GamesReview UK

It's been a while since the blog was last updated. Frankly, I've just been too busy recently. However, fear not! For those of you eager to find out where my gaming time has taken me in the last few months, stick around. Updates will be hitting soon.

My focus has started to switch from text based reviews / gaming commentary (old net) to the ever evolving medium of v-logging. Most of my new posts will therefore be direct links to YouTube vids of mine. Be aware that some of this content will be strictly "for the lulz"! Call this laziness on my part if you like... I call it rolling with the online trends.

Also, due to some recent back-end housekeeping, you may find that certain links and pictures will no longer work for various older posts. This is due to a recent server change I've made for the older content from my original website. Although I have all this backed up, I don't intend to upload it all across into the blog again. The actual reviews themselves can still be accessed in the blog archives going back to 2003.

Review: Halo Reach

2010-09-17T15:21:00.003+01:00

by
The Critical Alien

Years ago, I posted an angry review about Halo 3. I didn't like it much but saw hope and potential in what was achieved by Bungie. Halo 3 was technically incredible but lacked the Halo feel and omitted a lot of features we all wanted to see at the time in 2007.

So, years later and here we are with Halo Reach. This is Bungie's final Halo game and you get the sense that they wanted to go out with a bang. For my money, this is the greatest Halo game I've played. It feels like the original Halo (which is good) and adds many new features to the mix. My favourite is Firefight mode. I'm a stickler for co-op and survival based co-op in particular. Firefight mode, which was first devised in last year's Halo: ODST, is insanely fun and addictive. I don't feel like I've even touched the surface of it either. You can alter any option you like and pretty much define the rules and content of your game to a precise idea in your head. Customisation, in every respect, is the key with Halo Reach.

Beyond Firefight, Reach delivers in all other areas. Matchmaking based Multiplayer feels even more polished and responsive than it did with Halo 3 and I suspect Halo: ODST (although I never played that one). It's fast at finding games but is still not quite as fast as the Call of Duty system. However, it's more sophisticated and essentially better. Any game mode you can think of is available and some you probably can't. Combined with the infinite potential for custom games, I'm going to go as far as to say that this is probably the most complete Multiplayer package I've ever seen in all my years of gaming online.

If the online side is not your bag then fear not. The Single Player (or 4 player co-op) Campaign mode is truly an incredible achievement by Bungie. I'm actually only half way through it, attempting Legendary (the toughest difficulty) in my first play through. However, I've seen enough to know this is the greatest Campaign of any Halo game. The word epic comes to mind. Every level is epic. There are no boring stages and you feel as if you could replay every moment again and again. I even loved the space combat mission.

The level design is excellent and the AI seems to be even more polished than before. No Halo game has ever suffered from bad AI though. Taking on an Elite in a one on one confrontation has always been the bread and butter of Halo for me. They are tough and always seem like a formidable, intelligent, adversary. So many games fail to achieve this sense of worthiness when it comes to the enemy's they throw at you. Even bosses in most games are nothing compared to just a standard grunt in this game. Bungie are simply the masters of AI coding.

Reach also offers the same Theatre mode and Forge mode we saw in Halo 3. Forge is improved and now allows for insane levels of design. You can essentially now make your own level. Your only limitation is the vast canvas of a map you get to use as your template for placing things down.

There really is nothing to fault with Reach (unless you're simply not into the Halo mechanic that is). Some have argued that the graphics could be better. Although this game is no Killzone 2 in the graphics department, the visuals are still excellent in my opinion. It's not until you go into Theatre mode and start zooming in on characters and vehicles that you realise quite how good the graphics actually are. Sound is also top notch, although I'm at odds about why Bungie decided to assign the sound of your weapon firing to a front 5.1 channel instead of the centre. It's no biggie though and you won't even notice this if you don't have 5.1 surround sound rigged up.

In summary, this game is as close to a flawless product as a gamer is ever going to see. 2010 hasn't seen much in the way of particularly memorable titles so far but Halo Reach has changed that. For my money, this is not only game of the year but also one of the greatest games I've ever played.

iPadded

2010-06-10T20:03:00.000+01:00

by The Critical Alien (on the iPad)

In my last blog post, I talked about trends. Well the iPad certainly is one. So I've got mine (have you?) and am now typing this up on it. I don't want to use this space to big this gadget up. I just want to make it clear that yours truly now owns one (and adores it).

The concept of an app (or widget in old speak) is nothing new. The rise of the iPhone in 2007 gave birth to, or at least propelled, the concept. However, no matter how good a game is on any smartphone I've always considered their screens to be too small to really get to grips with gaming on them. In my opinion, the iPad is much better suited for solid gaming. And so I've taken the leap into perhaps what is a new era, or at least platform, for computer games.

I'm going to talk about apps. Gaming apps. There are already some great ones available through Apple's App Store and so far I've been genuinely impressed, and surprised, by the calibre of these games. In this post, I'm going to list some favourites.

Angry Birds HD

Based on the popular iPhone app, this is an incredibly good little game. It's extremely addictive and based on a simple premise; to sling shoot birds via
multi-touch with the aim of penetrating defences and flattening those evil pigs. It's war against pigs and birds and about as brutal as any Wii game. To me, this game represents pure old school gaming goodness but, combined with the flawless tech that drives the iPad, it seems new to boot. This is pure gameplay combined with great, uniquely responsive touch technology on an incredible LED screen.

PInball HD

Another example of a gaming staple but one that greatly benefits from the merits of its platform. This is a brilliant pinball game and comes at a time where pinball as a gaming genre has surely been tilted out of the scope of consoles and the PC. It's really a perfect pinball game and better than any measly Xbox Live Arcade or PSN title you might find that boasts balls and the odd flipper.

Plants vs Zombies HD

A PC game brought to the iPad. This is a classy app and certainly got me reevaluating what ingredients are needed for a great game. It's just simple base defence in the form of plants you select and place in a yard repelling a zombie horde hell bent on busting your garden fence.

Worms HD

This is a games blog and no one reading it needs any introduction to
Worms. If you do, I suggest a visit back to Google. I was very impressed by this particular version of the Worms template. All the coolest weapons are here, along with multiplayer options and enough customisation options to keep teams varied. The key is the iPad's screen and, again, the intuitive nature of multi-touch for a game like this. A match made in heaven perhaps. WASD style is the way Worms evolved but I was able to very quickly adapt and now simply love playing Worms in this new way.

This is really just a little report on my current gaming time with the iPad. All I know is that I've been gaming on this more in the last week than I've been riding into sunsets on Red Dead Redemption. I've been iPadded.

State of Gaming: The Flow of Rehashes

2010-03-29T15:25:00.008+01:00

by
The Critical Alien

Firstly, follow me on Twitter you fools. K thx.

I'm currently playing Heavy Rain, which I've completed twice, and Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3. Occasionally, I'll step into Left 4 Dead 2 on PC. So does this mean I've finally signed up for the SDF? No. What is does mean though is that it's clear to me now that Sony are the only ones attempting to push gaming to the next level. Heavy Rain is simply incredible, and in many ways ground breaking. Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3 is technically impeccable. Due to the Blu-Ray format, it can be played in full HD goodness and with full Master DTS sound. The 360 version, all three discs of it, falls very short in comparison. As a game, FFXIII is just a bit of escapist fantasy. I love it because I don't take it seriously. I let the HD goodness fill my room and blast me into an alternative world (whilst muting the dialogue).

Personally, I'm starting to cotton on to Sony's master plan: push hard for the true HD gaming revolution and mammoth sized Blu-Ray content. This is the only way to move forward. It gives developers scope and vast space to play with. Now I'm no PS3 fanboy. I just follow the trends and roll with where it's at. The 360 still has the edge online, for sure, but what does that really mean when all you're doing is playing Modern Warfare 2 with 15 people? The battlefield is shifting.

In stark comparison to Sony's attempt to push HD, Blu-Ray, and 256 player warzones (MAG), we have what I like to call the Western Gaming Establishment. Now these guys just don't seem to want to budge and right now we're seeing rehash central.

I was going to review Dice's latest offering for PC, PS3, and 360. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to be precise. The problem is, I can't say a lot about it. The truth is that I'm starting to lose the will to review rehash titles and this is one. They come and go again, they offer no great advancement, and in some ways they even seem to be a step backwards.

You see, I'm a PC gamer at heart. If you read my blog posts, dating back to 2003 when I was a nipper, this fact isn't that hard to suss. This latest generation of consoles though has clearly blurred the line between PC and console gaming. The problem I find is that I'm now looking back to the days before this happened. When the PC was leap years ahead of console technology developers seemed to work harder at harnessing the PC hardware. Nowadays, they port it across nine times out of ten. These ports are subject to console limitations, such as ram limits, and it really shows.

Bad Company 2 is a quality game. It's a step forward from the extremely flawed original. I loved it for a few weeks. However, within those three or four weeks I was basically bored of it. It has a console sense about it. For instance, the maps are tiny compared to the PC exclusive of Battlefield 2 from 2005. The controls are clearly designed around a controller first, mouse and keyboard second. The PC centric stuff, such as the server browser, and player limit, are also clearly afterthoughts.

Sure, Destruction 2.0 is incredible. This is a system that sees every building brought down into rubble and every annoying fence knifed wide open. This is unfortunately where the innovation ends though.

In terms of the core combat, nothing has advanced that much since BF2. In 2005, this was the cream on the cake. In 2010, it feels five years old to me. Energy bars essentially. You snipe a guy in the chest and he never quite dies. It's all about headshots. This is fine though. All I'm saying is it's based on aged code.

What really is a joke is the gun selection. In an efforts to rival Modern Warfare 2, which wasn't that bad, Dice have attempted to implement a gun unlock progression system. Sadly, it makes no sense. Why are all the initial guns basically miles better than the stuff you unlock? It's important for starting guns to be good but surely not the best in almost every class! I'll accept that scopes etc do give you a sense of expansion though. The problem is just that there is little to no incentive to bother unlocking guns and when you do you're just downright disappointed.

Bad Company 2 is basically a good FPS. PC gamers have embraced it due to the horrible lack of high-end online FPS games currently out there. You know something's wrong when your steam friends list consists of people playing Counter Strike: Source and, in some instances, CS 1.6. This game has at least brought a new title to the table. For how long though is anyone's guess.

I'm becoming less and less interested in games that don't seem to shift the envelope. So here we are playing BC2 in 2010. We have destructible buildings but far smaller maps than BF2, no jets or warships, and half the amount of players? Something doesn't add up.

People joke about stuff like PSN Home on the PS3 but at least it's new and ambitious. I'm all about advancement. Rehashes are the enemy of gaming folks. They set a nasty trend and are designed to be rolled out, hyped, and sold to the masses.

Besides Sony, who encourage developers to do big things, I believe that Valve are about the only pioneers left out there. Steam is generally embraced nowadays and stuff like Left 4 Dead 2 has a calibre to it that cannot be denied. I'm hoping Half Life 3 is coming along because I can imagine it will be a real trend setter. Time will tell and in the meantime I'm left hoping for greater things to come for gaming than what we're currently seeing. Battlefield 3 maybe... hmm.

3 months later... Hello!

2010-02-15T23:45:00.001Z

By Morgan

Its all been fairly quiet since November and with work and my personal (gaming) life taking up most of my time, I've not really had the motivation to put hand to keyboard in Open Office. Still, 3 months later here I am ready to share my opinions once again. Prepare to not care.

2009 – A Review
I've been trying to write an intro piece for this section, the “Best of '09” however everything seems to generic and forced. Therefore I have taken the decision to jump right in. Instead of your usual categorised (and generally rigged) awards I'm just going to summarise a few of the games I played in 2009 and why I feel they are worthy of some playtime.

Starting chronologically
Mirror's Edge
I completed this game in one sitting for two reasons:
The first, because this game is incredibly short. My first play-through took me around 5 and a half hours. Don't get me wrong, there is a fair bit to do but in a game where the player character is constantly running, you're going to get things done fairly quickly.
The second reason? Its bags of fun. I remember renting this as I was unsure of whether it was worth the price tag of £39.99. Given its length I'd have to say no, however when I picked it up 3 months after release for the sum of £10 I felt like I'd committed daylight robbery. The story is fairly decent (if not predictable) with the bland looking back drop brought to life through the simple use of colours. Add that to an extremely smooth game-play experience with well mapped controls and you have a game that seriously should have been given more praise than it was.

Killzone 2
The Playstation 3's Halo killer. I quite enjoy how Sony are still trying to murder a near 10 year old game... Still, this is the closest they've come.
Akin to an action film, explosions and death are just a part of the Killzone 2 roller-coaster. You're not going to find an epic story, character depth or emotional scenes worthy of Hollywood blockbusters but you will have fun. Yes the controls are weighty but once you get used to them you'll wonder why you ever complained (and I have to wonder why as Bad Company 2 doesn't seem to be getting a rap for it). Its also visually one of the best games the Playstation 3 has to offer and packs one of the few multi-player modes I've bothered trying out on the PS3. Its an almost complete package and although repetitive at times, does just enough to keep you going.

Demon's Souls
This is what games should be. Described as impossible by some, I'd choose to call Demon's Souls “Unforgiving” in that although everything is painfully hard, there is always a way forward. I spent the better part of 2 days trying to get past the first 2 levels, it recently took me 2 days to complete Bioshock 2.
Yes the learning curve is steep, yes the enemies are powerful but so are you. This game combines some of the best things about RPG games (stats, weapons, armour, magic) and brings them all together in a way that actually effects your play style. Being a jack of all trades ala Final Fantasy will not help you win easily whereas a more methodical approach to character building will reap rewards in the long term. Try this game, even if its just for 2 days.

Uncharted 2: Among Theives
My game of the year and the only game I've ever purchased at midnight. Taking features from great games such as Tomb Raider and Gears of War is one thing, but to combine them so well with cinematic influences from the Indiana Jones series makes this game stand out amongst the crowd. Yes its an obvious comparison but its all there and it doesn't try to hide it, instead it uses the general themes of treasure, girls, guns and betrayal to its advantage; building on the first game whilst making every new feature its own.
The multi-player's quite good too...

Left4Dead 2
Not an add-on, not an expansion but a bloody worthy sequel. I enjoyed Left4Dead, clocking up around 50-60 hours of overall playtime. Since release I've clocked up nearly 80 hours on this game and with the large variety in campaigns, new weapons and interesting game modes its not hard to see why.
Scavenge is probably my favourite addition, akin to versus mode in its team vs team approach the games are shorter and rage quits generally don't destroy any semblance of fun. It requires a great sense of teamwork in a shorter time and can inspire some hilarious moments. Jockey'ing people off roofs has never been so much fun.
One improvement? A ratings system so rage quitters can be punished for their sins.

Honourable mentions: Resident Evil 5, inFamous, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Demigod, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time.

