some of my favourite games were developed by Raven with the Quake 3 engine, however there is one thing that is putting me off this whole concept. My experiences with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I could write an entire article on the flaws of that game, and I hope to god that they have fixed it somehow for the multiplayer part of Wolfenstein.
Fingers crossed. I’m preparing for a few mixed reviews.
It’s been a while since we did an article on a game so:
Borderlands is an upcoming science fiction - first person shooter for PC, Xbox360 and PS3 (which is also open world). The game is being developed by Gearbox and will contain RPG elements and recent images show the game will be cell shaded. The game is due to be released in October of this year.
I have to say that the original trailer looked quite interesting, but since realizing that the game was cell shaded, I haven’t been as keen on this game. I know many people are content and even like that type of graphical style but it just isn’t for me. You can see the original trailer below:
The story takes place on the planet Pandora which is situated at the edge of the galaxy. Colonists travel there in search of precious recourses. The travels learn very quickly that the planet does not offer much and those who have any money leave the planet, but those who don’t have any money are left on the planet. While you are tasked with exploring ancient alien ruins in search for a mystical artefact. The game has four playable characters each with specialized skills, abilities and back stories. As the game progresses you are able to upgrade their stats.
One of the biggest selling points for this game is its randomization engine. The randomization works much the same as Diablo’s level generator except that it works for weapons. The game provides you with millions of different guns ranging from rifles that shoot rockets to pistols that act as sniper rifles.
Since I finally got my sorry excuse for a computer working today, I’ve been putting off writing this article. The main reason for that is I bought Prototype yesterday, and have been playing it non-stop. So all you people reading this should feel very lucky that I decided to halt my gaming-fest for ten minutes in order to appease you.
I’ll start by saying that Prototype is “balls-to-the-wall” awesome. A compliment I do not award lightly, even in light of such amazingness. As you may have read in my previous articles on the various trailers and gameplay videos, Prototype is an open-world third person game where you play Alex Mercer, a guy who woke up in a morgue just in time for his own autopsy. As he rushes out in shock, he realises that everyone wants to kill him. And to top it all off, he seems to have more super powers than any Marvel superhero could dream of. But why does everyone want to kill him? Why has he got superpowers? Oh, we don’t know, because he has amnesia. Didn’t see that coming, did you.
The game centres around him trying to get to the bottom of who he is, what he is, and who is responsible for his own augmentation, and the increasing cases of “zombification” across the city. What I quite like about the mystery is what the game calls ‘The Web of Intrigue’. One of your powers is to consume people, whether it be pedestrians or the military. Consuming a person builds up your health, and it allows you to shapeshift and assume their identity. But you can also access the memories of the people you consume, and each memory you find that relates to you is pieced together in an interface called the Web of Intrigue. Fragments of seemingly unrelated memories that you can watch over and over again to try and piece the puzzle together.
But of course, the real fun begins on the streets. Where you literally rip people in to pieces with your awesomeness. Your awesomeness manifests itself in the form of fricking huge claws, which you use to proclaim superiority across the land. What I also like is what the game calls the “shield”. I think that is pretty boring name though. I call it “battering ram”. Because its pretty useless as a shield, but very effective in letting you sprint down a road at 200kmph, and just ram through anyone and anything. All you see is a cloud of death and destruction in front of you whilst you plough forward through a mangled gory mess of the remains of bodies and cars.
If you have played Spiderman 2 or Ultimate Spiderman, you know how awesome they were. And how revolutionary. This is the same. Except this time you have so many more weapons, vehicles and powers at your disposal. And also, you can slice those annoying pedestrians that call out your name in two. Its like a cross between Spiderman 2 and Grand Theft Auto.
I declare the graphics “ok yet irrelevant”. In this case the gameplay makes up for the crappy textures and the simplistic and repetitive building design. It also makes up for the lack of character variation. Whilst a street of 200 civilians has around five character models copied over and over, and every single high ranking officer you have to consume looks the same, the game is so fast paced and fun that you tend to ignore petty details like that. And trust me, if I can overlook the low-end graphical capabilities, you can too.
