There has not been a good reception of this game from a LOT of places.
I honestly don't understand this. The standards this game is being held to seem unreasonably high for a new IP.
I understand there are issues with it - the missions are repetative, and generic. I get it. The crazies are annoying, the beggars are redundant and irritating. You can fight your way through the game without an ounce of stealth.
The middle issues (the crazies and the beggars) are the only real thing I agree with. They are a bit too focused on the player.
As to the repetative missions - there are 5 types of 'investigate' missions, climbing towers for viewpoints, and saving citizens.
I get it. Perhaps you don't like the pickpocket missions, or think that the eavesdrop missions are stupid. But every single one of them does a unique thing to advance a plot that is being shot down by a lot of people unjustly - more on that later.
The key here though is that the amount of these that you are actually required to do for each assassination is minimal. You need to do at most 1 of the viewpoint climbs, if you have an idea of where all the missions are located already - they just put points on your map for things that are there, they don't activate anything. And on top of that, you'd be skipping on some of the coolest aspects of the engine - the climbing of buildings looks so solid and natural that I kept doing it just to see the animations again.
You don't need to do any of the civilian saving missions - which I think are actually kinda fun - its a challenge to find a way to wipe out all three to 5 guards before a whole slew of others comes along. I found a good deal of pleasure in planning my approach and making a clean getaway. The game offers a good deal of satisfaction when you axe some guy in the back of the head with a hidden blade and then just blend into the crowd before the other people even realise "Hey, that guys fucking dead! Shit!"
As for the investigation missions - yes, some of them get repetative. But the only ones I really didn't enjoy were the interrogation ones, just because the guards seem only to jump in if you really are wailing on a guy good and hard. The very-few flag-collecting missions are early on and really I think they just give the player an excuse to go jumping from rooftop to rooftop to flex the free-running system - and it is a beautiful system. The mini-assassinate missions are interesting enough - that whole 'getting away with it' aspect was something I found quite amusing, although sometimes also irritating if you were recently in a big fight in the area. The eavesdrop missions offer another look into the story they are developing. I think I'm forgetting one type, but who cares.
Lets move on then to the story, whcih I feel is one of the games greatest strengths. Many many people have shot this story down. I think its because they honestly weren't paying attention. If you payed attention, you got some real hints of moral gray areas. It had a lot of metal-gear style moments - you never really know who's side your on, or if the side you appear to be on is even the right one. Ends justifying the means and all that. There is suspicion of EVERYONE even from the start.
Thats the small plot. The large plot, which I found myself itching to know more and more about, is what they are using to setup the next games. Honestly, I think most people completely ignored this shit, and as such, didn't realize the depth to which it is developed. Another result of my final thought on this game, but I will leave that till the end. Basically, if you liked the plot of any of the metal gear games or are a buff for 'history's mysteries' kinds of stories (relics, etc.) then you'd like the overarching story, I would think.
The assassinations of the main targets are fun too. But again, the game suffers (and I hate to use that term, for it implies that the game is poor, and I am not intending that) from the main poitn I'm driving at - this is the first game I can remember playing where you get out of it as much as you put into it. And no, I don't mean a WoW esque grind for phat lewtz. I mean, if you give this game a chance, and play it the way it's meant to be played - planning your approaches, emphasis on stealth, a quick clean kill - it is REMARKABLY fun to play. The only major difference between this game and other games that have come before it of the same basic idea is that they don't really punish you for not doing it that way. You can stroll up, kill 50 guards in one big brawl, and then stab the guy and bolt, if you want. And as a result, if you end up tripping and grabbing attention to yourself, you can still succeed at the mission and get away without throwing the controller in frustration at the fact that your getting stabbed in the head 5823145 ways from sunday for being exposed. Most people, I think, ignored the stealth approaches, and thus lost a great deal of the experience of the game.
It makes the game a give and take. If all you are doing is pushing through it because you have nothign better to do, and you aren't really into it, it comes across as a boring fighter with some pretty visuals and a cooky plot. But if you seriously pay attention, it makes sense in lots of ways and is a rewarding game experience. Its kind of simultaneously an art flick and a popcorn flick, if such a thing exists and has a parallel video game comparison.
And as a final thought, anyone with any technical knowledge can appreciate how difficult it is to make an open world stealth game. Seriously, the final result is a damned impressive go at it, if not perfect.
Bottom line - if you are willing to give the effort and pay attention to this game, it is well worth buying. If you are looking for a plotless low-impact open world brawler, stick to GTA. I'll give it an 8.5 out of 10.
