I’ve been holding off on putting thought to paper (well, keyboard to bits) for awhile because I wasn’t sure how to approach this.
Without a doubt, Fallout 3 is one of the biggest titles of the year, perhaps the game of the year. Unlike other big name titles it isn’t all about the graphics – but has gorgeous graphics and oozes style; it focuses on a familiar – but not overdone (here’s looking at you Call of Duty 5) post-apocalyptic world; a story driven game – rather than a series of “quests” that just happen to get in your way (Far Cry 2 anyone?); and it is in the style of role playing-first person hybrid which thanks to the V.A.T.S. (“Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System”) gives you the choice of manual or automated firing thus not requiring you to be a trigger-junkie.
For me the most enjoyable aspects were the sci-fi elements. It isn’t the first sci-fi RPG out there but the sheer number of fantasy RPG’s (quality or otherwise) eclipses those that spring to mind. There is something satisfying leveling up and being more efficient with a plasma rifle.
With advances in “gaming technology” its nice to see lots of games benefiting from it. In particular, Fallout 3 is big. I could phrase that better – its fucking big. To walk from one side to the other of the map without going indoors, you’d get no loading screens, but it would take a least half an hour (“real world” time) to do so – and that’s before factoring in combat, repairs, looting, quests, and all the things you’d actually do in the game itself. I really got a sense for how massive the game is.
So seemingly it does everything right? Yeah, well almost. According to my save games, it did take me roughly twenty hours to complete, but a lot of that involved dicking around to see how many ways I could tick certain people off or explode super mutants with mini-nukes. If you drilled down to the core story of the game, even venturing out for some of the side quests the main story would be abruptly over in under ten hours. By todays “standards”, ten hours certainly isn’t anything to scoff at (again, Call of Duty 5 proves that), but the majority of that time involves traversing the Wastelands on foot, and storyline does conclude very suddenly and unfortunately in a way that does not give credit to the rest of the game. Okay, I’ll stop beating around the bush, the ending was balls.
There are other problems too. The level cap is set to twenty, which does take some time to get to – I had finished the game at level 13 – but finishing a few more of the side quests wouldn’t have made it that hard to reach the cap. The real problem however, is that at level 13 I was indestructible. Armed with a heavily (self-repaired and thus self-upgraded) unique plasma rifle, and protected with Enclave Telsa Armour, nothing but several Deathclaws could take me down, and at that stage I had only ever seen one at a time. It wasn’t a matter of difficulty so much as I was single shot killing everything because of the mechanics of upgrading/repairing guns, combined with a high energy weapon proficiency.
Despite the flaws of the game, it was genuinely fun to play. I’ve spent many more hours going back to save games near the end and detouring to explore the rest of the Wastelands and to finish off side quests. I played it on PC so I can’t vouch how the experience is on a console (available on PS3/Xbox 360), but the overall game play should be so similar that I’ll give it a universal highly recommended – go out and get it, or at least find somebody who has it to take a look at it for yourself as there is no demo available.
Bottom line? If you like RPG’s, get it. If you like shooters, get it. If you like a good story, get it.
Which possible war could a shooter choose to focus on to become the next big success? You guessed right, World War II! This war certainly hasn’t been done to death in the movie, documentary, or gaming genres. World War II games have become like a lot of sports game franchises – a new one is released every year with upgraded graphics and new players licensed.
Call of Duty World at War (CoDWaW) marks the fourth (sixth if you include the United Offensive expansion and the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube exclusive Call of Duty 2: Big Red One) game in the Call of Duty (CoD) series to focus on World War II. I suppose by focusing on World War II the game becomes cheaper to produce as they certainly don’t need to employee any story writers. Sadly Treyarch also decided not to employee too people to focus on the single player either, which despite the fun of a limitless flame thrower, was still a woefully short three hours of wave after wave of either Nazi’s or screaming Japanese soldiers.
Treyarch seemingly thought to very little about growing the series leaving that up to Infinity Ward, who have made the only decent Call of Duty games (1, 2 & 4). CoDWaW is a modified version of the CoD4 engine – they’ve added up to four player co-op to parts of the campaign, but visually and game mechanic wise it feels like a step back. The game plays more like a “rails” shooter (ie Time Crisis or House of the Dead) with a lot of invisible walls restricting where you can or can’t go – I came across a few open doors that I simply couldn’t walk through – and I was propelled forward to my death on more than one occasion when my AI teammates decided to walk into me.