I haven’t quite finished it yet. But my guesses are on whoever designed his clothes being behind it all. I mean, not only do his clothes morph with him, but he never changes them. A whole fricking 18 days without changing his goddamn clothes. Those machines that can detect you when you are disguised probably work on the basis that the smelliest object in a mile radius must be our guy. To top it all off, I don’t understand why they haven’t picked up on the fast that his hood seems to be fused to his skull.
Picture this. Nintendo turn up to E3 with the Wii Motion Plus. They look around a sneer. They think they’re way ahead of the times. They think they have something revolutionary to tell the world about. They have motion control. Now picture their faces when Microsoft and Sony turn up with their own innovations. Innovations that make the Wii look like EyeToy. Innovations that blow your freaking mind.
Microsoft’s “Project Natal”, aside from its awful name, is phenomenal. This is the one that stuck in my mind. Whilst Sony’s was very interesting and looked like great fun, we’ve seen the likes of it before. With gyroscopic motion sensing controllers. Project Natal is different, there is no controller. Think PlayStation EyeToy combined with the Wii motion sensing.
This thing has full body motion capture. Your 3D avatar literally mimics every move you make, whether it be your head, arm or leg. You can actually be the character on screen.
This thing has voice recognition. Whilst I normally have to put on an American accent for any voice recognition to work, voice recognition is a great idea for consoles. Simple commands can be easily recognised, as can be seen in Windows and games like Tom Clancy’s EndWar.
This thing has facial recognition. Yes, you heard it right. It will sign in to Xbox Live depending on who sits down in front of the console. The only problem I foresee is families with identical twins. Or in 2012 when clones take over the world.
This thing is awesome. Yes, awesome. It is officially awesome. Microsoft certified awesome. This thing is piss-yourself awesome. I am talking more awesome than the wonderful invention of foot showers on the beach. More awesome than a guest appearance of Steve Jobs during the target practice tutorial of Far Cry 3. This is so fricking awesome, it even mentions Chuck Norris in the advert. It is THAT good!
I actually believe this may be revolutionary. Not just in games consoles, but in the computing field and in the entertainment industry. And the fact that this is all done using just a little camera, is incredible.
Here is the Microsoft advert. It is cheesy as always. Microsoft should learn how to make a good advertisement. But everything seen in it is not fake, head over the GameTrailers where they have a load of tech demos of it in action. (But don’t pay attention to the Lionhead tech demo. That's just Peter Moleneux up to his old lying tricks again)
Definitely watch this. These are the tech demos that they showed at E3, and I do have a favourite line, “This isn’t a game where you end up on the sofa just using some preset waggle commands” *oh snap says the audience*
As many of you are already aware, I am eagerly awaiting this game. Almost as much as the Halo fanboys anxiously awaited Halo 3. New footage at the E3 presentation doesn’t show anything particularly new. The footage starts off with the main character climbing up a wall of ice and into an enemy base. Halfway up the character reaches a platform and we see that his ice-picks can be used as weapons, suggestive that like Left 4 Dead, Modern Warfare will have melee weapons.
The presentation also shows how the on screen radar has been moved to the weapon for more realism, which is always good. Although the best part of the presentation was the last half. The awesome part where you get to drive vehicles and shoot. Then again, saying all that, I’ve got to that too me the game doesn’t look all too different from the first instalment. This isn’t a bad thing in anyway considering how epic the first instalment was. Anyway, watch the presentation and make your own mind up.
Well, considering that the first Left 4 Dead contained certain elements of suck. The bar isn’t set very high for improvement.
Lots of people liked the game. That of course is completely understandable if you:
1. Enjoy doing mundane repetitive things 2. Enjoy being gangbanged by zombies 3. Enjoy getting stuck in a team with some idiot who keeps wasting ammo on your exposed behind 4. Enjoy Using your general awesomeness and skills with the shotgun to achieve OVER 9000 gory headshots
I only apply for the fourth one, and 1 out of 4 doesn’t make me one of the faithful. So I give the game a fat 5/10. This game is irrefutable proof that it is actually humanly possible to screw up a game centering around a zombie apocalypse. I don’t know how you did it Valve, but you did it. Congratulations. You get the official “Unconventional Updates Game of the Suck Award”. Yeah, you made a game that is almost as boring and useless as Spore. A game that forces to you shoot police cars to get any excitement, only to be followed with regret when you are surrounded and placed in a very awkward position with a hundred zombies while Bill takes photos.