I was a big fan of diablo 2. It opened up the world of online and social gaming to me. Sure, it was point-click-loot-repeat, but it had a definite shine and polish to it, and playing a game with people on the other side of the country was an amazing thing. To this day, its still, arguably, THE definitive dungeon crawler experience.
So when I heard that the developers of D2 split off to form Flagship studios and were making a post-apocalyptic guns vs zombies vs knights vs demons dungeon crawler in full 3D, what Diablo fan wasn't excited? Then you see the absolutely AMAZING cinematic that they released - turns out its the opening video, and it is still amazing to this day - and you get more excited.
Then you load it up, and immediately you notice problems. Within the first 5 minutes of play, my newly created marksman got 'stuck' on a piece of terrain - an omen? Anyways, with some luck, they happened to put in a /stuck command similar to that in WoW, which I just tried for shits and giggles, and it worked well enough.
So I start playing through, and I notice its easy. Big deal, its just the opening area, and I'm a fairly seasoned fps player, alongside having more WoW mileage under my belt that I will openly admit to most people, so maybe I'm just a bit on quick on the learning curve.
So here's where I cut out the descriptive story like approach and cut to the chase - the game is not good.
To be more precise, I think the game is not done. I honestly think it coudl have used a few more months in the shop to tweak the play balance and fix a large quantity of bugs that pretty much any decent internal testing should have caught, easily.
The game's style is a good one. Tried and true to diablo, you face some creatively designed baddies, en masse. Problem is, for the first 10 levels or so of my playing, and very much still now on my hunter at level 23 (as I understand it thats about halfway to the level 50 cap, but I may be mistaken on that), I'm still playing a first person shooter. It's like unreal tournament against stupid bots. None of the 'skills' or 'talents' or whatever you want to call them on the hutner tree are really that useful. That is to say, I can succeed FULLY without using any of them. All thats required is the standard circle strafe/jump like an idiot/spray and pray mentality that died out of most fps' a decade ago.
Whats worse, is that a friend of mine, who is also seasoned in both fps' and mmo's, more so than I am, on at least the mmo front, is that his blademaster is actually really fucking hard. And then I start ot look at it. The game is not balanced for shit!
I started to notice the number of special monsters that do nasty nasty things to anyone in close - strike one against melee. The swarms of monsters that I can use my hunter-like feign-death ripoff to escape from would just rape melee, since you can't clip through monsters, and as such you would litereally get boxed in, and the timer on health pots is too long to make them useful in any context other than patching yoruself up after a fight. The ranged baddies often do a sort of spread attack - which, when you're right on them, means that all of the spread particles hit you - another strike against melee.
All this would be fine if the melee classes had a significant increase in damage mitigation or health points - seems an obvious fix, no? Well, apparently not, because they don't.
And thats not to mention all the bugs. I've found that more often than not, Hellgate decides when I stop playing Hellgate, not I. Hellgate crashes when it has enough, and is such that it takes too long to restart for me to find it worth the effort to do so. There are numerous framerate lagspikes throughout, an entire server cluster in Asia is fucked and needs to be wiped clean, and the ui is clunky and ill-defined - there are still things on it that move and switch and I have no clue what the fuck they mean.
Honestly, this game is just not done. It feels as though they got their alpha build running, put their story in place, and then just got pressured to print it and ship it before they had proper chance to do quality assurance. And if that is not the case, than they need to fire whoever they put in charge of said assurance, because they did a piss poor job of it.
The game had (and perhaps still does have) potential. The artwork is great, the armor sets play off each other in subtle and remarkable ways, the worlds and creatures are fairly rich and enjoyable, if a bit redundant at times. . .but honetsly. . .put it back in the oven.
I like a medium rare steak every now and then, but this sumbitch is still mooing. Toss this fucker back on the coals, and get back to me in six months when you've finished your development cycle, please.
First let me preface this by saying this game is too deep for me to have completely evaluated, thus far.
But even on a relatively light tasting of the game (maybe around a dozen games played), I can say with some certainty that it one of the best balanced multi-class games I've played, spanning all genres. And, any game that can make playing a medic legitimately amusing is well worth note and praise.
A more in-depth review would be mostly bullshit, so I'll spare you, and go back to playing. You should play it too.
Two things on the plate today - a belated review of halo 3, and a review of the Orange Box (sans TF2 because thats too deep to have played thoroughly for a review yet).
KEEP IN MIND THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS, so if you haven't played it and don't want it ruined, go play with your dick or something.