AI might be a little too kind, AS (Artificial Stupidity) might be more accurate. My main gripe with the first CoD game was that you single handedly had to do absolutely everything as your team mates couldn’t hit the side of a barn from point blank range. As the series as progressed, the AI has slowly learnt how to fire a gun and even better than that, not relied on you to do absolutely everything to win the war. Unfortunately, CoDWaW makes another step backwards here and the AI again requires every objective to be completed by the player, which seemingly extends to killing every opponent. In CoD4 I noticed my AI allies would at least throw back grenades if they were close enough – in CoDWaW my allied AI aimed their grenades at me, killing me on numerous occasions.
If you love the Call of Duty series I would still recommend CoD4 (price alone makes it better value, let alone the better gameplay and larger single player campaign), but if you prefer a WW2 shooter and have no interest in single player this might be for you.
WW2 Shooter + no visual improvements + incredibly short campaign = One and a half out of five from me.
I’ll skip a full break down of Red Alert 3, as I’ve already covered a fair bit of it in my review of the beta. Not much changed from the beta in terms of units or balance, so this is more to do with the single player campaign. Since that review however, I’ve played/completed Red Alert 2/Yuri’s Revenge so I have a bit more insight to the Red Alert series.
Campaign
The story starts by the defeated Soviet forces going back in time to kill Einstein, the man who “won them the war” with his technology in Red Alert 2. When the Soviets return, they find not everything was how they’d imagined with a new “technologically superior” enemy, The Empire of the Rising Sun, emerging from nowhere.
The three factions, Allies, Soviets and Empire of the Rising Sun all start from the same spot but fork out to create their own “destiny” and ultimately victory at the expense of the other two. This raises the interesting question of what’s considered cannon in the storyline – traditionally in all Command and Conquer games, it has been the Allies/GDI/”good guys in general” whose storyline is considered correct for the proceeding games. As such, they’ve always been the first campaign offered, but in Red Alert 3, the Soviet campaign is offered first.
My problems with the series isn’t exclusive to Red Alert, but to nearly anything that creates a series out of time travelling. In Red Alert specifically, time travelling just gives the an easy out (in every episode!) to screw with the previous games story and never build on it. The Allied and Soviet forces are mostly made up of units/etc from the previous game, nothing really “new and game changing”.
Bottom line
The bottom line is I’d give the game a two and a half stars out of five; while it is a solid RTS series it is getting old rehashing essentially the same story formula of the previous games, including Command & Conquer.
Please note: I must stress these are my impressions from the beta (v1.4), and may not represent the final product.
Because I bought Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath, I was given access to the Red Alert 3 beta program. Additional keys have been released as part of an exclusive deal between EA and Fileplanet, first to their (Fileplanet) premium account holders but most recently to the free accounts too.
The beta is limited to online multiplayer only and to four maps (2x 2v2 and 2x 1v1 maps), but there is no limit to access to the three factions and their respective units.
Gameplay
It’s hard to comment if the gameplay is good, bad or otherwise in a restricted beta of a game especially when it is limited to just multiplayer, but I can draw comparisons. It plays much like any RTS – you collect resources, create buildings that provide X resource (in this case, electricity), create units, provide defense, or unlock further units (in the case of Russia; the Allies and Empire of the Rising Sun both ‘research’ the next tier of units). There is nothing particularly different or innovative with the gameplay presented in RA3.
The previous two games released by EA since acquiring Westwood/C&C rights have been C&C: Generals (and it’s expansion, Zero Hour) and C&C3:Tiberium Wars (and it’s expansion, Kanes Wrath), if I was to pick which one RA3 is most like, it’d definitely be Generals.
Generals has a “rewards” system, where you earn “experience” by doing stuff, which could include creating buildings, units, or removing substantial chunks of the enemy. In return, you could spend your experience on three rewards trees (dubbed at the time ‘General Abilities’), which included unit upgrades, aerial assaults, spawning units anywhere on the map, etc. RA3 features the same system, although the rewards don’t seem to be turning-the-tide-of-battle as some of the Generals rewards were (hint, this is a good thing – it sucks when all your hardwork can be undone by an enemies reward).