So rounds up my review. No doubt I'll get flamed for a) Only owning a pc and PS3 and b) For not buying Modern Warfare 2, though from my previous posts I'd say its fairly clear why I didn't...

As for the next post, hopefully it will appear sometime before April. Maybe I'll be venting about the colossal disappointment that was Bioshock 2 (for me at least anyway). Until next time.

Oh look, a Bandwagon, .. 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. Jump!

2010-02-10T21:41:00.004Z

The Modern Warfare 2 Review

by Robinson09

plus a quick take

by
The Critical Alien

So here it is, the most highly anticipated game of all time. Causing controversy that makes GTA look like a sequel to viva pinata, and selling a truly astronomical amount of copies (1.23m units in its first day in the UK), this game has really taken the world by storm.

I have a unique angle to the game, in that I am one of the very few who never actually played the first. Admittedly, I had a quick bang at the multiplayer at a mates and also owned World at War on the PC, but i had yet to experience that much loved single player campaign so praised from COD 4.

The first comment I'd like to make was the price. One of the first (of a few) reasons this game became newsworthy fodder was the fact that its producer, Activision, had decided to market the game at a £54.99 price point, about a £15 mark up on most game releases. This raised the eyebrows of many, seeing Activision really milking the franchise for all its worth. In my opinion retailers were never going to sell at that price point, with most settling on a £44.99 position. Much was my surprise then when I can pick up this game (again, the most highly anticipated game of all time) for a measly £26 on launch day. In fact, due to some cheeky sainsburys staff discount cards being thrown around, my copy was £22.10! It was a truly incredible price drop, like I'd never seen before for video-games. I mean, if they'd dropped the price to just £35, a fair few people would have be delighted, but to take a full £30 from the RRP on release day is just crazy.

But anyway onto the game. I was as excited as this kid as the game loaded up, having heard so much about the original, and knew I was in for a treat as the introduction movie ran, with voice acting and a musical score worthy of a Hollywood movie. And then I'm thrown into the Afghan warzone, apparently teaching the local Afghans some soldier skills. The graphics are glorious, I just couldn't stop looking around and taking it all in. I move through the small 'training' section that signals what your difficulty should be (I chose hardened - more on that later) before suddenly (albeit predictably) all hell breaks loose. Within minutes I'm in the back of a military Jeep, shooting the crap out of pretty much anything as we flew down a street (think black hawk down); the game moves so fast at points, your literally getting shot at from all directions and it really does feel intense.

As I mentioned earlier, I chose the 'hardened' difficultly level. Many COD players will be familiar with the system, and the kudos that come from completing on veteran (a feat I dare not attempt), but even on hardened, this game is hard. You will die, and you will most likely die alot. Often, you won't even know where the shot came from before you're down on the floor, blood pouring down the screen. However, whilst in most games relentless death frustrates me, it seems different in MW2. When you die, there's a short blood screen and then a fast load straight back to the previous checkpoint. This is seamless and quick, and with generally well placed checkpoints, you never really have to redo too much.

The difficulty is also where my first gripe comes however. There seems to be a slight lack of balance between the levels. For example, I was breezing fairly swiftly through the first few levels, with a regular amount of failure, but then hit the 'favela' level, which really seemed to turn it up notch. I died so many times I lost count, and frustration really started to kick in. For a Brazilian shanty town, there seemed to be an almost ridiculous amount of resistance, akin to some kind of crappy tramps military base.

Anyway back to the positives. Almost every level comes with a breath-taking set piece with many showing real innovation from the designers. They really are totally awesome and really show how the game is a step up from your regular run and gun FPS. The levels are also well designed and varied, with locations including Afghanistan, an oil rig, suburban America, a snowy place and an airport.

Now would be a good time to talk about one of the other reasons this game has been so controversial. The third level of the game has the player actively taking part in a terrorist attack, with the four perpetrators (including the player) committing mass murder. There is truly a sense of horror during this scene and it is perhaps unjustified. Although you are warned multiple times about the intensity of this scene, it still just doesn't seem right in a video-game.

All in all then, a solid FPS. I didn't really dabble with the online side of things though and I get the impression that's really where the party's at.

Alien's quick take:

I've played enough FPS games over the years to know when one comes along and does something differently and Infinity Ward's MW2 clearly doesn't do much new. It's essentially the same old game. This is CoD in every respect and I don't think I need to add much to what Robinson has said about this title. All I will say is that I simply loved the MP for the first few months. It then just got stale somehow. Unlike CoD 4, it wasn't a new experience and therefore the thrill didn't stick for as long as it did in 2007.

If I'm honest, I'd be lying if I said MW2 let me down though. It delivered the MW fix and that's really all we wanted isn't it? The MP is still up their with the best of them too. World at War was a non starter online for me due to the poorly designed maps and vehicles. If I want those I'll hit Battlefield.

The main thing to discuss about MW2 MP is the plethora of new kill streak rewards. It's basically air-strike city. Call in the Pave Low buddy! I wasn't happy to see the spamming initially and felt the raw arcade skill of CoD 4 had been reduced to harrier whoring. It does grow on you though (although I still think the chopper gunner is a joke). Due to the map design and carefully designed anti-air perks, things aren't as chaotic as I feared at first. The reality is CoD 4 will probably seem lacking in this department now with its measly three pre-set support options.

Single player isn't the reason I play CoD. Not since CoD 2 have I cared. When I played CoD 4 back in '07 and realised its SP greatness I was shocked. I loved it like we all did. However, I wasn't expecting this again with MW2 and didn't receive it. It's workable and I kinda liked the whole "betrayed by the man" dynamic. I'll accept it was about as original as your average Seagal movie though. It's also just pretty short.

I want to discuss this game more in a pending post I am putting together on the latest grim pattern that seems to be developing in the gaming industry. I think for now I'll just keep it at that. All in all though, MW2 certainly gets a thumbs up from me.

Still alive!

2010-02-04T18:04:00.007Z

by
The Critical Alien

It's been a good while since anything new hit the blog. If you've been standing by, in hope for some great new post, then I apologise. I guess we've all been too bust binging on MW2. However, fear not! I intend to roll a few new posts out in the next few weeks covering some of the most pressing gaming developments.

You're Late!

2009-11-16T20:31:00.003Z

By Morgan

Things I’ve been playing recently:
Borderlands
Uncharted 2
The Left4Dead 2 Demo
The Torchlight Demo
Dragon Age (the reason I’ve missed another Monday post)

Given that the merits of Uncharted 2 have already been discussed in an earlier post, I’m only going to say that this is a game of sheer quality. Its one of those games that really pushes this medium as an art form, blending fun and intuitive game play elements with an exemplary cast and script.

Borderlands and Left4Dead 2 have been briefly run over by myself, so I’ll avoid these two. As much as I love Borderlands I don’t feel that there’s much more to say than it’s a brave attempt at a new concept, flawed if you will by its own design. Left4Dead 2 will be receiving a bit more coverage from me around the time of its release.

That leaves us with (arguably) this year’s two biggest RPG releases. Both games are vying for the void left between the date Diablo 3 was announced and its eventual release (probably in around 5 years time). I was going to rant about why I hate developers releasing in game footage of titles when they’re nowhere near completion but I don’t want to sound like a miserable git. Instead I’m going to actually discuss why after playing over 30 hours of one, and around 30 minutes of the other I adore both.

Created by a team of RPG veterans, Torchlight focuses heavily on Dungeon Crawling game play mixed with the same click to attack style of combat found in the Diablo games. For a short time, it’s an extremely fun game and its one I could see myself playing in bursts (and for £14.99 I’m not complaining) however over a long period of time, I’m really not so sure it will hold me as much as say... Dragon Age. That’s not to say Torchlight isn’t a good game, it has both good and bad points. Its just a shame that for me, its repetitive game play stands out as a bad point.

Overall, the thing that really stands out for me in the game is the music. Immediately on your arrival in the town a huge sense of atmosphere is created by the sombre song playing in the background. It’s almost depressing in tone, but works really well to set the mood of the dead end town you find yourself in. Inside the dungeon itself, the music takes much more of a background role to the well recorded combat sounds yet still manages to set the dark and dangerous feel of each floor you pass through. It really does help to make the very repetitive game play much more bearable and it is easily in my opinion, the game’s best feature.

Bioware’s latest effort, Dragon Age takes influence from a variety of mediums including most fantasy genres and of course, tabletop Dungeons and Dragons. What Bioware Game (Mass Effect not included) would be able to function without stats, stats, more stats and damage rolls. As confusing as it may be to your average gamer, it’s something that quickly becomes clear after an hour of play and in my opinion there is nothing like it. As ridiculous as it sounds, what better way is there to ensure you never play the same game twice than by adding random chance to almost everything you do in the game! Seriously, I’m not complaining here! I know it’s a huge over exaggeration but it’s something that I feel is a core component of the genre. Baldurs Gate was rock solid because of it and luckily, Dragon Age is just the same (to the point that I *may* have lost some hair).

The one thing that had kept me engaged throughout the difficult situations was the constant need to progress though the story within the game. Engaging narratives have been common features within Bioware games (even if they can be criticised for their similarities over the various games) and this one is no different, combining traditional medieval themes of war and treachery with a swords and sorcery fantasy setting. It works well for the most part, assuming that you ignore some of the stereotypical plot points and contrived characters (Morrigan) and focus on some of the better things to come out of the game (Opening Character Sections, Shale).

At present I’ve clocked up around 50 hours in the game and according to the in game progress calculator I’m around 30% of the way through. For £30 I think this is fantastic value for money, especially when you consider most games nowadays offer 6-8 hours of single player game play, with developers assuming most players will fall in love with the multiplayer side. In terms of numbers, you’re getting around 6 games for the price of one here and it’s a great deal for a great game. Definitely a game of the year contender.

This is all starting to look a little jumbled now so I’m going to quit whilst I’m behind. Stay tuned sometime this week (hopefully) for a Left4Dead 2 piece.

Gaming Podcasts

2009-11-16T12:09:00.007Z

by Robinson09

I'm sure that many of you out there own ipods and the like, so therefore enjoy a good podcast. I have various favourites 'casts on my ipod, some gaming ones in particular. I have chosen my favourite two and thought id would share the enjoyment with you!

First up we have the Gamespot UK Podcast, which can be found her e.

Presented by the brilliant Guy Cocker (insert immature name joke here), this podcast releases a new recording 3/4 times a month, generally between 1 and 2 hours long. The team discuss all the latest gaming news, latest reviews and also have a special guest for every episode, often a highlight. Guests are generally from a more obscure gaming background, giving a great in-site into many different sections of the industry. The podcast has a high production value and is very informative and entertaining, making it a great listen on the bus or when walking the dog etc.

Secondly, i would also recommend the Joystiq podcast, which accompanies the great gaming blog Joystiq. Find it here.

This podcast, recorded in the states, I would class as second place to gamespot UK. The cast is very informative, and i find that discussion on certain issues can be deeper than GSUK and more provoking. The podcast is also fairly humorous at points, but where it is let down compared to GSUK is the production value. Whereas GSUK is very tight and well produced, Joystiq takes more of a 'wing it' approach, with people entering and leaving randomly, mobile phones going off and various sneezes and what-not throughout the recording. This does let it down, but its a good podcast none-the-less.

So i suggest you check them out. Stand-by for my Modern Warfare 2 review, making sure i give it a proper play through, and I'm finding some parts fairly hard at the minute. Should be up soon though.
Thanks for reading.

Fear? not really.

2009-11-12T09:19:00.007Z

By Goldfingers

Fear 2 is the successor to the popular PC game Fear, a ‘port’ later ended up on 360. Well successor is perhaps not the right word, but I’ll get into that later.

Once you get into the game most PC players will immediately notice one thing, black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Yep that’s right, they didn’t bother to add support for 16:10 resolutions and if the recent steam hardware surveys are anything to go by it’s easy to see how it’s an annoyance for most people. From then on I realised this was a game made for consoles, and pc was now the ‘port’. Now let me make this clear, Fear 2 is a console game.

The game actually looks pretty acceptable aside from the black bars. Although it suffers from a boring colour palette (and the black lines) the game looks quite pretty; great effects, satifisfying blood puffs, a few shiny textures here and there.

Once you actually start shooting at stuff there are a couple of differences that differentiate the game play to fear 1, but largely you would be forgiven for thinking it’s the same game. The biggest improvement is that when you aren’t in slo-mo mode the combat still feels great. And it creates a more cinematic feeling of going back to normal motion- slo mo and so on. In fear 1, while the combat felt great in slo-mo the weapons all felt wrong, they didn’t do enough damage and the recoil was too much in normal speed. Aside from that it’s still going to try and scare you in the same ways, except there’s a difference this time. You’ve seen it all before. In fact the enemies are almost identical to the first game as well.

It’s a simple story; this super being that they have created is now going mad and killing everything in sight. She’s more powerful this time, and actually seems a formidable foe. In fact the parts of the game with Alma in are actually really fun, atmospheric and often scary. Right now your thinking how could anyone go wrong with a story so simple as that, right? Well IW choose to tell the story through notepads, borrowing from games like system shock 2 and doom 3. There are few cut scenes, and the radio messages do little to explain things. The problem is, these little notepads have some of the most cringe worthy writing I’ve ever seen In a game, simply has to be seen to believed.

The sound does it’s job fairly well, it’s all in 5.1 and works. It creates more of an adrenaline feel this time, rather than the tense atmosphere of the last game.

Overall you’re getting an average experience, it all works it just doesn’t do anything really well. For fans of the first game prepare to be disappointed, and for those who haven’t played the first game; stick to that.

Football Manager 2010 Review

2009-11-08T18:59:00.010Z

By Robinson 09

Being my first post on the site, i have decided to 'kick off' (excuse the pun) well within my comfort zone with the new football manager release. My love of the football manager genre began with Championship Manager 4, since which i have been a sucker with my money every year since.
Last years title saw the introduction of the controversial 3D match engine, and with new competion from the now revived Championship Manager series, what improvements can Football Manager 10 offer to hold onto its crown?

The first thing you notice is a total re-jig of the user interface. This hit me for six, having just come from FM09, trying to navigate around the new UI was particularly dificult. After a while the new setup does come easier, but still, admittedly after just a few hours gameplay (like clicking you fingers in FM terms), i still feel myself getting frustrated with what seems to be a rather fiddly UI (The continue button is now in the top right hand corner! Why put it there, it has never been there, it should never be there etc etc).