First up, the highest-selling opening of a game ever, Halo Tres
First, I will admit, I like halo. A lot of people don't - that much I don't get. As far as console shooters go, its tops of the pops, in my book. It marks a difference in shooter 'style' that so few people seem to acknowledge. Halo has that super-human element that so many shooters pass over these days. Its a game where you play a god of ammunition and kick-assery. Something like Call of Duty 4, while the multiplayer demo was fantastic, is along a much different vein.
That being said, I think halo delivers on every front. The story is very good, when you consider that its a first person shooter - honestly, when was the last time you felt involved in a shooter game? Thats disreguarding perhaps hl2, but even in that there is a deep story that is not portrayed well. But I digress.
As far as halo 3 goes, its hard to judge it with most games, because of its sheer content load. First off, the campaign. Judged solo, without any of the other components, I'd give it an 8 of 10. The opening scenes are fantastic, with some seriously hard fights (played on heroic), but gratifying. Later on, they give the story and less of the intensity - the flood never did much for me, and their appearence in here is no difference - they seem easy by comparison to the brutes (not-withstanding the 'pure-form' flood, which are just annoying as fuck). It was never a not-fun experience (take that, grammar), but at times it was a bit bland, especially in the afformentioned end. That is only in reguards to gameplay, mind you - the story is interesting enough for those parts. The ending, even after watching the credits - which you shoudl do if playing it - is a bit...m'eh. I've never been a fan of writing characters off for no real reason, as they did here. He escaped, and you feel good about escaping with the lovely return to the exit chase-type scene (a throwback that I did appreciate), but then they sorta can him and Cortana unceremoniously and without great purpose. Dude should have the chance to sit back with a beer and a hooker for the rest of his life - seriously, he just saved the universe for like the 12th time. Man deserves some poon and booze.
Secondly, with halo, you get the ever-rich mutliplayer experience. The matchmaking is remarkable, as it was with halo 2. Now, my forrays into console online play are limited, but as a whole, I am certainly impressed. After less than 4 or 5 matches (have to allow some calibration afterall), I find myself primarily playing games that are very close and very fun, which is no small feat, considering in my Counterstrike days I would either roll or be rolled, there was very little middle ground. The armor permutations make for a reasonable amount of customization, I just wish they were a tad easier to unlock (that 4th silver skull is a recockulous feat - it would never have been cracked unless someone did the decoding into hex as was done, which I am not a fan of). I'm a little irked that Bungie kept the recon armor for themselves, as that was my fav by far leading up to the release, but oh well. I'll settle for looking like a gundam with a shotgun, thats fine with me. THe multiplayer also gets an 9 out of 10 (i don't believe in perfect 10s, and if I did, this one wouldn't get it).
The games true appreciation comes from the 'extras' of sorts. The saved film feature is one of those things that I have been wanting in a game of this type for a long time, and its nice to see someone finally gives a rats ass enough to do it. The screenshots are awesome, and my desktop may or may not contain me karate-chopping some asshole with an explosive device.
The forge is something I haven't played around with a whole lot, but the ideas seem very interesting indeed. However, as I understand it now, its sort of stuck to lan-like games, and whilst I pine for the ability to play on a college dorm floor over the network again (those were some epic ctf games), the food remains a fine detractor from that life. All in all, its a perk, and a decent one, but I fear it won't be used as much as it should, at least by me.
Overall, I'd give the game a solid 8/10, if only for the sheer volume of content.
Moving on, time to hit the Orange Box. First off, I'll go with hl2 ep 2, which I just finished about half an hour ago. I gotta tell ya, I was a little unimpressed up untill the open-arena strider fight. But at that point, all my reservations went to hell, where they can fester and suffer righteously. This is the most intense shooter-oriented gameplay I have seen in a LONG time, people. More than made up for the gameplay that led up to it. I need to stress that that gameplay isn't bad, per se, but it is stock for a half life game - that is to say, it was along the same pacing and intensity as hl2 was itself, for the msot part, which is still quite good, but by now is made a bit stale by Valves own previous submissions to the series. Again, though - this last fight is truly epic in quality. 9 of 10 for the last battle, but a serious brow furling at the final scene... cliffhangers in games blow.
Portal - this is a game that every single person who as ever put mouse to crosshairs should play. Its a tad short, which is unfortunate. But the game, while it lasts, is about as entertaining as games have been in the past few years. It almost creates its own genre, as its not really a shooter. There is no shooting. There is portal...ing. The first-person-science-puzzle approach is very very engaging. Top that off with the sense of humour the game produces, and you've got a hit game right there. THe narbacular drop guys deserve some serious kudos here. The thing that most excites me about this is the potential for community created maps. Thats gonna have some really fun shit in it. Portal gets a 9 of 10.