Zero Hour introduced another dimension of combat (sea, alongside air and ground) to Generals (which does not appear in C&C3), but is present in RA3. While this does have the problem that the developers have to balance yet another playing field, it really does add so much more to the game.
Graphics/Art Style
While I haven’t played a lot of the older games in the C&C universe, I’ve played a fair bit of Generals, and C&C3, and it is safe to say the visuals in RA3 are nothing like those. The easiest comparison would be Half-Life 2/Counter Strike to Team Fortress 2. The former are ‘realism’ shooters while the latter is a stylised, over the top, brightly coloured piece of art. RA3 falls into latter category, having many over the top effects and everything is very brightly coloured.
Like all games thus far based on SAGE (or RNA as its now known) it has appealing visuals in the unit models, detail textures, and particle effects, but throw it into a multiplayer arena and massive slow downs occur unless all players turn the graphics quality down. The game doesn’t become choppy as if frames are being skipped, it simply slows down the game speed so it takes longer for things to occur. With C&C3, I found settings that were silky smooth in single player, even during the epically scaled final battles, would bring the game to its knees in even the smallest 1v1 game online.
Problems
While this is a beta and you must expect most bugs or problems that will be fixed, it is hard not to see some that will never be fixed given the track record of EA.
Gamespy
For reasons that have never benefited actual gamers, Gamespy is involved in the multiplayer aspect of RA3, providing the chat lobby and game match making services. It is extremely rare (Quake…sure) to see a game that has benefited from Gamespy’s assistance with lobby/match making – and RA3 is no different. It mimics all the flaws of C&C3′s online play, where available games often don’t appear at all or the list continually expands and contracts so fast that it is often impossible to actually select the game you wish to join! One of the worst ‘features’ is that you have to be in the chat lobby (and currently there is over twenty) of the game creator to see the game; change lobbies and you see a different subset of available games.
Netcode
One thing that has played SAGE/RNA games has been poor networking code. During the days where I semi-frequented a gaming focused NetCafe, it was rare to see a LAN game of Generals finish without at least one of the players crash out due to network issues. The initial release of Kane’s Wrath was plagued with a ‘out-of-sync’ issue, which after a period of time would just lose connection with other players, rendering the game useless. EA denied that such a problem existed (stating it couldn’t be replicated and that a very small percentage of the player base was effected) for some time, until they decreased such occurrences with a patch (but not totally removed) after three months!
In RA3, I’ve already seen one or two out-of-sync issues, and many players randomly dropped from the game!
Balance
In one of the patches C&C3, the ability to construct multiple defenses at once by building multiple cranes was removed. It was a fairly drastic change, and effected singleplayer as well. I can’t help but shake the feeling that there will be some major balance upsets after the release of the game. Russian submarines currently seem to be overly powerful just as their Terror Drones are – to the point where I’ve had a few games where people have quit when others have gone Russian.
Will it drain my wallet?
The inevitable question is: despite its flaws, is this game “good enough” to be worth shelling out for? If you’re a hard core C&C/RA fan, it’s got some solid stuff in there which you’ll love. If you are a C&C/RA fan but are a Westwood purist? Not a chance – there is too much of the “EA Influence” inherited from Generals and C&C3. I fall short of being a fanatic to the series or to Westwood so the decision is a little tougher. I’ve been burnt by the flaws in Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath and generally poor support by EA in those games as well as Battlefield 2/2142, but RA3 does offer some genuinely different gameplay to be entertaining.
My answer is, no, I won’t be buying it upon launch because I don’t feel it is worth the launch RRP of AUD$99.95; while the game might be fun, it’s just too “same-y” in both the good and bad aspects. If I can find it for AUD$60 or under, I’ll reconsider, but for now the similarities in gameplay to C&C3 and Generals are just encouraging me to hold tight to my money until StarCraft 2 is released.
Gallery
The EGames Expo was on again in Melbourne’s Exhibition Centre, and they’ve learnt a lot from the first event held last year.
Key differences over last year were
- The booth babes were hotter
- There were more booths
- There were more freebies
- You could bring bags in (and cameras!)