So, the UI apart, what other new features do you get from FM10. The 3D match engine, first introduced last year, has seen a years worth of polish, which really shows in the end result. The play seems much dynamic somehow, with 'over 100' new player animations, the whole thing just feels slicker and altogether more enjoyable. Ball physics seem to have been notably improved, so watching the net ripple as your midfield maestro curls one in from 30 yards looks great.
Other things that i have found especially useful are the inclusion of 'Backroom Advice', where your staff offer there advice on various different actions you could take to improve the team or sign a new player etc. For the lazy player (like myself), this enables quick and easy changes to be made. Players can also now 'Shout' tactical changes from the touchline for his team, and also chant and gesture rudely towards the referee (ok, that may not all be true). This extra tactical option adds another layer to FM's already extensive tactics system, but in reality, I didn't find myself using it much on a regular basis.

So yes, its football manager. They still don't have the license for the German National Team, and it will most definitely still eat up large amounts of your time. As with last years game, i will be trying to win the champions league with Everton, which is always good fun (my 2.3 million signing of Ruud Van Nisterrooooy is looking inspired).
The thing is, for the first time with a FM game, i would rather be playing last years title. I wish that Sports Interactive had taken the 'If it aint broke' approach on the user interface, as this is where the game seems to be let down. This may well improve with time however, meaning Football Manager 10 is still very much the undisputed king of Football Management Games.
Thanks for Reading.

Weekly Update

2009-11-02T23:26:00.009Z

By Morgan

Rather than a full on article this week, I'm going to be skimming over several topics. After spending most of my week playing Borderlands I've become fairly out of touch with what's going on in the gaming world. Of course, I won't just be talking about Gearbox Software's new game, I'll also be reviewing some of the stories that have been brought to my attention this past week.

Borderlands
After taking advantage of the 4-pack deal on Steam I had expected a wonderful co-operative experience from Borderlands that would combine the game play of Fallout 3 with the old school Dungeon Crawling loot of the Diablo series. Instead what I found was a worthy effort at re-inventing a genre, verging on brilliance but unfortunately failing due to simple mistakes made by its developers.

Upon release for the consoles Borderlands was blighted by networking problems that often meant a large majority of people could not host or join co-operative games online. Worse still, the PC version that was released around 2 weeks later still had these crippling issues, despite a console patch being released the previous day. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the game; however if a publisher chooses to market a game on the strength of its co-op play they should at least make sure the developer has not cocked up the netcode before release. Yes there are workarounds such as lan software (Hamachi, Tunngle, Gameranger) or port forwarding however these should not be needed. It reeks of laziness on the part of Gearbox and its hard to justify paying full price for what is essentially a broken game.

They have however nailed something that a lot of games are missing these days, fun. When you can get a co-op game going this game is fantastic, just make sure to play with friends if you want your fair share of the loot. I just feel that simple development issues are stopping me from enjoying it even further.

Left4Dead 2
Another moan as pre-order customers get shafted once again. A demo that was 2 days late, no apology and no real benefit to pre-order customers. Yes, there is a hat that you can use in Team Fortress 2, but if you don't own said game, its more money you're paying out just to get your pre-order bonus.

Modern Warfare 2
I'm glad I left it a few days late to write this article, else I wouldn't have stumbled across this great transcript from a chat session with the Infinity Ward team. I am astounded that the developers of one of the most successful games ever seem to be continually driving away a market that has allowed them to reach the position that they are in today.

It would also seem that a video entitled “Killing FourTwoZero” (That's IW's Robert Bowling) has been removed from Youtube as Activision claimed copyright infringement. Are they are blind to the storm they have caused?

...And Finally
Dragon Age: Origins is released in the UK on Friday and I honestly can't wait. After being hooked on the flash game I am eager to jump in to the full game head first and lose myself just as I did with Baldurs Gate.

Moan, Moan, Moan... and Moan

2009-10-26T23:43:00.008Z

By Morgan

I’ve recently been trying to write an article regarding the current Infinity Ward Dedicated Server malarkey, however I find myself struggling to provide anything other than what’s already been said. Therefore during this article I’m going to moan about Activision.

Robert Kotick can’t seem to get enough of controversy at the minute. Here is a man at the head of one of the top gaming publishers in the world, a man who is in charge of so much responsibility and a man who for his own reasons, seems to hate the gaming world.

First he announced the rise in pricing for Modern Warfare 2 with copies reaching up to the dizzy heights of around £55 per console copy of the game. This was shortly followed by a complete contradiction of his former views claiming that due to the high price of the Playstation 3 and its accessories, Activision didn’t feel it was a profitable platform to produce games for. All of this coming from the man who watches Guitar Hero (a game with a plastic guitar) sell millions of units with each going for up to £100 in the United Kingdom on release. Seemingly not content with angering the console and pc crowds, Kotick recently made a speech at the 2009 Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in which he claimed the future of video games (more specifically, game development) was one “without fun”; a nice choice of words there from one of the most powerful men in gaming.

Kotick doesn’t seem to realise that the games industry is an entertainment one, built on the foundations of fun. Imagine if he was in charge of cinema and film distribution. Would every film be a low budget, art house piece of crap where we sit and watch a girl drink, smoke and cry for 5 minutes whilst a man pats her on the shoulder? Probably, but heh, if we take out the fun all we’re left with is mind numbing boredom and drawn out references to social problems (for those wondering about the above, it’s probably daddy issues). The problem is that if said film sells out he’ll be encouraged to make more (unless he’s Uwe Boll, in which case he will just make more...).

As the industry grew it was always likely that management types such as this would take an interest and it’s a shame to say that we as gamers may have brought this upon ourselves. Who else remembers the days of demo’s, shareware and (dare I say it) free games! It was a time in which people were just expected to have fun and nothing else. Nowadays it’s all about addicting the consumer to a concept, rather than allowing them to just enjoy something.

Games such as World of Warcraft rake in millions ever year and although enjoyed by gamers, one has to ask what exactly it gives people over other games? An epic story? Great characters? An amazing setting? Endless replayability? You could probably tick some boxes however a lot of questions remain. Endgame raiding for example just screams endless repetition to me and can it really be called replay value when you’re paying money for the game each month? Sure fans may love it, but for me, the growing price of the game over time does not make it a worthwhile investment. Compare this with a game such as Dead Space that cost a maximum of £40 on release (Around 3-4 months of World of Warcraft, not including the price of the boxed media), a game that attempted (and succeeded) to revitalise the horror genre. Despite its great reviews, the game encountered poor sales EA and had apparently considered scrapping the brand until they saw the cult following it had developed. Companies seem to be in favour of scrapping innovation in return for a profit, and it’s something people like Kotick are really pushing for. The problem is that shareholders and investors are seeking profits and are likely to agree with him, thus forcing the industry down a very bad road.

Before someone says it, piracy is NOT the answer. But neither is shelling out large amounts of money on games that are using their name to generate interest. Just look at FarCry 2, what a crock of shit that was. Look for innovation, look for fun and through buying these games we can hope to show the industry that fun is the way forward, that fun is what the consumer wants when they’re spending their money.

Maybe a Modern Warfare 2 article next week. Maybe...

Uncharted 2: A new era of gaming

2009-10-26T11:59:00.009Z

by
The Critical Alien

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

I've never actually said this before about a game. Uncharted 2 has blurred the line for me between film and game. Finally, after years of gaming highs and lows, a game hits that does pretty much every single thing right. There isn't any issue with the game. There isn't any blemish that erodes its greatness. This, my friends, is as good as gaming gets.

Whenever I play Uncharted 2, which I've completed twice now, my reaction is always the same. It plays like a movie. Ever since the first 3d titles, games have attempted to mimic and recreate film. Set pieces have always been an attempt to portray cinematic moments. As far as I'm concerned, gaming has, since its infancy, been on a journey of catch up with film as a narrative medium.

I guess Half Life 2 was perhaps the first example of this boundary dissolution between the two. In that, characters were lifelike and there was never a differentiation between cut scene and game. Steven Spielberg, the CoD4 whore, even commented on this and believed this was where games needed to be heading in order to reach the next level. Uncharted 2 is surely the first game ever to cross this boundary. Personally, I think GTA IV was close but didn't quite make that jump.

Beyond the characters and dialogue Uncharted 2 is simply an excellent game. The level design is homed and never overly fleshed out. The action is tight too. The cover system is perfect, and works online, as is the cool melee system and climbing mechanic. Even the enemy A.I seems flawless. They make an effort to flank you, use cover effectively, hurl grenades, and even retreat.

I honestly have tried to find flaws here. If I was being picky, I'd say that perhaps the last level lacked the sheer wow factor of mid-game stages. This is such a straw man though. Perhaps the only thing that can be said about Uncharted 2 is that it could do with even more co-op levels. The co-op isn't linked to the single player, a good thing, but with only three levels to play through with mates you soon plough through it. However, more are likely on the way in the form of DLC.

The multiplayer is generally excellent. Matchmaking is here but works well for this sort of game (not for stuff like... oh MW2 on PC). There are also other co-op modes for up to three players such as a fun and unique gold rush mode and standard survival. This game has also opened up the Playstation Network to new great things that Xbox Live users have grown accustomed to. Now all we need is cross game chat ;)

I don't want to go on about Uncharted 2 too much for fear of coming across like a fanboy. I don't care what console this game is on, nor do I care if it could or couldn't potentially run on an Xbox 360. All I know is that Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is one of the best games I've ever played on any format.

Infinity Ward and the PC Community

2009-10-25T22:27:00.029Z

by
Laxe

Well, as a new contributor to the site my first post will be on a topic that's quite big right now in the PC community. Namely Infinity Ward's decision to take away dedicated server support for their new title Modern Warfare 2 (you may have heard of it).

Now before I get flamed by the console crowd be aware that I do own all the current gen consoles and handhelds bar the DS Lite cos I sold that a while back. I chose to play many of the multi-plat games on the PC and if it was a console only game the PS3/360. I do not play FPS on the consoles if I can help it, mainly due to the control scheme but also due to the match-making. As a matter of fact I choose to play my FPS and most other games on my PC because I find p2p match-making botched and very often laggy - something which dedicated servers alleviate.

Personally I don't know why Infinity Ward decided to get rid of the dedicated servers instead of having both match-making and dedicated servers. It's not like they're mutually exclusive methods of getting into a game. Also I cannot understand why they did not go for a 'master server' which EA did with Battlefield 2142 where there were stat tracking and had a log-in system in order to prevent pirated copies playing online. This worked fairly well in my opinion and whilst not perfect (stat-padding etc.) it still supported dedicated servers which many PC gamers prefer.

Of course I know many console gamers don't know nor care why the PC gamer crowd (or most of them from what I can see) are so uptight about this change Infinity Ward has made to Modern Warfare 2 but for me it's simply this: they've taken away the online advantages of playing online with the PC which hinges around those dedicated servers and lag-free gaming. That and now that the player cap has been reduced from 32 players to 16 to account for the p2p connection which in my eyes means less fun with more players in games. Some may not see it that way but the value proposition of the game has suddenly plunged four-fold so far.

The fact that Infinity Ward says that these changes were made to cater to the 'casual' and 'moderate' COD4 player is somewhat of an oxymoron. Such players either do not mind the server browser or don't exist. Those that found PC COD4 intimidating have either moved past the difficulty curve of choosing a server (which, let's be honest, if you can install a game on a PC and configure it you won't have much trouble at all) or have moved on to the console scene. I do not think that COD4 nor MW2 will ever be a 'casual' game by any stretch of the imagination and therefore saying that such a gamer exists on the PC is both an ice-thin argument and laughable.

It is a sad state of affairs overall in the PC community and I can't see this getting any better anytime soon. There were other avenues Infinity Ward could have taken to combat piracy (which will always be a problem on both the PC and 360) but the lack of choice of method is one I cannot accept. On a deeper level I do not like the fact that they have waited until now to announce these changes to the PC community. One could say they knew that there would be backlash and wanted to quietly slide this under our noses so near to release, especially if the claim that they have invested a lot of time and money into this new system. Surely one would think they'd want to shout about it from the rooftops if they honestly had believed that IW.NET would be a resounding success?

As many I don't think I will be buying this game and have instead pre-ordered Borderlands which I had not before since I had assumed all my gaming time would've been taken up by playing MW2. It's sad to think that within two years Infinity Ward has changed it's tune so drastically regarding the PC community; from their stance on supporting modders and dedicated servers (see here for an interview with Grant Collier) to the poor excuse of catering for players that either do not exist or are the distinct minority of PC gamers. That and the lack of information about IW.NET this close to release does not alleviate my concerns for the tone Infinity Ward are taking towards PC gaming in general.

For all those who are interested, please sign the petition here and show your support. As of writing it has reached 156744 signitures. If anything it will show Infinity Ward how many people's toes they are treading on with this decision.

Clash of the mil-sims: A dragon is rising

2009-10-14T17:18:00.012+01:00

I'm not even convinced there is such a genre as the mil-sim. There is really only one true fully fledged military simulation game and that is Operation Flashpoint and the Arma series. There isn't anything else out there that is even remotely comparable to those Bohemia titles. However, it is clear that the tubes speak of the mil-sim nowadays like it is a defined category of game. The reality is that most realistic war games are closer to tactical FPSs. The mil-sim is something more than just that. It is a sandbox open world where a multitude of military vehicles, small arms, and disciplines can be played, tested, driven, and destroyed.

I was going to talk about Arma2. My review of it didn't quite finalise what I had to say. However, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has now hit and I've decided to combine my opinion on this new game with what I have to say about Arma2.

The reception Dragon Rising has received seems to be pretty negative from the perspective of the community yet rather positive on the reviews front. This is because no matter how hardcore a games reviewer is, writing for a well known website or magazine, they are not in the same obsessive league as those true mil-sim aficionados who will spend hours arguing on youtube over whether or not the Chinese fire green tracers or not.

Dragon Rising is all about accessibility. Arma2 is more a toolkit for smart people. Dragon Rising aims to bring the mil-sim (or in other words the original Flashpoint template) to the masses. In my opinion, this has been achieved. Console players seem to like the game. It is easy to learn but not so easy to master. Arma2, on the other hand, is hard to learn and hard to master. It is just hard. I love Arma2 though. But I also love Codemaster's new take on the mil-sim.

Sadly, most of my gaming buddies don't do sneaking around in the bushes with night vision goggles on. They're too busy grinding in caves or surviving onslaughts of the undead. I did manage to get one pal onboard for my tour of DR though. Using neat virtual LAN software to get over the problems with the game's influxed master server, we hit some co-op. We aren't yet close to completion but I've seen enough to know that DR is a quality game.

DR is alot like the original Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon before Red Storm Entertainment got shafted and Ubisoft borked the franchise in the GRAW series. You can't muck about. Enemies will catch you out and cleverly flank you. The key is in applying realistic doctrines to your assaults and behaviours in game. This is why I like DR: because using real world tactics actually achieves outcomes. Even Arma2 sometimes fails to achieve authenticity when it comes to stuff like this. Enemies won't be pinned down by suppression for example whereas in DR they will be suppressed if you sustain enough covering fire on a position. They also run away and even play dead. Gunfights are dirty affairs but when things go to plan it feels oh so great.