TF2 I cannot adequately review right now. I've not played a game online yet, as I'm trying to corral friends together towards that purpose, and its proving annoying difficult. But the depth that it at least portrays externally is impressive, and the art style is fantastic. I'm a big fan of when people take technology to make something look good, not necessarily super real. This is the best I've seen in cartoon-style gameplay, by far.
So there you go. Halo 3, 8 of 10, Orange Box, 9 of 10, sans a tf2 review. Now if I could just find someone I know that would want a copy of hl2 and ep 1, that wouldn't then go and buy the orange box themselves. Ah well.
I managed to snag a spot on the call of duty 4 beta on xbox live this past week.
My impressions?
I think the developers have some kind of chemical imbalance that does not allow them to push out anything less than a stellar gaming experience. I was a HUGE fan of the first call of duty (its the best ww2 game of all time, and I don't expect it to be dethroned any time soon), and their forray into modern arms has not disappointed in the slightest.
Beign as its a beta, I get that they will have network issues, so I am not overly upset about the fact that I can't ever seem to play team deathmatch. However, I am more than compensated, as the objective game types are quite fun.
Dominate is a capture-control point mode, much akin to Day of Defeat. Not revolutionary, but the gunplay of the game and its solid overall design and look and feel hit the nail on the head, and that makes for some fun gameplay.
The other kind is Search and Destroy - think of it like de_* maps on counterstrike, only without the annoyances. The bomb starts on the ground, so that afk guy can't be the bomb carrier (he'd have to move, then go afk, which is jsut a total dick move). The bombs themselves are slightly portable, once planted - the defuse action has you actually picking up the bomb, and you can move around a little bit with it, but its basically still being gimped to one spot. And the mode dishes out a whopping 50 points per kill, 25 for assists (I'll get to the point/ranking system in a minute). For comparison, team deathmatch nets 10 poitns per kill, 2 for assist, and those values are halfed for dominate.
The ranking system is where the multiplayer for this game really really shines through. Its not so much that its new or exciting - its along the same lines as the Battlefield ranking system. However, the balance of it is phenomenal. There are only major weapon upgrades every 6 to 10 levels - I'm level 16 now, and not counting pistols and stupid crap, I've only gotten 2 new, beefy guns - the rest are sidearms and things like an uzi - more or less a gimmick gun (mac attack!). And even then - the upgraded major guns aren't that far beyond the regular guns. Don't get me wrong, I'd use the m4 over the m16 - but the only major difference is that the m16 is stuck on 3 round burst (bad for close encounters) - other than that, the m4 is pretty near identical, as far as I can tell. The sniper rifle upgrade goes from a bolt action to an automatic, but the shot damage goes way down, so it balances out. Just makes it a bit more viable in close encounters, but even then, the beautifully impelented melee accomodates.
The melee is a click in of the right stick - and instantly, your guy flicks out a knife that is a garunteed kill if it lands on its target. Really, really satisfying.
Overall, the game is well worth a playthrough, aside from some matchmaking annoyances (its a beta, I'm not holding it up to an insanely scrutinous standard here). Beta is not open for new entries now, but snag a copy of this when it hits shelves in a couple of months.
THe only thing I can't quite decide is if I want it for the 360 or the PC. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
This is a test of the software on www.animoto.com This site lets you make a slideshow that takes pictures and music and randomly generates transitions and such to make for a more interesting result. It also makes it all embeddable-like.
With the recent fiasco related to a Pearl Jam concert and AT&T censoring certain anti-Bush lyrics during a webcast, there has been an uproar about net neutrality
What is bothersome about it is that this particular situation is more akin to a sponsorship/record deal than anything close to net neutrality.
As I understand it, Net Neutrality is the concept that no corporation can control what content you are allowed to see on the internet - that is, they cannot shut a website that they don't own down, even if its information goes over their servers, as in the case of ISPs like AT&T or Comcast.
Had Pearl Jam's concert been broadcast on the web via their own site, and then still censored (which would, admittedly, have to be one hell of a hack by an at&t team to censor, in line, a live webcast, with great accuracy), then it would indeed be something ot uproar about. The fact is, though, that the broadcast was done on an att website that Pearl Jam signed a deal with in order to get their stuff on the web, and even if the censorship was deliberate (there is some pussyfooting around that issue, but its irrelevent), it is AT&T's perogative, as site owner and operator, and hoster of all content therein, to put up or not put up whatever they so choose.