That being said, it still seems to have a long way to go. We (chickz0r and I) went today (Sunday, the final day), and it was packed but lacked excitement. Perhaps a combination of weather and being the closing day, but exhibitors and attendees just seemed to be a bit down on the whole day, compared to last year.
Fury again was one of the main attractions, but after being an alpha tester for the game, I had no interest in it. They had a “super special” on Fury, $30AUD for one, or $50AUD for two, instead of the RRP of $89.95. That isn’t limited to EGE, you can also pick it up for about that price (or cheaper, given the exchange rate) from Auran’s store. Auran had their own stage, with competitions (to win a Core2Quad system, I think), as well as a dozen or so other computers setup to play Fury. They really sure have spent a bit more on the demo systems they brought down from the Sunshine State…performance was worse than that of last years pre-alpha demo!
Crysis came in second for most coverage on the grounds, with PC’s setup in a competitive “NetCafe” environment, as well as more casual ones setup on lounges with large (30″+) HDTV’s. They were plagued with problems – many computers had to have the three finger salute (Ctrl + Alt + Del) performed on a regular basis by the staff operating the systems, some were even running in windowed mode!
Sony actually had something to present other than the PSP this year, with their PS3, but the majority of their systems were PSP and PS2′s; they did however, have one large booth and competitions for Resistance: Fall of Man. Microsoft had a giant inflatable Master Chief helmet, with many 360′s showing of Halo 3, to be expected. Nintendo rounded up the console giants by occupying the exact same spot as last time (right at the front door), but mostly had Wii sports going – rather disappointing!
I’m hoping that the cosplayers today weren’t all that turned up for the event, because if they were, my Soundwave costume (if I had of finished it..) had a serious chance to take out best costume. I know I’m being overly critical for somebody who didn’t dress up, but the Cosplay Parade had nearly half the audience leave before the second Cosplayer was on stage.
Freebies last time were nonexistent, however this time we managed to score 4 or 5 Seagate pens, and an Intel keychain. Not great, but we weren’t there for long. There were other freebies being handed out (or thrown out in the case of the Frisbees), so at least some exhibitors have learnt.
I think over time EGE is going to get better and better, it is still in its infancy and isn’t sure how the audience is going to react. This year was packed, so hopefully next year they learn a better layout and to include more consoles/pc’s so people don’t have to line up for more than half an hour to play one thing. I’d love more freebies, but what can they really give away?
Overall, I had less fun than last year, but it was good to see that the event is going strong and will more than likely continue on next year.
A little known company called Valve released “The Orange Box” to the world a little while ago, and while it unarguably is a good value buy given the average game these days, I’ve been a little under whelmed by the actual content. This will probably be a series of posts broken up into each game.
Half-Life 2
Half-Life (1, the original, the first) was hailed as a break through in the First Person Shooter for it having a story line, a unique concept back in those days. For those who haven’t played it (I didn’t play it myself until the weeks before its sequel), the story can be found easily enough by searching for it, but I’ll summarise it for the lazy
You’re a physicist, Gordron Freeman, incapable of speech, hygiene (you never leave that suit), or actually doing physics, set to save the world after the Black Mesa research complex goes ape after a failed portal based research experiment. Since you’ve looked at guns before, you instantly know how to use them with better-than-military grade precision, and you have to save the world/your own ass by escaping Black Mesa.
But wait, there is more, once you do beat the impossible odds of battling Security Guards, Military Personal and random aliens, you’ll teleport yourself to their planet, and beat the shit out of them, be ‘liberated’ by the “G-Man”, and the games over. Congratulations.
In 1998/9, sure, story telling was weak in games because the budgets weren’t there to hire non-geeks (ie, those who can write coherent sentences), and don’t get me wrong, the game is fairly solid in gameplay and overall presentation – I just don’t get why its hailed as the best thing to come out in the history of History.
Like all quality sequels, you start off where you were in the last game, except throw that into the HL universe and you start off in the nothingness which the G-Man left us in. Oh, and it’s ten to twenty years in the future – you don’t find out and official sources aren’t sure. Once a company finds a good formula for making games/books/movies, they tend to stick to it, and Half-Life 2 is no different. You play Gordon Freeman, you wear a special suit, you don’t talk, and you have to save the world.