It all reminds me of Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. This was a vastly underrated game that adopted the same system as DR. This is squad based combat and it is homed for that. Co-op for up to four players is what DR is all about although the A.I is workable.

Arma2 is a different sort of experience to this because Arma2 is realistic in ways no other game attempts to realise. If DR is hollywood realism then Arma2 is just realism. Hardcore mil-simmers want full realism. Most gamers want a mixture. Me, it depends on my mood and that's why I have both games on PC.

The editor that ships with DR for PC is simply incredible. It's probably more sophisticated than Arma2's one and is certainly much easier to learn. However, CM made a pretty big mistake with regards to hosting your mission files. In order to play them with people, you must manually send them the files first. Not a big issue but I personally loved showing random players in Arma2 my crazy attempts at a mission.

There is also a 64 object limit for the editor in DR. Clever people will overcome this (CM are sure of it) but it requires proper scripting knowledge in the LUA language. This means that DR's accessibility doesn't quite put a lid on the complex ambitions of mission makers out there.

There is no denying that Arma2 is the real Operation Flashpoint sequel. It is also a far more ambitious game. However, DR is still a good game though. It isn't as good as Hell's Highway (and if that game had co-op I'd be in heaven) and it really feels like a console game but it's sound, tactical stuff. It also achieves a greater sense of immersion than Arma2. This does fall short with classic console coding limitations though, such as enemy bodies vanishing after 30 seconds.

In summary then. What I'm saying here is that it isn't that Arma2 is a mil-sim. It's that Arma2, and other Bohemia titles, are the only mil-sims. Dragon Rising is a tactical FPS and a rather good one. Ultimately then, there is no clash going on here. Personally, after all is said and done, I'm left wondering what could have been if Codemasters and Bohemia had never parted company. As a fan of the original Flashpoint from 2001, I still feel that the polish of Codemasters as publisher combined with the genius of Bohemia as developer is what both these games ultimately lack in order to be classed as truly great games.

by The Critical Alien
2009

Batman: Arkham Asylum

2009-09-21T15:40:00.004+01:00

I don't care much for caped crusaders. Never been one for the comic books. It just hasn't ever resonated with me. Because of this, I've never really been interested in computer games based on comic book characters. However, Arkham Asylum has proved the one comic book game that stands above the usual suspects. Here we have a genuinely great game and one that actually makes the uninitiated rather interested in the man dressed as a bat.

Simply put, this game is a master class is level design and pacing. It is vanilla gaming. Gaming 101. I couldn't put the damn thing down. Like a great movie, it ends too quickly and you want more. Challenge mode keeps you going though once the single player is dealt with. It's fun for a while and gives you quick access to punch ups and stealth stages. You can also freely roam the map once you've done the game and hunt for all the riddles and trophies you may have missed.

I'm not one to go around trying to find all the lost gems in games and even with Arkham Asylum I don't really plan on bothering to get that 100% completion achievement. That is just me though. The game is just a masterful romp around a well designed island. The fun of the fighting system is probably unsurpassed. I've not seen a better scrolling beat-em-up since Streets of Rage 2. There is also a really nice sense of cinematic quality to the set pieces and the gadgets are well implemented as they all must be used during certain points.

Solid as a rock game by Rocksteady. You don't see this sort of old school stuff that much nowadays. It's a fresh title and one that really came from nowhere for gamers like me not that interested in the source material. A quick review I know, but there is little else to say. If you are reading this and own either a PS3 or 360, or have a decent gaming PC, just go and get this one. Anyway, back to the batcave.

by The Critical Alien

Sequels, sequels, and more sequels

2009-09-21T15:14:00.016+01:00

I've not updated the blog in a few weeks, largely because all I seem to play nowadays is Left 4 Dead and occasionally Arma 2. However, quite a few titles are around the corner. For those that might be interested, here are the games I intend to play and review over the next coming months:

Batman: Arkham Asylum (review now here)
Halo: ODST (maybe) (Update: Actually, I cba)
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (Here)
Borderlands (co-op fest)
MW2 (clearly) (Update: Bad news)
Left 4 Dead 2 (Those swines)
Natural Selection 2 (If it ever makes an '09 release date) (Update: Which it won't)
Uncharted 2 (I smell a classic)

And if that's not enough, I'll also be revisiting Arma2 at some point because certain things just need to be said. So stick around and I'll be in touch.

by The Critical Alien
2009

Left 4 Dead: Pros in action

2009-08-10T14:25:00.007+01:00

Left 4 Dead is, in a word, awesome. Nothing seems to beat the co-op mode when you're with a good team and taking on an equally good team in the versus mode. This vid shows me playing alongside some gaming buddies. This is how the pros do it. Take note.

by The Critical Alien
2009

Bloody 'Armazing'

2009-07-26T21:59:00.015+01:00

It's so easy to knock a game like Arma2. It is a behemoth of a game; aiming at meeting the expectations of a community of gamers so hard to please that even real militaries sometimes fail to convince them things are done a certain way (America's Army 3 for example). Arma2 is the spiritual successor of Operation Flashpoint and is, in many ways, just like that 2001 title.

The interface is essentially the same, only far more sophisticated. You get more options. You get more units. You get improved A.I and you get one stunning new graphics engine. For me, the fact I got a brand new map to play with and make my own missions on was enough. I guess the one things that really is new here is that map in all its graphical glory. Stunning. There is no game to compare this 225km2 landscape to. It feels real and lush and takes us noticably a step further into a virtual subspace. Oblivion was the first to really do this in 2005. Now we have Arma2.

I could go on and on here about why Arma2 is easily the greatest FPS/Military Sim ever made. It is an acquired taste though. Many will only take note of the bugs and sure, it has them in abundance. Many will also just dislike the intense realism and the fact that you just cannot play this game rambo style. Arma2 is a tactical affair and one that simply acts as a gaming platform at its core. The fanbase will mold this puppy like they did with the original Flashpoint and first Arma game. Mods will eventually come out that will improve on aspects that are arguable lacking. Already, a stunning sound mod has been ported over from the original Arma community and works great with Arma2.

Any PC gamer with a good enough rig needs to at least check out the demo of this game if only to see the graphics. But be warned: this game is a demanding one and even mid range PCs will struggle. I recently bought what can only be described as an ub3r gaming rig and even I struggle. To be honest, this is largely down to current issues the game has with Nvidia's flagship GTX295 card and Bohemia have promised us patches that will fix these problems.

The gem with Arma2 isn't the campaign. I haven't really even touched on it. Nor is the gem here the adversarial mp. If you want that, play Call of Duty 4. The gem is co-op. This is plain and simple. Co-op in Arma2 is co-op squared. No game compares. Any console game looks old and weak in comparison and even most PC-based co-op games fall short of what Arma2 offers: the ability to make and host your own co-op missions/scenarios and play them effortlessly online with as many mates as your bandwidth can handle (about 3-10 I'd say). The YouTube video posted above is my very own and based on a mission I am currently working on. (see here)

The sad thing here is that most PC gamers really just have a lot of hardware catching up to do to join this co-op fest. If something like this ever made it onto Xbox Live... game over competition. There are rumours that Arma2 is, in fact, being ported to the 360 and I am very excited at the prospect. Let's hope they manage to transfer this "create and host" dynamic onto a console. Without it, the game wouldn't be the same.

In terms of platforms, Steam is the way to go with Arma2. Although it doesn't support cloud-based features or server lists and steam friends invites, it does automatically update itself (which is worth the extra few bucks alone) and supports the Steam in-game interface. This allows for you to talk to friends whilst in-game and simply makes arranging games a more hassle free affair. However, I will admit to being slightly disappointed at the lack of 'full' integration. It really is no big deal though as the netcode is stable and hosting private games is a piece of cake.

I am simply in gaming nirvana when I have the tools of Arma2's inventory at my disposal. I have made a bunch of missions and keep learning more and more aspects of the powerful mission editor. I have hosted them and played with mates and it feels like gaming has finally enabled a level of freedom never before seen. I can make my own scenarios and play them with friends. From this point on, anything else for me is going to seem dated and seriously limited in comparison to this.

There are issues with Arma2 though. The flora/grass is great but doesn't exist after about 20 feet. Ground is bare and featureless besides trees and bushes beyond this point. This means that no-one can truly hide in the grass as they will be seen by people at a distance! Bohemia fixed this in the original Arma with a patch that simply created less detailed grass at a distance and basically need to do the same here. There are also just general bugs with everything from a certain weapon's firing animation to the fact players tend to get kicked from mp games when the host switches a mission. There is one word for this though and that word is patches.

Fixes will come and Arma2 will improve. Mods will hit and Arma2 will find new fans. Arma2 is a platform and I cannot stress that enough. No developers out there are doing what Bohemia have done here. They have released a toolkit for the wargamer. Everything from first aid modules to hand signals can be enabled or disabled in the editor and for the single player side of it there is even a random mission generator that allows you to define the type of battle. If you know what you're doing, you can even then save these missions and put them in the appropriate folder of your Arma2 dir and host them online! True gaming freedom.

If everyone who is remotely into war games had the kind of PC you need to fully embrace Arma2 then I think we'd be seeing far more hype about this game. The reality is though that this game is just too revolutionary for most gamers to take on board. Firstly, you need a really high end PC to get the most from the visuals. You also need to know what you're doing and be prepared to 'fiddle' and experiment with tweaks in order to get those extra frames per second. Perhaps most importantly though, you need to be a patient and mature gamer. Not a gamer who is only after the quick fix sensations of the linear 'CoD' genre. This game spoonfeeds you nothing. You have to go out and find those gaming moments. The thing is, once you encounter them they are real and unscripted. Nothing else comes close.

by The Critical Alien
© 2009

Arma2 on Steam: PC gaming is back on track

2009-06-08T11:31:00.005+01:00

I'm going to be quick to admit that, for the most part of last year, I was brainwashed by console propaganda. Me, a veteran PC gamer, spending all my gaming time and budget on Xbox 360 titles and eventually even a PS3! I'm suddenly now at a point of total 360 reversal though. Console gaming has its place, sure, but PC gaming looks oh so promising once again.

I sort of gave up on PC gaming by about mid 2007. Essentially, the realisation that Call of Duty 4 was best played on an Xbox 360 and Live got me thinking and negating any potential long overdue system upgrade. I was also just fed up with the hassle of the installation process. Why doesn't it just work like with a console, I'd say to myself. I got infuriated by driver conflicts and low frame rates. I just wanted straight forward, hassle free, gaming on my HDTV.

Of course, I was right to think this way for a while. PC gaming was, for all intents and purposes, dead during a black period of about late 2007 to... now. Two things have suddenly changed this. One is Steam. The other is Bohemia Interactive's Arma2.

Steam

When Steam first launched in 2003, I hated it. So did everyone. Even your mother hated Steam. Steam was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Steam, worse even than that, was Jar Jar Binks when it came to gamers. No-one wanted anything to do with it. It was the enemy of IRC, CS 1.6, and celeron processors. However, Valve knew what they were doing. Steam improved and it's now essentially Xbox Live on a PC... only better and free.

Because of Steam, I've hit up a few games and love them because of the ease of being able to download them and play them with friends. Left 4 Dead and Killing Floor are Steam-centric games and no-one can imagine playing them the old way.

Arma 2

Arma2 is BIS' latest title; a hardcore mil-sim and by most accounts the greatest. I'm an Operation Flashpoint vet but never played the original Arma due to my lack of upgrade in 2007. However, Arma2 is the reason why I've upgraded to a very high end rig and 24" monitor! It is the reason why I'm unlikely to log into Live or PSN for months. From what I have read and seen, this game will be astonishing.

When you combine the literally unlimitied potential of Arma2 with the fact it is going to be released on Steam this month I think it becomes clear that a very special moment awaits for those gamers that are into the FPS / mil-sim genre. This will be an easily accessible large scale co-operative game of scope and purpose. Sure, it will have bugs (that will get patched) but in the words of Eurogamer, this is clearly one of the most ambitious games ever made.

If I had to select one game to play for the rest of my life I would still, to this day, say Operation Flashpoint. However, this may soon be set to change to Arma2. Everything is in place here: gorgeous graphics, realism, a mass of customisable weapons and vehicles, a new and powerful mission editor, the huge 225km map, and countless online modes. I have no doubt that the mod community will also truly flourish. There are already impressive vids out there of projects that will no doubt add to Arma2's greatness.

There is also the potential of the organic campaign. I've read things about this that have simply flawed my expectations. Firstly, it is four player co-op. Secondly, it is persistent and not based on any standard mission structure. Things change on the fly, intel comes in, and you decide who to trust and what to do and what not to do. Like a real recon team, you're forced to act on information as it comes in. The potential here for arguments and squad in-fighting regarding what direction to take is enough alone to put a smile on my face.

Another important thing to note about Arma2 is its landscape. This game looks like it has an exploration factor comparable to Oblivion. The scenary, the animals, the plantlife, all stunning. The civilians, the weather, the night and day cycle, all incredible. This game is one to check out. Roll on the 19th! It is due out on Steam on the 30th but here's to hoping that they move that forward soon to match the retail release.

by The Critical Alien
2009

A journey with the PS3: I came, I saw, and then I went "Meh"

2009-04-16T18:22:00.020+01:00

I've spent the past few weeks in a daze of sorts. DMT? No, I wish. Alcohol? Sure, but that's only partly to blame. No, my real drug of choice has been Sony's Playstation 3.

I've sampled this piece of kit in every manner possible and come to some interesting conclusions. This is a tale of my time with the PS3, split into sections detailing each specific area.

The interface

Crucial to the console experience, the initial interface or hub is as vital as anything. Coming from the Xbox 360, I was at first a little at odds with the lack of eye candy. I then realised that this was actually a rather cheeky little interface; enabling you to customise most elements. Needless to say, I stuck a nice pic of a lady up for my background and was pleased to see it fully on display (unlike with the NXE and its random black blobs of blockage).

DVD playback

The PS3 is the DVD playback king, no doubt. The upscaling is incredibly good. End of discussion. Oh yeah, and blu-ray is good too.

Killzone 2

It seems as if this game is, by itself, a part of the PS3 so integral that it almost seems embedded in the console. I was very won over by the hype before this game came out and I will admit that it was a major factor in my mind when it came to deciding whether to buy or walk on by.

For me, FPS titles are where it is at gaming wise. KZ2 is a mighty title. It is graphically incredible. It is technically impeccable. It has very good online multiplayer. However, here comes the inevitable. It is essentially just another linear FPS. It gets old quite quickly. It suffers from all the old FPS faults and it isn't as good as CoD4 online. Nuff said.

Playstation Network

Now here is where my proper analysis kicks in. We all know that the PSN can barely touch Xbox Live when it comes to ease of communication. However, what amazes me about PSN is simply how reliable it is most of the time when compared to Live. This is largely due to dedicated servers being the norm in most games.