What AT&T allegedly did would be the same as a record label altering a musicians lyrics without their consent. Its underhanded, and Pearl Jam might have grounds to sue on interference with artistic license, but as I expect that little money was going to Pearl Jam because of this, they really don't have a leg to stand on.
That being said, I don't want people thinking that I am in the corner of big corporations. For example, Comcast has been limiting torrent flows using some nasty software that constantly resets peer connections between yoru computer and anyone outside of Comcast's network of users. They say (and this is factual) that this is an attempt to keep their bandwidth from basically being raped by people acting as file servers, but as they don't seem to have a clause in their contract about any bandwidth limiting beyond 'excessive measures' they should have no need to do something like this - either they are not living up to their proimses to their customers if such a clause isn't there, or they ahve rights to kick customers out for surpassing their bandwidth limits (or take other actions). In any case, there are better ways to approach the situation besides using what is basically malicious net-disrupting software.
I am all for net neutrality. I think, first off, that the internet is a body that cannot be censored by a government, as it completely ignores international borders - traffic in and out of the united states networks is rediculously common - such is the beauty of the internet. No government, least of all ours that is based on things like FREEDOM OF SPEECH, which anti-neutrality laws would utterly destroy.
A few little one-liners I feel the need to jot down, so jotted they shall become.
Bioshock - has the makings of a great game. Survival/horror games arne't really my thing, but it does have its artistic and appreciative values to it. However, I will not go so far as to pass judgement completely yet. Most people are calling it revolutionary after playing what is essentially a 15-20 minute demo. Way I hear it, the opening 10 minutes of Uwe Bol's Postal movie is enjoyable enough too - but anyone who thinks he can string together a competent, whole, good movie would be fooling themselves.
Thats not to say Bioshock wont be great - I'm sure it will be quite good at the very least. However, I'm holding out my 'zomg!'s untill I (or at least some more people) have played the game in it's entirety. Maybe its just the fact that its a first person shooter with a fully developed plot that is driving people nuts. M'eh.
Blue (my dog) is growing quite well. Last time he was at the vet, he was 11.5 pounds, and I'm taking him in again tomorrow for his rabies shots, so I imagine I'll have an updated figure then. He is still cute, but he is now in what appears to be the puppy equivalent of the 'terrible twos' and as such is a handful most of the time. Worth it, though.
It's amazing that, some 7 to 8 years after I started playing it, I can still enjoy a night of counterstrike now and again. Doesn't hurt if you go 10 and 0 for the start ofa round, including a kick ass gun-juggling pistol round that nets 3 kills in a 6v6 game, but I digress.
I've recently signed up for Xbox Live, in anticipation of Halo 3's multiplay and (gasp!) online coop - I'm really surprised they managed to go for 4 player online coop - for something that I imagine would be a big market, a surprisingly small number of first person shooters are coop friendly - what I pine for is a coop oriented game. Gears of War did ok, and there is this upcoming 'Army of Two' that has an element of interest, but it seems a bit ...I dunno, it just doesn't have that allure. Its a very bloody game, and thats something I find that, lately, I am not into. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-gore (no, that is not a political statement), but I am just of the mind lately that it is unnecessary. That could tie in to why I'm not all that into Bioshock and everyone else seems to be frothing at the mouth. It's got a decisively dark, gory theme to it. The sort of demo movie (idle at the start screen) on bioshock is remarkably gory, but at the same time - its rare that you get such a perspective in a scripted event. To see the thing impale you is. . .well its something I've not seen done in a game before, and not even really done in movies (the only thing I can really think of is when, in the Matrix, Neo gets capped by Smith, you see from his eyes as he looks down, in disbelief, at the gaping holes in his chest - this is kinda like that, but instead of bullet holes, there is a gigantic drill busting out of your rib-cage Alien-style).
My search for a good game to play once a week or so with the guys back home continues to turn up bupkis. No one wants to join wow that already hasn't, and I don't particularly want to restart playing wow. UT is contrived, counterstrike is played out (for most people, not for me), and Diablo 2 gets boring after about 4 hours worth of play once you've done the whole 5 acts once. Stock shooters have little appeal, and I'm not really interested in rekindling starcraft on battle.net (I always sucked at starcraft - but I still loved it).
Any suggestions for good pc multiplay experiences are welcome. Newer games preferred - as of now, we all seem to be waiting on Hellgate: London. Although personally, I'd like to see us get into TF2 when the orange box drops, too.