There are some mind boggling changes to the game though. No longer do the evil aliens hail from the terrifying floating rocks called Xen, in fact some of them are even our new allies, for our new enemy is the Combine, who were behind the original invasion as-if-you-didn’t-already-guess-that; Physics can now be handled by even the lowliest of physicists thanks to the Gravity Gun; and finally, Head Crab Zombies come in many different flavours.
Don’t get me wrong, HL2 had some solid gameplay to it; AI was decent, weapons varied and interesting, and it was especially beautiful when it came out. However just like it’s predecessor, it was hailed for having an incredibly rich story. The game was fairly short, the stories had plot holes that you could drive a small truck through, and the ending was incredibly lame; but that was overlooked by most because you had the gravity gun where you could cut zombies up with circular saw blades.
Half-Life 2: Episode One was meant to be the first in a rapid succession of episodic content for the Half Life saga which would give shorter game play but be more regularly produced, and at a reduced cost. Given it took six years for the sequel of Half-Life, slightly more regularly produced isn’t setting their standards particularly high, and with Ep1, they certainly did give the shorter game play and more regular – only totaling about two-to-four hours of gameplay, and released a year after HL2.
Half-Life 2 and Doom3 were released close together, and HL2 was hailed as being much better because it actually had environments (plural) rather than just one-super-long-dark-corridor-with-a-poor-flashlight. The majority of Ep1 is made up of areas where you have little-to-no ammo, in the dark, shooting zombies. Sounds original and awesome right?
I suppose it would be wrong of me if I failed to mention just how cinematic Ep1 was. For a large slab of the game, it was like a movie, I forgot I was simply playing a game. I’m sure many industry analysts are wondering how you can achieve such immersion. Valves answer to that question is as simple as it is elegant…give the player no ammo in a First Person Shooter, but give them a “cute” female NPC that follows them around who has unlimited ammo but simply won’t share. It wasn’t that I was immersed, it was that I had to watch Alyx have all the fun.
I’m not far enough in to Half-Life 2: Episode Two to critisise it to the inevitable pointless rant I’ll undoubtedly have in my head, but it certainly isn’t promising much. It starts off with a train crash, and all of your weapons have been vapourised, yet Alex retains hers. You’ve also inexplicitly developed a separate battery pack so that the flashlight and running are no longer connected.
In all fairness, the Half Life games aren’t bad. That is to say, they’re not terrible, but they’re not awesome. They fall somewhere in between, kind of what Yahtzee said about Halo 3. The Source engine is certainly good looking, and scales well, and etcetera and so forth about their technical capabilities, but at the end of the day, we’ve got a overly-hyped-underdelivered-game which for some reason, gets 95% or higher in “real” reviews.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars demo came out the other week, which is one of the most hotly talked about games for this year. It joins a few others – such as Bioshock, Halo 3, Team Fortress 2, Crysis – in this half of the year, that seem to be reviving the first person shooter genre. I was a big fan of the original Enemy Territory from Splash Damage, so much so that I actually played it with a clan (White Stripes, or something like that).
I’m also a fan of Battlefield 2142 (BF2142) with its large futuristic environments, but prefer the more objective based gameplay that games like Enemy Territory and Unreal Tournament 2004′s Assault mode offers. Quake Wars is essentially BF2142 + Strogg + Unreal Tournament’s Assault Mode. It is a chaotically paced game, where strategy doesn’t have to play a big part, but certainly can change the tides of war.
Graphics wise, Quake Wars is surprisingly nice looking. Those who have played Doom3 or Quake 4 (or Prey) will remember that while the dark corridors looked very realistic, as dark corridors go, but outside environments were a bit…lacking in realism, from scenery, general textures and lighting. Quake Wars, on the other hand, actually does very good job of the battlefront – both inside and outside.
Gameplay, as mention, isn’t entirely unfamiliar to existing games such as UT2004′s Assault mode, BF2/2142, and Enemy Territory. It doesn’t take long to see this game is geared towards competitive play, there are signs such as ‘pings’ when you’ve hit somebody with a weapon, which is both a good and a bad thing. Competitive based games tend to develop some really good players of the game, but at the same time, those players often belong to a single clan, which results in public servers often being no fun when one team is incredibly well coordinated, and you’re a casual gamer.