For a game like KZ2, dedicated servers aren't around and yet the lag seldom sets in. It is generally a flawless affair. However, with games like Little Big Planet (see below) lag creeps in like a wasp through your car door on a hot summers day.

"Be gone, lag! Hello?"

The above line about sums up ones inner thoughts and linguistic behaviours during a session of LBP - the game I "wanted" to love. You see, the PSN succeeds only with a few games whilst in others you simply begin to miss Live. I hate admitting it but I have grown accustomed to Live over the years and can't seem to tolerate the choir of trying to arrange a session with mates without the Live tools at my disposal. Even before NXE's fantastic party mode feature, for years Live allowed gamer to send messages, arrange private chat, and quickly send invites. Sony take note.

The PSN is a form of stripped down, bare essentials, online experience in comparison. Like an old Soviet T-34, the thing works but just lacks the polished, feature-ladden sparkle of Uncle Sam's M1a1 Abrams (and yes I do know that this is likely the worst cross tank / online system comparison ever considered by a gamophile on the internet).

In all fairness though, a brilliant new feature has just recently come out with a firmware update. Now you can create private text-based chat channels and use them to communicate with friends when in games. Not quite a party mode but it's close and actually something Live doesn't have.

Little Big Planet

Made just up the road from me, LBP is a unique gaming experience akin to taking five dried grams of psilocybin magic mushrooms. The only difference is that with psilocybin you get to see self replicating machine elves, whereas with LBP it's all about sack people.

LBP represents a lesson for me. This is a lesson I should have learnt a long, long time ago. That lesson is this: don't go telling people to get a game unless you know for sure it's worth the cash. I waxed lyrical about this thing for weeks. The problem was I hadn't played it much online with other people. When you do, things fall apart due to lag.

I've tried playing this with two or three friends and the lag kills all fun. With one other, it is just about playable but even then gets sluggish and hangs during load times. Lag, or netcode, utterly ruins this game online and the whole point of this game is the online component.

PS3 Home

Ah, now the fun bit of my little tale. Home is a kind of Second Life-like, Active Worlds wannabe but without the ability to make your own world and show your mates. Instead, you get an apartment that no-one ever sees because no-one cba to look at how imaginative you are when it comes to arranging generic furniture around a template room.

Home is essentially a 3d realm of Sony hegemonic adware. You get to look at posters for PS3 exclusive games. You get to watch videos of people talking about the PS3. It is all very stomach churning. Home is also unoficially a 3d flirting space where males attempt to chat up females who are, in reality, males looking for lulz.

For a week or two it was fun but I soon got bored of telling people great anecdotes about all manner of things only for them to say "I have no keyboard".

It was all looking bleak for Home until...

Xi

Xi, which literally means something, is a sub Crystal Maze ARG, or Alternate Reality Game. Basically, Sony made a sort of persistent MMO challenge, split into missions and clues. You start in a lobby environment and eventually enter the "games" area. This was the state of play the last time I logged in. It gets updated constantly. However, I'm no longer interested.

In reality, Xi is an exercise in Googling. You need the answer to the first mission? Cba to actually work out the puzzle for yourself? Google the code! Google the next code! Google the answer to everything until you actually have to start doing something with your controller.

The first real mini challenge is a fun series of timed arcade games. You then get to have a go with the six axis tree dodging. Finally, you get to experience a text-based rpg old school style. I was just about still interested up until this point but then suddenly a new mission struck. Now, you're expected to do all those mini games again... only on an expert setting. Read strict time limits and other annoyances. I gave up with it. Where is the incentive? Nah, it's not worth the button pounding.

Browser

If I'm honest, the main reason I got a PS3 was for the internet browser, which I heard was very good. I was pleased to discover it's true greatness. 90% of my PS3 time now consists of just resting in bed watching Youtube, iplayer, Dailymotion, etc. The way you can make videos full screen and view them on your HDTV is just total goodness.

Life with Playstation (formerly Folding@home)

Wtf is this? No, seriously. I still don't know. It seems to be a series of mathematical downloads akin to Seti packets of data for CPUs to churn over. Whilst the cell works, you get to look at a globe and read news stories. Downright random. I wasn't won over. I wasn't even approached by anything from what I can tell.

Conclusion

The PS3 is a highly sophisticated device capable of all sorts of things. Little touches like upscaling and wireless connectivity out of the box impressed me. I actually like the interface too. It's simple and mature, unlike the NXE; a horrendously misjudged mish mash of childish theme and adult content.

Although I like the PS3 for being an all singing console, the sad truth is that I know the 360 will still woo me back to it everytime with its promises of easy mic-based communication, invites, fast and instant downloads, and a vaster library of games. All I know is that last night I was on CoD4 on Live and it felt oh so good.

Here's the deal with the PS3. It's not a games console. It really isn't. It's a sort of blu-ray/dvd player with an internet browser and a decent set of codecs for file playback. This thing is basically a big bad black son of a... media player.

by The Critical Alien
© 2009

A new direction... sort of

2009-03-18T18:06:00.005Z

I've been thinking about it and have decided that reviews just don't work for blogs. People may disagree but it just seems out of place somehow. I've also concluded that reviews in general are almost a dated concept in this ever-evolving new era of the personal computer.

From now on, I won't be continuing with the review template; that is, I won't give a game a score out of ten. I want to share my thoughts about games I play, sure, but no longer see the point in giving them the review treatment. If a game is pants, I'll just say it.

I no longer believe that scores hold any real meaning, particularly when it comes to computer games. What a gamer thinks one day about a title changes a week later. There are so many things to take into consideration: longetivity, playability, the potential for patches and updates. The list is endless.

I prefer the idea of offering my own take on games without trying to forge a review on top of that. So, farewell to ye olde rating system.

by The Critical Alien
2009

Demo reactions

2009-02-10T17:51:00.004Z

Precisely what it says on the tin; my reaction to some of the latest demos to hit Xbox Live and the Playstation Network.

Resident Evil 5:

I'm not a big Resy gamer. Not since 2 have I cared, and to be honest I didn't care that much even then. I wasn't that blown away by anything I saw with this demo. I'm not feeling the controls (who is?) and wasn't impressed at all by the death animations of the zombies. The levels in the demo felt linear and horribly tight. There doesn't seem to be much exploration factor and although I never really got my teeth into Left for Dead, I doubt this game will be able to compete in the zombie stakes. Co-op might prove fun but I see no great game to behold here.

Halo Wars:

Oh my. Is it just me? Wars is a sickeningly generic RTS affair. There is nothing going on here. I, for one, can never go back to the old school RTS template after playing games like Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. This demo just felt dated and stamped with a big sticker marked 'Halo merchandise'. Fun? Maybe for a short while but this really is just a hideously average looking RTS game and nothing else.

Killzone 2:

Firstly for the record, I now have a PS3! Go me. I am going to post something separate soon detailing my experience of the console switch and my take on Sony's side of the gaming pie. Now, KZ2. I went into this demo open minded but with the knowledge that I had been spoiled by years of PC and 360 FPS games. Everyone keeps affirming that the PS3 doesn't do FPS titles. It just doesn't. Well, it now does. I was very impressed by this one. This is an adult FPS game and aims to please the veterans out there. The A.I is smart, the graphics obscenely good, and the general production values are clearly way, way up there.

There seems to be a big fuss right now about this demo's suposede 'trigger lag' and sluggish movement. This is what happens when an entire generation of FPS gamers start their epic journey with titles like CoD4. They grow up thinking it's the norm to be able to pull off a twitch 360' jump head shot from 50 metres, bless them. KZ2 is a different kind of FPS. This is a nice hybrid mix of Vegas and Halo. From my experience with the demo I am certain I am going to love the full game. The multiplayer may very well be the next big thing too.

F.E.A.R 2:

Oh dear. Remember the first time you watched Robocop 2? No? I do. It was a weird experience. You knew that the movie's wasn't all that bad. It was just that it wasn't Robocop. Why? Different Director. F.E.A.R 2 isn't made by the same people as the original and you can tell within about thirty seconds. This is a good example of a bunch of immature games makers being allowed to run with an idea and just keep running. By the end of the demo, you've probably seen more ghosts than you saw in the entire campaign of the original. I basically don't think this will be anything like as good as the first one.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest:

Late to the party with this one I know seeing as it's already out now. All I will say is that I respect Pandemic for trying something new here with the old team deathmatch template. It plays like World of Warcraft pvp split into rounds. Ultimately though, it's just hardcore button mashing. It's also a sad example of poor balancing. You either play as the scout or... well you just play as the scout. Probably not one to buy then.

by The Critical Alien
2009

Review: Gears of War 2

2009-01-07T11:11:00.010Z

Format: Xbox 360

Category: TPS
Players: 1-10
Publisher: Microsoft

Those gears of war

It look me a while to get round to reviewing Gears of War 2. I wanted to assess it after a long playtest. My initial reactions were positive but I wanted to delve deeper. I wanted to know, for sure, that this was as good of a game as I thought during those first few days. Time will tell I said, and it did.

There is no denying that the original Gears was a great game. It set a level that many titles still fail to come close to. Even two years on, this is still stunning to play. About the most important and integral feature of Gears was its pioneering cover system. Replicated many times but arguably never bettered, this turned what would otherwise have been a brilliant third person shooter into a stellar game worthy of an Xbox 360 purchase.

Gears 2 was seriously hyped prior to launch but the hysteria never reached that ridiculous fever pitch we witnessed in 2007 with Halo 3. It is obvious that due to Gears 2's mature content the marketing was carefully targeted and word of mouth relied upon. In other words, any half serious gamer knew about Gears 2 and had made it a 2008 aim to pre-order.

The truth is that there is nothing overwhelmingly new about Gears 2. It plays just like the original and the visuals are arguably hardly much different. I say arguably because I've been told to go back to the original now after playing the sequel because apparently you quickly realise quite how dated the original suddenly looks compared to the new game. I'm cynical but will confess I haven't tried it.

The cover system mechanic is the same as before but simply didn't require any alterations. The single player is about as dramatic as the original and two player co-op is still a possibility. I have to admit that I just wasn't that bothered about the single player though. This isn't a fault of the game itself. It's just that it has gotten to the point now for me where I crave multiplayer and large scale co-op. I was just too busy on Horde mode.

Simply put, Horde mode is where it's at. Easily the best feature of Gears 2, this is a five player co-operative mode where you are expected to simply hold your ground and survive against increasingly tougher hordes of the locust enemy. It's basically GRAW 2's defend mode... done well. For about three weeks no-one on my Xbox Live contact list could put it down. We lived Horde mode for days on end. I even dreamt of Horde mode. Horde mode... mmmm.

I'm pretty convinced I know precisely why Horde mode works so well. It's because it genuinely requires co-operative team work to get through. Without working together you will get stomped on, hard. By about level 25 it's intense to the point of cardiac arrest danger territory. You know a game is dynamite when you're listening to four other grown men screaming wildly like schoolgirls over headsets at 3am because a Grinder just breached the defences.

When you're done taking on the swarms a very workable matchmaking-based five-on-five adversarial (Tom Clancy language) mode awaits. Now, I've always sucked at Gears when it comes to the player versus player angle. I'm not one of those Quake-style gamers who can be bothered to run half way across the map each time a round begins just in order to pick up some grenades or a sniper rifle. Therefore, I generally mid table it every time and tend to use the shotgun religiously.

For this reason, I wasn't as excited about the team deathmatch stuff as others out there. However, I will acknowledge the fact that it's clearly very good; with a vast number of settings/gametypes to fiddle with and well implemented bots to fill the numbers and practice on.

So, what about time? Has it told? Sort of. For me, Gears 2 was a love affair that actually only lasted around a month. When your Live contacts start failing to accept your invites to Horde mode and you're left playing with the 13-year-old gamers things fade. There are also several omissions here. There should have been a clan creation system, with ladders etc. There also should have been single player co-op for more than two players. Remember, we live in a post Halo 3 gaming world here. I'm also of the opinion that Horde mode now needs a fresh update. Give us the ability to go beyond level 50, create crazy objectives, and allow players to set the type and amount of enemy? Customisation ftw.

Gears 2 is awesome, clearly. I'm just reaching that point now where I can no longer get that excited by a game unless I'm playing alongside lots of pals. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm now officially a co-op whore. Horde mode is Gears of War 2 and, in the famous words of Faithless, I want more.

Summary

+Gears greatness
+Matchmaking for Gears greatness
+Horde Mode
+The greatness of the Gears
-No clan support

9.4 / 10

It's Gears of War 2!

by The Critical Alien
© 2009

Writers

2009-01-01T10:30:00.040Z

Current:

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PS3...

2008-12-27T11:20:00.003Z

Hmm. Do I buy a PS3 or don't I buy a PS3?

2009 will be Sony's year, I predict. Home looks sweet. Killzone 2 is primed. And perhaps it is now clear that Blu-Ray won the format war. So, during this time of economic upheaval, is it really a wise move for me, an Xbox 360 owner, to spend hundreds on this great black obelisk-like machine?

Discuss.

by The Critical Alien

2008

The New Xbox Experience?

2008-11-27T19:02:00.005Z

Microsoft don't do philosophy. I do. I ask the big questions. The kinds of questions that would leave even closet Satre's flummoxed. One such question is this: what exactly is the New Xbox Experience?

I've spent the last few days pondering about this one. My conclusion is based on literally two hours of intellectual toil. 'NXE' is an odd concept. Microsoft wants you to believe that their recent dashboard update for the Xbox 360 is a major step into new territory, but is it? Let's weigh it up.

Initially, there is clearly a wow factor once you've switched your 360 back on after the update's initial installation. The new design for the dashboard is neat and modern. It really goes to show how, even in the space of just three years, the design of software can move from cutting edge to obsolete. The old dashboard design had clearly done the rounds and needed to go. However, I'm not so convinced it was replaced. In reality, the NXE is a paintjob.

The major new feature is the Avatar. You create a Wii-like alter ego. Clothing and shaping your avatar is a laugh for about five minutes. I spent a good deal of time perfecting mine because I imagined some great 3D lobby beckoned. However, no such 3D massively multiplayer platform exists. The avatars are ultimately the biggest waste of effort I think there has been since Sega launched the 32x.

What is the point of an avatar when there is literally no environment available where you can take them? The answer is there is no point. None at all. The 'friends' blade (are they still called blades??) is random. It's interesting to see how your friends have designed their avatars but this blade is the only section of the dashboard where you can view them. Because of this, they don't seem integral to your Xbox experience. They feel gimmicky and less central than even the old gamerpic you can select for your profile.