Now go do something useful, like make a new 5 hour version of the Portal campaign. And don’t you dare think about releasing the new Half Life in the meantime. I’m watching you.
Anyway, the new Left 4 Dead 2 is being released at some point. I would look the date up, but I’m sure it says in the trailer. The only endearing feature I can think of is the introduction of melee objects. Namely, chainsaws and axes. Through my experience of the crowbar in Half Life 2, I can say categorically that I hate it. And I hope to God that the melee system in this source game is better than Freeman’s trusty stick of suck.
Anyway, here you are. Its a pretty good trailer. But then again…does anything live up to the trailer nowadays? I think game developers should just release trailers instead of games. They end up being better, and since they don’t have any gameplay in them any more then they wont even need to make a game first.
I’ve already made a post about this, but there’s no harm in covering the E3 trailer. Which by the way was pretty awesome. Whilst this isn’t set in the crusades, and more in my least favourite period of history, the idea of more technology at your disposal (like a wrist gun – see trailer) is pretty awesome. From some concept art I can see that you may be able to use Da Vinci’s famous flying machine prototype.
The trailer shows some continuity at the end (other than the Altair clone and wrist-blade), where the assassinated noble is revealed to be wearing a templar necklace. Whilst it would be more at home in the Crusades and seems a bit out of place in 16th Century Venice, this does make sense in Assassin’s Creed lore. The graphics seem almost identical to the cut scene at the beginning of the original game, it makes me wonder how much will have changed in this latest instalment. I’m hoping a whole new variety of features and abilities will surface.
Here’s the trailer. This is one that deserves some HD time.
After the first Crysis went all Halo 2 on us at the end, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that their would be a sequel. In fact, there was more thought put in to what kind of monster super computer would be capable of taming the next instalment than what it would be about. Well never fear, thanks to the CryENGINE 3, computers that couldn’t even run Crysis Warhead can run Crysis 2 well. However I still doubt it will work on my computer, so its even better news that the game is also debuting on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. So just to run that by you again. Crysis 2 is coming out, and you wont need a fire extinguisher within arms reach, with no graphics deprivation.
I must say I really hate teaser trailers. I also hate the new trend by which a trailer is completely prerendered and shows no gameplay footage whatsoever. The trailer doesn’t do much to promote Crysis 2 to me, but my knowledge of the last two games is enough to sustain my hype. Crysis was a revolutionary game in both the graphics and physics department, and now that other games have almost caught up, I’d like to see what Crytek has up its sleeves this time round.
I played the entire demo of Fear 2 when it came out and thought it was pretty good. I would have bought the game as well if it wasn’t for my lack of funds. But since renting the game out and playing a few hours of it, I’ve changed my opinion and decided that its better of that I didn’t buy it. If you have played the original Fear or even Fear 2 then you will know that it’s an FPS based around about trying to scare some people and a some mentally retarded girl who wants to rape you. No, I’m being serious. Anyway as far as scary goes, being raped in-game by a crazy anorexic telepath rates pretty high (well for me anyway).
When playing through the demo, you are led to believe that you are playing through a level in the game. WRONG. I always wondered why the demo seemed a bit disjointed. First you start off in a ruined city, the next minute you’re in a school, followed by subways, then you’re outside again, and before long you’re in a giant exoskeleton robotic combat suit. Well, after playing the actual game for a while I figured out that the demo is in fact a lie. They took the best bits from the game and stuck them together. Playing through the full version of the game, the only bits that were any good were the bits I had already played in the demo. In essence, if you’ve played the demo, you’ve played the game.