Given that it is just a demo, and fairly recently released, so far there aren’t too many ‘uber’ players (other than myself of course) which has led to some very interesting battles on the demo map, where looming doom has been undone by inexperience, turning into a surprising win. That being said, I’ve noticed a few tactics that cannot be described as anything but bastardly. Strogg going behind GDF spawn points as snipers, using the Icarus (jet pack sort of thing); GDF flying behind the last spawn point and shooting down Strogg as they spawn; etc.
The particular map in the demo is certainly inclined to favour the Strogg (somewhat too much one might say), which isn’t really helping show off the game, but it is fun.
I’ll be picking this game up on release, I think, and can Stroggly (ha, get it, Stroggly – strongly? hahaha..ha..ha..) recommend this. Given Splash Damage’s track record, I’d say any inbalances will be picked up rather quickly through a series of patches. Bottom line is, this game has got some tough competition coming out, as well as existing similar games. BF2/2142 players will probably stick to that, although those disgruntled by how poorly EA/DICE have addressed the bugs/lag (which there seemed no such problems in the Quake Wars demo) will move over. UT2004 players will want something to play until Unreal Tournament 3, and this could certainly be that.
Quake Wars come out tomorrow-ish, but at a horrible price of AUD$99.95 from EBGames…I think I might import it or buy it from Steam (once I’m uncapped) since the exchange rate is so nice at the moment
Games often have bugs in them, usually in the form of not being able to complete a mission or quest, or in-balances like a knife being able to sniper.
While we’re probably seeing more buggy games due to how quickly games tend to be pumped out these days, more often than not, these issues get addressed during the support lifespan of the game (at least in the PC arena).
Today I encountered what I must admit is the best bug I’ve ever seen in a game.
While trying to frag Ryan in FEAR (he had FEAR, I had FEAR Combat – the free multiplayer version), I discovered after about five minutes into the game, that my frame rate dropped from (what I perceived to be) 60 frames a second down to under 20 frames a second.
Given FEAR is a shooter, frame rates as well as low ping can make all the difference.
A restart of the game, fixed, at least for another five minutes. Fine, I rebooted my system, seeing that Visual Studio Orcas had half crashed. Again, once I reached that magical mark of 300 seconds, the frame rates plummeted like Lemmings.
As it did, Ryan managed to sneak a few bullets into me and shoved me into spectator mode, waiting for me to click to respawn. I decided a quick search on Google would be in order to see if I was the only one (search term was “fear slowdown”). The eight result yeilded something I initially dismissed as so rediculous it could never possibly be, that USB mice and keyboards were dropping my framerate.
Given I was on my laptop however, I decided that I’d give this preposterous idea a go, unplugging my Logitech G5 2007 and G15 (I’m a Logitech fanboy, I also run their Z-5400 speakers), and restarted the game.
Two hours later, my framerates continued to be far beyond that which was achivable with a mouse. It’s a pity I can’t say the same for my score.
Ubisoft’s Dark Messiah of Might and Magic looks like a fantastic game. When the demo was rolled out, I eagerly watched the bits fly to my hard drive.
“Finally“, I thought, “a game to quench my evil desires. Or at the very least, tickle them.“.
The demo provided that. Oh how fun it was to kick Orcs into a bottomless pit. Or you could use arrows to push them into it, or heck, magic!
I replayed that part of the demo over and over.
I should point out, in reality, I was after an RPG where being evil was encouraged, as well as ‘shooter’. Dark Messiah seemed to be a good blend of the two.
A few months later, Dark Messiah launched, to some mediocre reviews, although I didn’t read them, as I’ve found a lot of the ‘big’ review sites tend to have opinions different to mine.
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The Wii rocks, okay?
First Andrew came around with his on launch day – I still thought it was fantastic. My sister played just one game of tennis, and she was trying to encourage me to go down and pickup my pre-order.
A few days later (the Sunday after), Ryan comes around with his Wii, and we played on it from ~3pm->11pm.
My mother got a shot.
Despite adamantly telling me I was not to get my Wii before Christmas, after that, she told me I could. The Wii is so fun it had my mother in hysterics while playing.
I only have WiiPlay and WiiSports, but they are some of the most enjoyable ‘multiplayer’ games around.
Wii will, wil will rock you indeed.