About the only thing to praise about the NXE is the new party feature. Finally, you can have up to 8 friends form up in a private party via the dashboard and either migrate into games together or do as you will separately whilst still being able to speak in the party's private chat. Essentially, this new feature equates to the end of trash talking... if you want it to that is. No longer do you need to be in public channels to be able to speak to more than one friend at a time. Expect a good deal more silence when playing games solo from now on.

For me, the NXE needed a really solid 3D world where you and your buddies could chill out independant of any game. The party mode should exist within a 3D private lobby - akin to something like Habbo Hotel's room creation. Omg. I actually just mentioned Habbo Hotel. Kill me now.

I'm sure Microsoft are due to spam us with mini games featuring 'avatar support'. However, we will no doubt have to pay for them. As far as I can see, the NXE will be based in a sadly 2D world. This reality check got me thinking about Sony's Playstation Home. I'm interested to see how Home shapes up once it finally comes out and will certainly be tempted to give it a go if it turns out to be as good as the hype suggests. Like I said in a previous post a while back, I predict Home may well represent the great console shift to the PS3 unless the NXE actually competes with something more than a gimmicky Avatar system thrown into the fray.

In conclusion, my personal take on the NXE is that it's a very convuluted dashboard paintjob. Party mode is fantastic and I cannot stress how happy I am to see this. The problem though isn't with the party mode. It's with the rest of the NXE. There is nothing to behold besides a slightly fancier marketplace front screen and some nice new camera effects if you keep your Vision Camera plugged in when on the dash. The NXE doesn't really seem like much of an experience to me, or particulary new for that matter. Hmm.

by The Critical Alien
© 2008

Rant Review: Call of Duty: World at War / Call of Duty 4 (???)

2008-11-18T21:29:00.011Z

Format: Xbox 360 / PS3 / PC

Category: FPS
Players: 1-18
Publisher: Activision

What the CoD?

Time for a new feature: the quick capsule review, aka a rant review. Inspired by an obscure Hicksean joke, I have decided to 'quick capsule' those games I just cba to actually properly critique. This may be for various reasons but you can rest assured that it will always be for a reason, and not just due to laziness on my part.

So, CoD: WaW. It was inevitable this game would hit and hit it did. I wasn't even going to bother picking it up but swapping Far Cry 2 for a part exchange in a well known games store ensured the coinage came calling. To say I was sad to part with Far Cry 2 would, simply, be a lie.

I didn't expect much from "CoD5". Treyarch's games catalogue reads like a token example of a list of games that should be put on a bus for a one way trip to the desert. However, I wanted to give this one an open mind. People had told me that it was surprisingly good. Infact, many have even dubbed it 'the greatest' WW2 game ever made. Let's break that down.

I guess people are impressed by the dramatic set pieces that... wait. No. Let's roll back a year or two. So there was this games developer called Infinity Ward and they created a few great WW2 FPS games off the back of their expertise having worked on the original Medal of Honor titles. By 2006, they got working on their magnum opus, Call of Duty 4. They made it from scratch and set a gold standard in the process. Call of Duty 4 was, and still is, that standard for FPS games on both the PC and consoles.

A few months pass. And here we have CoD: WaW. Quick Capsule review time: this game is merely the sum of Treyarch taking IW's CoD4 formula and just dumping a few new ideas into the mix. This is literally akin to someone taking a core code for a game, customising the options screen, adding a new score over the top, and altering the maps/player models and then announcing it's the latest big thing.

I'll admit that, at first, this game actually really surprised me. At one point I fell for the line that Treyarch had actually pulled it off. I then realised that this was far from the reality of WaW. The reality here is that people are paying for a CoD4 clone. There is nothing new here. Co-op is decent enough. However, I'm not convinced it was particularly hard to implement. My real gripe is with the adversarial multiplayer. Compared to CoD4, it's just not that good. I can't put my finger on it. It's a sense of there being a lack of that magic touch to the map design we saw in CoD4. It's in the way weaponry lacks that cool and solid feel you get in CoD4. It's in the lack of red tiger camo. WaW just isn't as inspired.

It's also in the small things. The voices of the enemies and buddies alike. What they say. How they say it. The voiceover you get for the start of a multiplayer match. All of these elements are superior in CoD4 because they just are. I also prefer the helicopter for a 7 kill streak over a pack of dogs anyday.

Guns, generally, are a massive failing point for WaW. Nothing is particularly exciting to use. For God's sake, to pit CoD4's arsenal of cutting-edge military shooters against the back catalogue of your Daddy's WW2 era firearms is only ever going to result in one winner when it comes to gamer satisfaction stakes. Treyarch needed to breathe life into these rusty guns in order to keep them exciting to use. We needed a little bit of artistic licence here. The M1 Garand, for example, needed a far more weightier, bass-heavy, blast of a sound effect. I don't care if your sound engineers didn't conclude that would be authentic. Also, camo patterns should have made it in in order to insert something into this dull set of boom sticks. There are also way too many bolt action rifles.

All WaW is is the product of an inferior studio trying to copy a superior one by literally pasting an entire body of code into their new game and tweaking/screwing with it in p-laces. About the only welcome new feature I could find was the filter for matchmaking that allows you to search for local gamers only (about time this became a standard over live). WaW does a few things well, such as the co-op and decent new gore system. The new zombie mode is also a neat bonus. However, I refuse to accept this game does anything better than, say, CoD2 when it comes to dramatic set pieces and linear level design. For me, it's also just a damn frustration that this WW2 title has taken all the limelight and left Hell's Highway in a cold and lonely shadow. Highway is the superior WW2 shooter even after its lack of co-op and poor multiplayer is taken into consideration. This is because it tried to do something different and ambitiously placed a heavy emphasis on realism.

CoD4 is all about the fun factor both on and offline. That is why red tiger camo is acceptable. That is why you can take on near enough one hundred baddies as a solo sniper guarding a man with a busted up leg. CoD: WaW tries too hard to be a 'horrors of war' piece and trust me when I say that computer games cannot achieve this like a good movie or book can.

Here be my conclusive take on Call of Duty: World at War:

Quick Capsule:

Online: Inferior to CoD4 in every respect - including map design, weapon selection, gametypes.

Single Player: Just another linear CoD romp. Co-op is fun but nothing ground breakingly good - particularly after experiencing Gears of War 2's Horde Mode (review to come soon).

Because of everything I have stated above, I refuse to actually score WaW. This is because I fear giving it a mark out of ten will negate my primary message here; being that CoD4 is the game and WaW is some pretender trying to make out it's the game. However, seeing as I never actually reviewed CoD4 back in 2007 I will use this moment to rate that glorious title instead.

Summary (Call of Duty 4)

+Linear gaming at its finest
+The paragon of pure FPS games
+Intense, dramatic, heart racing action
+Simply put, the greatest FPS multiplayer experience since CS
-Co-op... if only

9.6 / 10

The pinnacle of a crowded genre both on and offline

by The Critical Alien
© 2008

Review: Far Cry 2

2008-10-30T18:58:00.010Z

Format: Xbox 360 / PS3 / PC

Category: FPS
Players: 1-16
Publisher: Ubisoft

Roaming the Bush.

Now here's a game that looks at first to have it all. A grand arsenal of guns? Check. A vast and varied map? Check. Smart A.I? Check. However, let's look a little closer. Cover system? No. Satisfying gunplay? Nope. An actual sense of being lost in the wilderness? Never.

You see, Far Cry 2 is not what it at first seems. I was excited to begin with. Everything was in place. The graphics are certainly a cut above most FPS games and the clean and clear HUD made me smile. It basically looks like real life. The problem is once the bullets start flying this game falls apart. It just doesn't feel right. I can't explain it but I know many out there will just know what I mean. Shooting an enemy just isn't satisfying. Firing your weapon is a generic experience and there is just a total lack of intensity about the combat.

You do a lot of driving in Far Cry 2... until you discover the bus stops. Even after being teleported via a black loading screen to the bus' destination there is still a good deal of marching to be done. I say marching because jogging/running in this game is broken. Like the gunplay, it feels wrong. I guess the PC gamers out there (all remaining five of them) might have no issue with this whilst playing WASD style. Sadly, us console gamers do. Pressing down on the analog stick COD4 style to run is how it should be. However, not being able to easily change direction mid run is awkward. Also, a problem for all formats, comes the blemish that is the way that running means your vision will become blurred around the edges of the screen. This pointless effect seems designed with some aim of achieving realism in mind. However, this actually simulates nothing and just proves irritating and even enough to spark motion sickness with some.

There is no denying that there is a real exploration factor here. After the initial thirty or so minutes of missions that are indirectly designed to teach you the controls, you are free to do as you will. I took a vehicle, hit the road, and headed out into the wild. To begin with there was an amazing sense about this. The hot African sun bombards your windscreen as you negotiate thick foliage and ramshackle dirt tracks. The driving side of things is very well handled. You get a first person view of the inside of the vehicle and are free to look around whilst driving. You can also study your map, which you hold in your arms, and still move around. This simulated view is a far more immersive way of putting you in the driver's seat than something like GTA IV's bog standard external views and bizarre windscreen-mounted-cam view.

Your journey will eventually come to a firm halt whether on foot or off roading though. Regardless of what way you go, you'll encounter impenetrable rock faces that oddly seem to run parallel to the roads as if nature mapped those very paths. In other words, the map is sectioned up. It doesn't feel realistic. I wanted to just head into the bush with a pistol and a machete and just get lost in a wilderness. It just doesn't work that way. Head in a direction for long enough and you'll hit a mountain side. There is no way to climb rocks or devise elaborate methods of crossing over. The game just doesn't really give you that sense of battling against the elements and pulling through.

Far Cry 2 needed more in the way of an emphasis on survival. There should have been the option to buy a tent and deploy it whenever you wanted and use that as a save point. There should have been a way of collecting various resources in order to make stuff like primitive bows. I don't know. It just seemed to me to lack everything I wanted from such an African setting.

The missions with Far Cry 2 are your standard go and blow up some crates tasking objectives. To be honest, I didn't bother with many. Instead, I roamed the map and created my own story. I often 'pretend' things when playing these kinds of games. In my world, I was a lone sniper out to cause as much chaos as possible whilst remaining out of site. I moved from enemy checkpoint to enemy checkpoint and engaged with an old Springfield bolt action sniper rifle from a distance. After playing in this manner for several hours I had basically unlocked almost every location marked on the map.

It was certainly fun. However, it was rather a pointless tour of duty. Sniping is completely effortless, with no scope drift or bullet drop, and the enemy make no effort to hunt you down. I wanted to see a collective effort by them to track me. I wanted to see swarms of them rambling through the vines, coming to get me. Instead, I just saw a load of checkpoints; where enemies patrol and never budge from. Once killed, they eventually respawn, ready for it all to happen again.

Many reviews go on about the awesome fire effects in this game. Personally, I think it's pretty worrying when the best thing you can say about a game is that the fire looks cool. Sure, it spreads around a little, only to then puff out into smoulder before you've got yourself a forest fire. Nothing burns for long and no major structure is destructible. I'll admit that on one occasion I was very impressed by the way fire can be used as a distraction. I sneaked over a promontory of rock where I had an overhead view of a few bad guys patrolling a... shed. I hurled a molotov and it lit the grass alight. They all ran off screaming 'fire' whilst I sniped them one by one. It's all good but just not enough.

Far Cry 2 is let down by its gunplay. Death animations aren't impressive. The blood effects are also poor. I wanted to see pools of the red stuff under bodies and entry and exit wounds. I also just wanted to see more realistic enemy behaviors. The A.I isn't stupid but the enemies don't strike me as organised. Okay, they're a bunch of militiamen with AK-47s and not much skill. However, this is no excuse for the way they never seem to just do human stuff like call for backup, stay in cover, or just run away.

There is a possibility here that I'm missing something regarding the A.I. You see, I ended up playing this game on the easy/normal difficulty settings. This was because otherwise, I just kept getting killed by crazy enemy jeep assaults (see further below) or just found it impossible to survive with enemies charging me and the sluggish control handling making precision firing next to impossible.

Just to cover it, I may as well bring up the game's multiplayer offering. To be blunt, it sucks. It feels dated, much like Hell's Highway's recent attempt. Also, it is another game that suffers from its lack of any co-op mode. The idea of roaming this vast world with a buddy to share the experience with would have made it all worthwhile. The hyped map editor is all very well but I'm just not into map making. At first glance it just looked too complicated to me and I doubt we will see many console players embrace it. It's interesting to note that at the time of writing the most popular custom map was a user created 'Shipment' from... yes you guessed it, Call of Duty 4. To me this was yet another example of multiplayer gaming truth number one: map design makes or breaks an online game. Map editors are all very well but they need to be backed up by... good maps.

I'm going to round this up with my final few points. The whole, 'omg I have Malaria, best take my meds', feature is BS. It shouldn't have made it into the game. You have to make sure you are stocked up with pills or otherwise you'll suddenly find yourself wondering the jungles and thinking you're under the influence of eight dried grams.

It was also sad to see this game suffer from the Oblivion style 'bandit on the road' syndrome. Whenever you drive across the road you're bound to encouter enemies driving jeeps and riding shotgun with a fixed MG. In other words, you'll get shot up and f*cked up unless you, too, cruise in a vehicle boasting some form of turret. You die, you die, you die. All because some jeep smashed into you and you had no time to grab cover.

This is a game that boasts it all but the execution is just lacking. It's just not that fun or satisfying to play. Combat is overly simplified and the marvellous world you roam lacks any real sense of life besides the generic evil militiamen and the odd zebra. This title is more a showcase than it is a computer game. It's a tech demo with a hefty pricetag for admission. If you're that desperate for some African sunsets, just get saving for that real trip.

Summary

+Visually stunning
+Uniquely realistic fire
+Pretty limitless freedom
+/-(But the map is sectioned up via rocky borders)
-Combat is generic and lacking in intensity
-No real sense of getting 'lost in the woods'

7.8 / 10

With freedom comes generic content and a dated FPS experience

by The Critical Alien
© 2008

Brushing up on some Gears

2008-10-28T22:00:00.004Z

I wonder quite how many people are doing, or have been contemplating doing, what I got up to for a great deal of last weekend. With the imminent release of Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360, I felt it wise to return to some old ground with the original Gears of War. Released in late 2006, this is still one beast of a third-person shooter.

Playing Gears again reminded me of quite how good it was. Sometimes it's too easy as a gamer to knock games and take the truly important stuff for granted. Playing through it on the Insane difficulty setting with a pal over Xbox Live co-op affirmed for me one thing above everything else; that this game still remains to be bettered. No shooter has really come close to offering the level of co-op integration that exists in Gears. Sure, Vegas 1 & 2 gave us a few laughs, and no doubt Halo 3 kept parties keen well into the night, but there is no denying that in terms of integration of co-op gameplay Gears is the daddy.