In other news, the developers had an odd habit of sticking ‘combat’ onto the name of every gun. For example you could have the ‘combat shotgun’ or the ‘combat pistol’. I can only assume they did this with the assumption that stupid people wouldn’t realize that there is no such thing as a peace shotgun. Or perhaps the developers didn’t realize that shotguns are generally used for combat.
I loved the first Assassin’s Creed game. Though repetitive, it was a great open world game that really makes you feel like an assassin. There is something oddly satisfying about climbing up to the top of a cathedral, flinging yourself with amazing precision in to a cart full of hay, climbing out and subsequently killing the guy that shouted out quite rudely “What is that madman doing?”.
The original game was set in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade. You, as the disgraced assassin Altair,are given the opportunity to reclaim your honour by carrying out assassination missions for your master Al Mualim. You travel to three of the most important cities in the Holy Land, Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre. Each one under the control of the three religions at war, the Jews, the Muslims and the Christians. Your purpose is to kill influential people on each side in an attempt to stop the Crusades. As you kill more leaders and you hear their story the plot thickens, and that is where I shall cry *SPOILER ALERT*. Anyhow, my point is to people who haven’t played the game, this game was awesome. To people who have played the game, you already know.
As some of you will also know, Assassin’s Creed 2 is set to emerge sometime before the end of the year. Set in the Italian Renaissance, Altair’s ancestor carries on the legacy. Its currently in development by the Ubisoft Montreal team, which both fills me with excitement and disappointment. I would much rather it was set in Africa rather than Italy, and as a First Person Shooter. Keep the storyline though, war-torn nations and I’ve got to kill the leaders of each side. In fact, how about you make Far Cry 3 first?
Whilst Assassin’s Creed was brilliant, I’m not sure I need a sequel just yet. I could wait a while until they get on with other sequels on the drawing board, like Far Cry 3 and the next Rainbow Six game. The team is responsible for some of my favourite games and an Assassin’s Creed 2 is not particularly high on my priorities. Still, this team made the original, as well as Far Cry 2 and Rainbow Six Vegas, so at least the game will be made well.
I watched the Modern Warfare II trailer again today. And then I watched it again. And I thought about how awesome Call of Duty 4 was, and since Infinity Ward are doing it again this year there is a big chance this will be even more awesome. But there it one problem. I think they may have caught Bungie-itus.
Bungie-itus is something I’ve diagnosed and it is derived from Bungie’s own antics. Where they have amassed such a massive mindless fanbase that they know that they can generate mass hype from releasing a 20 second video. Bungie took it all the way for their first teaser for Halo 3:ODST. They first of all generated hype at E3 2008 for a new sneak peek at their upcoming game, only to be suddenly cancelled last minute by Microsoft to the disappointment of millions of Halo fanboys. Then about a month after E3 they release a 24-hour countdown on their website. “Counting down to what?” says the world. And what are all of those cryptic messages? Keep it clean? What’s that all about? Then at the end of it, we can all download a 70MB video that shows us approximately 15 seconds of nothing. But still, somehow, people are so hyped they could explode.
I saw this trailer, along with the last one, and I can see an aspect of bungie-itus in it. All I see in the trailer is Call of Duty 4…but with vehicles. Not that they aren’t about 6 years late for that. There were vehicles in war games back in Battlefield 1942, its nothing too revolutionary. But this trailer does not get me any more hyped for the game. Only annoyed that they wasted my time with something that as far as I could see could have come straight out of CoD4. There wasn’t even any actual gameplay footage behind the gun.
I think Infinity Ward have realised that teasing the fans is the way to go, instead of actually showing them what their game can actually do. I hope other developers don’t follow Bungie’s example.
So many of us play games on different platforms, be it PC, Xbox, PS3 or Wii. So the thought of cross platform gaming and being able to play with friends would almost certainly have crossed your mind, as it has mine. Microsoft, and Valve both have software that allows Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gamers to play with PC gamers. So it sounds like a brilliant idea, but do we actually want it? I'm voting no.
For one, the Wii has such low hardware specs that games from other platforms can’t run on it (with the exception of simple games like Galaxy Wars or Canabalt).