I was also reminded of the simple fact that Gears just feels solid and smooth around the edges. It's in the details such as the way a bright orange glow will pierce bullet holes upon initial impact with solid surfaces. It's in the way the cover system is just flawless. It's in the way your A.I teammates just seem to get on with it and it's in the way the active reload feature keeps even reloading your weapon entertaining.

Frankly, I just forgot about the calibre of game Gears represented. I forgot how much of a marvel it was and remains today. I'm sure vast swarms of gamers will be revisiting this title over the next few weeks in preparation for the arrival of the sequel and I bet most of them conclude much the same as I; that in actuality we've seen little in the way of greatness over these last two years.

Call of Duty 4 stands out for me as the only truly special game to have come out since Gears. Again, the key with CoD4 was its polish. The 60 fps touch. The unique perk multiplayer. The engrossing story. The developers just had that special touch that makes a great game. GTA IV just didn't quite nail it for me atleast - not enough for me to call it great anyway. Halo 3 certainly didn't. The rest were never really in the competition.

Roll on Gears 2 then.

by The Critical Alien

Review: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

2008-10-04T17:20:00.015+01:00

Format: Xbox 360 / PS3 / PC

Category: FPS
Players: 1-20
Publisher: Ubisoft

Got the t-shirt.

Literally. It came free with my copy of Gearbox's latest tactical WW2 FPS; a game I've been pretty pumped for since... oh at least 2006! When it came in the mail it was one of those childish moments I seldom experience nowadays. Like a geek, I 'prepared' myself before settling in for a hardcore night of war gaming. How? By watching Saving Private Ryan and eating Pringles, of course.

I can't be bothered to type Hell's Highway every time so from here on in this one's called Highway. I had a feeling Highway was going to do something special. Three years of development would surely ensure one hell of a game? You would think so, and you would be right to think so, for Highway delivers. There are a plethora of issues here though; most being minor, a few being major.

I'm going to be blunt here. Quite simply, Highway is without doubt one of the finest FPS games I've ever played. It's also one of the very best WW2 era shooters put onto a disc. As war games go, this is a high point. However, it's a flawed game and some of its rougher elements are plain embarrassing for all concerned.

Highway is all about the single player experience. Forget the multiplayer. It's optionless, laggy, played by about 35 people, and blatantly just an afterthought. There is no party mode, clan system, or any sense that it's going to be a hit. It feels like the old days of online gaming and reminds me of early builds of Day of Defeat as opposed to a Cod 4 rival. This is a shame. I wasn't expecting a great deal from the team deathmatch mode but was hoping for co-op. Highway is just one of those games crying out to be played with a friend. Why it didn't make it into final code is a question I don't think anyone has a satisying answer for. The best I've heard is something about how 'we' are just not there yet as an industry. Well, surely we are? With Cod 5's 4 player co-op on the way and countless other games managing to include some form of co-op mode in recent years there basically just isn't an excuse. It was obviously on the cards at some stage of production but just never happened. Frankly, this is just embarresment number one.

If Highway had just been a generic romp of an FPS game I'd have been utterly pissed off with the fact the multiplayer side of things is just pants. The thing is this: what Highway does well it does so well that I, for one at least, can just forgive and forget. The experience this game puts you through feels like playing the very best bits of Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. Now I know that just sounds like a gaming cliche' nowadays, and I'll admit I've said that before about much older titles, but here I just cannot emphasise it enough. However, the bug/omission list goes on.

There are all sorts of blemishes with Highway that could/should have been ironed out before release and considering the length of time it took to make, and countless delays, it just makes no sense that they exist. One particularly striking issue comes with the way your character's mouth doesn't move when he is yelling out a command to the squad. When in the third person cover view this is very noticeable and just takes away some of the sense of it being real and cinematic. All we needed was a mouth movement animation! Also, why can't you chose your kit before each stage? I wasn't impressed by the way this game assigns weapons to you. It's odd because you never get to use some guns, such as the Grease gun, at all. It's also rather bizarre how you can't pick up German stick grenades. They don't seem to be modeled at all. This is a shame as it would have been nice to have more than one type of explosive. I also wanted to try out the bazooka and .30 caliber MG for myself. There should also have been some form of melee attack, a rifle butt atleast.

There is no animation for attaching charges to Pak 88s either. You just hear a click to acknowledge the bomb is set. I died the first time I primed a field gun because I literally just didn't realise I'd done anything and didn't run for cover. I was also unimpressed by the way death of squadmates is handled. They never die! Instead, they fall and writhe in pain only to respawn at the start of a new checkpoint. The Cod system should have been adopted here. I would liked to have seen some form of pool of reinforcements who run into the fray every time a soldier falls. A medic would have also been a decent inclusion, and a sniper team. Stuff like this would have made this an absolute masterpiece of a game as opposed to a very, very good one.

This brings me to another problem. Only in one level near the end do you get to play with a full squad at your disposal; being 3 teams of 3 guys. I wanted far more of this earlier on. However, the early stages were still stunning in every other respect and that's the thing about Highway. Its successes are solid enough to negate the f*ck ups.

What Highway does is something no other war game, besides former Brothers in Arms titles, has ever come close to: depicting combat for what it really is. Skirmishes can be long, drawn out affairs where you find yourself flushing enemies out of barns with grenades, pinning down an MG42 position with sustained covering fire, or even just getting so confused and battle weary that you lay low in the bushes and hope for a positive outcome. Blood spatters the ground where dead bodies rest in the grass and grenade explosions raze sandbag placements and create billowing craters in the earth.

Combat just feels authentic. Sometimes you'll just see red and feel a burning desire to assault all guns blazing. It never works out though. You rely on the men around you, your squad, and the skill is ultimately in leading them through it. Here are a few things you simply MUST do in order to get the full experience with this game: 1) Turn off every on screen HUD element. 2) Crank that effects vol all the way up. 3) Set the controls for 'tour of duty' - the FPS controller layout God intended. 4) When it's unlocked, you owe it to yourself to play in the 'authentic' difficulty setting.

With these pointers in mind, you'll get to experience a true simulation of WW2 era squad based combat. This is not a game that has you single handedly defeat a reinforced armoured battalion. Nor is this a game that puts you in the shoes of some godlike hero of warfare. In fact, Sgt. Baker is in some ways an anti hero. You're a dried up soldier in no mood to do much besides get through it.

The story is adequate without being particularly memorable I would suggest. My biggest gripe was the way British troops were acknowledged but in that antiquated way certain Americans just can't leave alone. I do wish Gearbox had just accepted the fact years ago that games cannot mirror television when it comes to portraying character. The cutscenes are overly sentimental and seem to be aimed at a pro-war, go America, gun demographic that doesn't really exist anymore in any great number and probably are mostly just too busy watching re-runs of BoB to play games anyway. That or they're dug in deep in Afghanistan right now.

The battle dialogue that can be heard during gameplay between squad mates could have been better too. It's good and quite varied but I just wish it had been even more varied and, well, just done by much better voice artists. There is often a lack of emotion in the comments you hear and not enough swearing. It's that simple. I really wanted to hear yells of "this son of a bitch" and "fucking flank that bastard" during intense moments of swell. Occasionally you do hear some realistic dialogue but it's just not as integral as it could have been.

The last level of Highway is a big anti climax. It's another 'to be continued' moment. I can live with that though because I want far more of this game. A factor I struggled to accept at first was the way this game tries to go all mystical on us. The initial in medias res level is a poorly handled introduction to the game as it simply fails to do anything besides throw you straight into the combat without any sense of a build up to the action. Later, we are once again forced to play through a sort of dream-like sequence in an abandoned hospital. You are split up from your squad and end up wondering through hallways whilst marvelling at the impressive visuals. The atmosphere is fantastic and certainly rivals moments from fully fledged horror games such as Fear and Bioshock. However, it just felt a little out of place. This is a realistic war game. It tries to be more than that and just shouldn't.

The eastern village moments are few and far between compared to the constantly challenging and genuinely realistic scenes where you are in the thick of it. I wasn't that amazed by the tank combat though. It felt like Medal of Honor, enter the evil nazi shooting gallery, territory. During scenes where you take on enemy tanks as infantry you also get the sense that realism goes out the window. For a game striving to be realistic there is no excuse for these old school moments where you defeat panzer tanks via satchels and rocket launchers instead of just avoiding them and calling in the P-51s.

So much that was promised simply hasn't made it into the game. For instance, enemies do not 'trip up' or help one another to safety if wounded. All of these elements simply failed to make it into final code. Also, civilians play no role whatsoever. There is also no true sense of comradeship with your men. I never once 'exchanged ammunition' for example. At its core, it's not much more than the previous Brothers game. It just takes those original premises, such as the find, fix, flank, finish game mechanic, and gives them a serious overhaul.

What Highway offers is a humble simulation of small scale skirmishes. No other game I have played comes close when it comes to just capturing that sense of real combat. Inclusions such as the action cam are simply brilliant. It slows down the action and zooms in on your well placed headshot or grenade hurl. Sometimes it can seem so real that you actually feel ill at ease with the results. The gore is grim and bloody.

Highway is a game I know I am going to play again and again. If it had co-op this would be an absolute high point in gaming. I'm not sure why it took so long to make, although I get the sense the PS3 may have been a seminal factor, but on the whole this is a brilliant game. When you're pinned down beside a log by enemy fire, hearing the whizzes of overpassing tracers and seeing the dirt hit your face, you will be about as close to war as you're ever going to get within the comfortable confines of your armchair.

Summary

+Fantastic visuals, sound, and atmosphere
+Genuinely realistic and tactical
+A WW2 game for the more mature gamer
+/-Which has no co-op mode
-What? No co op mode? Ya rly! No wai!
-Vomit inducing story

9.0 / 10

A seriously intense, realistic, and mature war game

by The Critical Alien
© 2008

Review: Soul Calibur IV

2008-09-05T13:28:00.019+01:00

Format: Xbox 360 / PS3

Category: Beat 'Em Up
Players: 1-2
Publisher: Namco

Die by the sword

'Tis been awhile since I had a good session with a classic beat 'em up. In fact, the last time I went a few rounds was in Dead or Alive 4. I was rusty upon picking up the sword and unsure how sharp my skills would prove. Having never played a Soul Calibur game before this point the world around me was alien and the task of mastering this title was, at first, daunting. Then I just realised I was that damn good at gaming and had this sh*t beat within 45 mins.-ed

So, I'm being quick to establish that namco's latest is rather easy, even for journeyman sword wielders. It's also short on story and hardly anything groundbreaking. Graphically, it's just okay without being jaw dropping (like the first time you got a look at DOA3, amirite?). The dialogue for the story mode is as bad as any beat 'em up out there too. I opted to switch off the English translation as, mercifully, you can select to enable the Japanese voice over. The music is great and really keeps you locked into that fantasy mindset when in option screens etc.

It takes about 10 minutes to complete story mode with each character and on normal mode you'd have to be lacking in opposable thumbs to pull off anything but a pretty flawless beat down each time you take on the A.I. On Hard mode, sure it gets tougher. However, I can still pretty much smoke all comers.

Soul Calibur IV is not about an immersive story. It's not even about story mode. It's about unlocking stuff: swords, armour, characters, art work, stages, even photographs of plastic models; each painstakingly detailing the main figures from the game. Soul Calibur is also about the glorious Character Creator. This is one powerful and effective char creation system. It rivals the best 'wrestling' games out there and I'm showing my age by even stating, for the record, that that sentiment includes the 'glory days' wrestling titles on the N64.

Within hours I'd created a very convincing Blade, for instance. Just check YouTube for a wealth of player videos showing off their skillz with the character making. I've seen perfect Hulks, flawless Harry Potters, and even Heath Ledger's Joker. All look convincing and it takes a good system to pull this level of customisation off.

Soul Calibur IV has a decent fighting system too. It's not particularly technical when it comes to counters but blocking itself is vital. There is also just something very satisfying about using swords etc but I guess I'm about 5 years late in saying that considering this is the forth game in the franchise. There are a host of styles to chose from but it's quite patent that many are just gimmicky rather than potentially effective. The plethora of styles and weapons gives each fight a unique sense about it too.

Online, you can take IV into standard 1 on 1 modes that also allow up to 4 players to take turns fighting. It's very basic and with no tag mode I wasn't that impressed. I don't think many were expecting much out of it online though and this feature is just good enough considering the genre.

Out of all the unlockable characters, weapons, stages, and clothing perhaps the most bizarre inclusions are the Star Wars personalities of Yoda (360), Vader (PS3), and The Apprentice (both versions). Firstly, I was happy to see them. Secondly, someone needs to retire George Lucas, period. I got the sense whilst reading the in-game story behind Yoda's inclusion, for example, that Lucas had literally gone out of his way to justify to the world why this cross of worlds had occurred. You also just get this sense of holy sacrament whenever the Wars chars are involved with what unfolds story wise. It's like a Steven Seagal movie in the sense that you just know Lucas wants to make out his characters can and will pwn all of Soul Calibur's weaklings. I'm also convinced The Apprentice was just made to be way tougher to defeat than any other character in the game. This is perhaps a new stage in viral marketing; the aim being to send the message out that this guy is l33t and will be even l33ter in the upcoming game, The Force Unleashed. It's also a bit ridiculous that you can't give the lightsaber or 'force' style to any of your own created characters. As if relics of some greatness you can't access, these three characters are not to be edited or copied like the rest. Star Wars is Serious Business, after all.

There we have it. IV won't bring you to tears. It won't keep you up until 3am. It probably won't do much besides offer good old stress relief for a few minutes every other day. Upon completing it with every character, you can rest assured that arcade mode, versus, and the gimmicky 'tower' mode will keep you going for a good while. However, it's all about making your own brawlers and entering into battles against randomly generated A.I opponents - a feature that is available in versus mode. This is a solid weapons based beat 'em up and well worth a 'stab' - lol.-ed

Summary

+Solid fighting system
+Loads to unlock
+A very good character creation system
+/-That won't let you customise or use Star Wars content
-Weak and lacking story
-'Tower' mode could have been more

8.0 / 10

by The Critical Alien

Hang in there, fellow gamers!

2008-09-05T12:51:00.002+01:00

In a way, this is a continuation of my ranting from the previous post regarding the state of the games industry. However, I wish to offer light at the end of this year's dark tunnel for gamer. Firstly though, from what I have seen Mercenaries 2 is a terrible, unpolished, and bug ridden game that is actually inferior to the 2005 original. I'm not really surprised to hear this. I suspect the reasons behind Merc 2's failure are largely down to Pandemic struggling with the requirements and demands of 'next gen' programming. They were hoping PS2 era thrills would do it for the seekers of digital bliss. We've moved on.

I'm not looking to review Mercs 2 here. It would be unfair seeing as I haven't played it, but from what I can tell the game is abysmal and I'm no longer in the game of buying any old trash just so I can say I've played it. I only pick up worthy games nowadays.