Secondly, you have the debateable fairness about pitting users against each other online who are using different platforms. It is well known that a keyboard and mouse is a lot more effective and precise when playing First Person Shooters than controllers. While controllers seems to be more effective when playing a racing/ driving game.
Then you have to worry about cheaters. Cheaters are much more common on PC games, especially popular games such as Modern Warfare 2. These cheats will put a lot of PC gamers who cheat in a much better position than those people using consoles. Although to be completely honest I don’t understand why people cheat; it takes the challenge out of the game, hence taking out the fun.
Lastly, if cross platform play was implemented it could take away the ability for PC gamers to use dedicated servers. We’ve already seen the downfalls of that with Modern Warfare 2, where many games are laggy or stop working mid-game.
So despite the advantages of cross platform gaming, I think that it will infuriate gamers of other platforms rather than bring all round joy.
When Far Cry 2 was announced, I got this tingly feeling that we were looking at something epic. Something that comes around every blue moon and brings us something totally and completely unexpected and awesome. I turned out to be right, and to this day believe Far Cry 2 is the best game I’ve ever played. Its not for all, but it is not by any stretch of the definition a bad game, or even average. I don’t know what it is about it, but the melding of all the different features and conventions just worked. This is how I feel about Prototype. I heard about this game sometime last year and thought it looked pretty good. Recently I posted an article about the game and my opinions. And now they have released the opening cutscene which is essentially amazing. I recommend HD if your internet lets you, I trying to work out for about half a minute whether it was computer generated or real.
Obviously it turned out to be computer generated. But I think the opening scene tends to define the game (excluding Far Cry 2’s crap opening scene with the long boring car drive and passing out five times before getting in to the action). Whilst this is far from gameplay footage, the amount of effort put in to a simple cutscene does show how the game could turn out. I think if they put in as much thought in to the game itself then this could be my new favourite game.
Jumping around from building to building. Scaling walls. Zombies. Gore. Gripping story. What is there not to like about it so far?
And here is my second article on Bioshock. For someone who has only played the demo, I’m actually getting quite excited about the sequel. 2K Games has recently disclosed a few details on the setting of Bioshock 2, people familiar with the original game will know the basic storyline. Set in the 1950s. Giant utopian underwater city. They find out how to genetically modify humans. City full of drug addicted mutants and crazed robots. Utopia gone haywire. You crash land there and kick copious amounts of arse in order to get out. You know, the old story.
In the original story, you play Jack. A guy who is in a plane crash and turns out to be pretty handy with the pistol. You are quickly introduced to “the good stuff”, which they call plasmids. Essentially drugs that you inject in to your arm which modifies your genes to the point that you can literally shoot flames, electricity and all kinds of stuff out of your hands. Whether it is an actual side effect or the entire game is just one big hallucination from the glowing drug cocktail in a rusty syringe is a matter of opinion. But playing the hero sounds better than playing the stoner. Now Bioshock 2 says goodbye to druggy Jack and instead puts you in control of the biggest meanest foe that he encountered, the Big Daddy. A behemoth powerhouse equipped with its trusty drill and super strength. At this point you have to step back and think about the whole prospect of being in control of a giant killing machine. Its pretty tempting.
And in accordance with the original Bioshock, there are plenty of little girls running around to be killed and harvested for more drugs. I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to introduce that feature in the last game, but it seems to work pretty well somehow. Apparently over the 10 year absence, the mutants have all gone even more crazy and disfigured, probably from withdrawal symptoms, and the aim of the game seems to be hunting down “The Big Sister”. I got to hand it to 2K, they really have outdone themselves with the naming.
Renegade likes to point out the flaws in the world and has an intense dislike for stupid people. He is also tall, intelligent, couragous and a compulsive liar.
Saying “If you like Call of Duty 4, then you’ll love Modern Warfare 2” is a little redundant. In fact saying anything about Modern Warfare 2 is fairly redundant seeing as it is probably the most talked about game at the moment. Rather than jump on the bandwagon of a straight review, I’ll talk more about the specifics, if you want a more general review then head over to somewhere like Gamespot where people are paid to spend hours glued to the screen.
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