In my last post I went on a rant about how Hell's Highway was shaping up. Well, it now looks like things aren't perhaps as gloomy for Gearbox's FPS. Apparently there is a co-op mode, according to this article anyway, and on top of this the multiplayer sounds pretty varied and large scale. Also, I'm now just beginning to sense the single player game really won't disappoint. It looks like a seriously mature and realistic experience from all I have seen and I can't wait to finally play it later in the month.

So, my message to the 'next gen' gamers is to hang in there. 2008 has been a terrible year for games up until now. We are all still playing those big '07 releases and waiting for the likes of Gears of War 2, Left for Dead, the aforementioned Hell's Highway, and wackier stuff such as the PS3's Little Big Planet. I'm sure that these titles will end 2008 with a gaming bang.

It is also interesting to see how 2009 is shaping up. Hopefully, early '09 will mark the start of a grand new step for the PS3. If Home, the free 3d MMO lobby-like Second Life clone, is as good as Sony are claiming I might even finally get around to picking up a PS3. That, alongside the release of Killzone 2, might finally mark a point where the PS3 can truly say it has something unique and worthy of praise over the 360 - besides Metal Gear.

Microsoft's pending Dashboard update for fall this year looks like a scarily Wii-like pretender in comparison. I just hope you can turn OFF the childish avatars upon updating the console and revert to the old layout. However, the idea of a dashboard party mode that launches into a game and therefore doesn't rely on that game to exist sounds very attractive - and it's about time this party mode as a console feature element entered the fray.

I'm about done with this one. I will review Hell's Highway later in the month. From then on I hope to be immersed in gaming and primed for Gears 2!

by The Critical Alien

Worrying trends in the Games Industry

2008-08-22T13:59:00.005+01:00

This morning I realised that the one game I've been hanging on for above all others this year, being Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, now looks set to disappoint. From what I can tell there is little left of the game that was promised to us back in early '06 builds. Many features have been omitted and the final game seems to be centred around a single player story. I'm noticing this more and more nowadays with 'next gen' games. They fail to deliver and the excuse is so often one relying on the argument that the game was designed with 'story' or an offline component in mind above anything else.

So, it's now relatively old news that Hell's Highway will not have any form of Co-Op mode. As a result, my excitement for this title has faded away by about 80%. We now are being told that the multiplayer component will, in effect, be quite a limited experience. There will be no bots, or A.I squad mates to order about whilst in online battle, and it seems that a timer for each battle will mean rounds last only a few measly minutes.

It all looks quite worrying as far as I'm concerned. Hell's Highway now seems destined to be yet another generic WW2 romp of an FPS game. Unless the single player is truly stunning I fear this game will flop. It looks to me like a scripted game relying solely on the squad hand-signal component to flesh it out. Without co-op, I'm just not particularly excited about the prospect of Brothers in Arms with better graphics. There is nothing new here, or am I wrong? Once the game is out next month we will know for sure how good this single player is going to be.

My real reason for this post is not to log my frustration over what looks set to be another shoddy FPS game though. Hell's Highway is just a microcosm of what seems to be a pattern developing as part of our current wave of 'next gen' games. Big things are promised and announced, little is delivered besides flashy visuals. Content wise, we are just not seeing much anymore. Where are the true 'next gen' titles? We WANT co-op in all our games! We WANT good, content heavy, multiplayer as well as a single player. And hell! If there has to be omissions then let's start getting rid of the story in these games! Let's start placing emphasis on gameplay as opposed to the cheesy drivel we see as stories in computer games.

Frankly, I'm just fed up with the po-faced, self righteousness of the attitudes developers seem to have regards their stories. No one really cares for stories in FPS games for example. If a story is in and co-op is not, I'm not playing. If there is no story (just some basic plot) but the game is content and feature heavy, I'm in!

Perhaps though, there is a hidden truth behind the constant excuse of story elements taking precedence over features. The real truth may be that this is just a lie, and that in reality it's just that games are too damn hard to make nowadays. Games makers are feeling the pressure and having to create shells for their dreams instead of the fully realised product. All I'm saying is if there must be a compromise let's start seeing it in favour of gameplay over story, longetivity over one-off experiences, and online play over offline.

Maybe Mercenaries 2 will deliver instead!

by The Critical Alien

Call of Duty: World at War: An early warning

2008-06-27T12:25:00.002+01:00

The internet has become ablaze in recent days with talk and speculation regarding Call of Duty 5. It seems that only very few CoD4 players out there are aware of the background behind the CoD series and are therefore mostly ripe for what I predict to be a harsh sting/reality check later in the year (game is set for a November 2008 release at time of writing).

I figure that the more coverage the truth gets, the more likely people may slowly start to realise the sad truth. I am doing this for the sake of the gamers' collective! Drop any notions of a true Call of Duty 5 release this year! Forget the rumours, hype, YouTube hysteria and forum activity. Sure, Call of Duty: World at War has been announced... but CoD5 this is most certainly not.

There are several reasons for this. The main one is that Infinity Ward, makers of CoD1, 2, and 4, have nothing to do with CoD:WaW. A few years ago, Activision signed a deal with Infinity Ward that gave them a 2 year allocation to make CoD games. However, Activision, being the publisher, wanted a yearly roll out of CoD titles so turned to a second dev team, Trayarch, to work on the alternate years' releases. We saw this with CoD3, a very poor game. It lacked the magic feel of Ward's CoD titles and was inferior to CoD2 in every way.

World at War is a Treyarch game. It is also another WW2 Treyarch game. This should be enough of a heads up for seasoned gamers. It will be a highly linear, highly scripted piece of cheesy, sentimental, tripe. The story will aim to please children and that magic feel of CoD4 will be absent. It is a roll out product, and it will be CoD3 with new locations. DO NOT FALL FOR THE HYPE. Stick with CoD4 for your CoD fix until the true, Infinity Ward, title hits in 2009.

K thx.

by The Critical Alien

Battlefield: Bad Company - an initial reaction

2008-06-11T14:06:00.008+01:00

Well, my 360 just Red Ring of Death'd me. I had it for well over a year so what should I expect!? With the UPS man due tomorrow, I can now look back on my game time with EA's Battlefield: Bad Company and ponder. I guess you could call this a pre-emptive review, but it's not my intention to judge or weigh up EA's new FPS title just yet. This is really just my reaction to the recent demo released for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

If you have read my earlier post regarding my anticipation for this game, amongst others, then you will know that this is a game that is right up my alley; being a semi-realistic sandbox FPS war game. Battlefield games are a mixed bag though. I never got into 2142 (did anyone?) and was very unimpressed by the console port that was Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. However, I was in love with Battlefield 1942 back in the day and, to a lesser extent, the popular modification, Destert Combat. On the PC, Battlefield 2 (not being the port) was also very tight. I still say it lacked the magic and sheer fun of 1942 but was still very good all round. This was primarily down to its well implemented squad system, large maps, and that 'war on terror' feel to the combat zones.

The demo of Bad Company leaves a lot to be desired. If I was in a bad mood, I would probably tell you how shoddy and downright inept the game is shaping up to be. However, I can identify certain positive factors that are large enough to conclude this game might have sparkles of promise. I stress might. Whether it turns out to be a mess or a masterpiece now depends entirely on what DICE and EA are going to do with the critical community demo feedback.

My reaction to the single player this game is going to offer is lukewarm. Based solely on the demo, my impression is that it is nothing more than a slightly superfluous training element for the online action. It is heavily scripted, which is not something any of us associate with Battlefield games. It is more than just fighting bots, but it essentially feels like a sandbox game being awkwardly blended in with scripted event triggers (kind of like an example of the bad missions in Operation Flashpoint). There are no squad controls, no means to select your kit, and very limited tactical considerations. I stress though that this is solely a reaction to the demo's single player level. However, from experience, I know that demos are often very good indications of a final product.

So then, the multiplayer. This is clearly about 95% of what the fuss is all about. I guess DICE just fancied their hand at story telling as something to do when not coding the online component. The bottom line is that there are many, many, issues with this game as it stands. I can tell that these are not 'demo' issues but integral problems with the design and mechanics of how Bad Company works. In other words, they won't get fixed in a few weeks. This worries me as many of these issues are major, make or break, hiccups.

Firstly, as it stands BC has absolutely no clan support. Just to be clear about this I want to repeat that. It has absolutely no, none, zilch, zero, support for clans. There is nowhere to add a player tag, form a basic clan emblem, or even a way to organise private clan matches. This is because everything relies on the dedicated servers hosted by EA. The closest thing BC has to a party mode is the squad invite feature in the custom game menu. You can only have up to four players in a squad. So it isn't really a true party mode. You then often find yourself being split up when you join a game. This is because team balancing seems to trump your private squad's existence. This forced splitting up happens a lot. It essentially means that the squad invite system is about as effective as sending manual invites whilst in game.

The second major problem with BC relates to this squad system. When you don't start up your own squad and join a match solo you will randomly be assigned to a squad and have no way of leaving it or joining another. This is ludicrous. It breaks BC like a stone coming at it from high above and crunching through its disc case. Players will often be unresponsive, loud and obnoxious (O RLY?), or just not the sort of folk you want to roll with. DICE don't seem to be able to comprehend the fact that humanity has just not reached that evolutionary point where we will, without fail, always manage to cooperate with our fellow man.

When in your randomly assigned squad you CANNOT communicate with anyone else on your team. There is no proximity voice system (which would have been perfect for this game), no way to talk globally, and no means to send any form of message out to players outside of your 4 man unit. Console games have always been hindered online by the fact they cannot incorporate a talk bar. However, many games now show us how voice chat should be done. With Xbox Live titles, there is simply no excuse for a poor comms system. It actually undermines the entire platform and just makes you look back to those days when you were running around El Alamein with 63 other players, whilst chatting on Teamspeak to your clan and spamming the talkbar with insults directed towards the noobz.

The communications are broken in BC as is the squad mechanic. These are crucial weaknesses that EA/DICE seem to think they can just disregard and hope will fade the more times they tell you this game has a gold rush mode in and is 'all about the gold bars'. The premise of BC is Kelly's Heroes. Yeah, we get that already. Move on.

What BC does well it does very well. The sound is some of the very best I've heard in a game. Gun fire exceeds expectation as it is cinematic. I often say that but it is truly the case with BC. But then again, DICE have always done a marvellous job with sound. Back in 1942, I remember the first time I heard the 'pop' of a distant explosion after several seconds had passed since the flash on the horizon. In BC, shots echo brilliantly and are nice and loud. So many games fail to get this right - GTA IV is a good example actually.

The destructible environment is impressive and takes a while to get used to. However, it's not integral to the way battles play out online. It is also apparent that the destruction is more limited than many had hoped for. Tanks can't plough through buildings as 'titanium' frames keep the body intact at all times. Walls will crumble and doors will give way but you can't seem to level locations in that way you know everyone is geared up to do. I say f*ck the considerations that restrict the destruction. It would be awesome to see full blown, 100%, destructible maps.

The unlocking/stat system looks good. It probably isn't going to impress you with its innovation though. It's basic but in a way this is good. As you rank up you earn credits and use these to unlock weapons. What I like is the way you can use your first credit to unlock anything you want; meaning no long waits for that particular weapon/gadget you want to test out. Graphically, BC is gorgeous but so are most FPS games these days. Gold rush mode plays out very well and the combat itself if decent and very much true to the Battlefield games of the past.

The sniping is top notch stuff and reminds me of classic PC titles of the past (Delta Force series essentially). However, the game lacks a prone position. You can crouch but can't hit the deck soldier style or combat roll. This is another serious problem with the game as it feels wrong, and therefore it is wrong. I've heard of no satisfactory reason why it's not in BC and if it doesn't make the final code (or patched code) I will be very concerned. Any outdoor environment shooter needs prone. This is like a rule of thumb. Where there are hills and fields there must be the ability to lie down in the dirt. I don't care what anyone says, crouch is no substitute. Crouch is for quick cover, prone is for sniping and... yes camping. In Battlefield games, camping is as valid an option for player as rushing. So, prone is needed. End of discussion.

You get the impression when playing the BC demo that the problem with so many games so far this year has been that they just don't stack up to Call of Duty 4. Like many, I think I'm now only just beginning to realise quite how much of an outstanding job Infinity Ward done with it. It stands out as the gold standard and, although not perfect, acts as a marker developers like DICE need to acknowledge and aim for.

If the final game hasn't satisfactorily addressed the issues I have covered then I won't personally be picking up BC. To be honest, I know from experience how it tends to play out - particularly when EA are concerned. They won't be addressed and the forum-based feedback will be largely ignored. The final game will be for those who find it fun running around solo and give no credence to any need for customisation options, clan battles, teamwork or even just playing with friends hindrance free. Essentially, it will be a streamlined EA product designed with bucks in mind and little else. I guess in a few weeks we will find out for sure.

by The Critical Alien

2008: What's Looming

2008-05-20T12:03:00.006+01:00

Since this is a blog, I've decided I should probably start thinking about posting the odd gaming related thought that pops into my head as part of the updates. I don't want to get too formulaic about this so these posts may consist of pretty random ideas and beliefs!

On The Prowl: What's Due Later In 2008

So, what's on the horizon for us gamers in 2008? This is the kind of commentary that should probably have been posted in January but the way I see it is that this year will hopefully still have a lot to offer even in the light of current releases. For me, GTA IV did not set any particular gold standard that can't be potentially bettered by upcoming future releases. There seems to be a sense right now amongst us gamers that GTA IV set the level and it's likely going to be the benchmark game of '08. I'm not so convinced.

Whether any other game this year manages to make five hundred million in release sales is not what I'm asking here. I'm pondering on whether there are any titles on the horizon that have the potential to prove superior to IV or other released games of this year in terms of playability.

MMO

On the MMORPG front Age of Conan looks set to do something. What that something is though seems debatable. Today marks the day it was officially released and launched in the US. If this proves to be a great MMO then I will probably give it a try although ever since my tours of Ultima Online back in the day I have vowed never to return to the world of the Massively Multiplayer. This was largely down to my unwillingness to pay monthly for access to a single game. However, I did dabble with World of Warcraft briefly. I never got on with it though. To me, it just felt like a generic race through repetitive stop and go levelling areas. I'm told the game becomes the great experience upon reaching the higher levels; its magic being in the high-end raiding and PvP. This may be the case but I was not prepared to grind for hours and hours to get there. It wasn't fun and didn't immerse me like UO did.

The most AoC can likely hope for is to dent the World of Warcraft market and find a foothold no matter how small. It won't suddenly become the new top dog in this genre. All one needs to do is read the WoW forums to discover the consensus view that people just aren't prepared to have to start from scratch in a MMO unless that new MMO is utterly astonishing and worthy of the days and days of grinding and tedious levelling. AoC looks set to be superior to many pretenders out there but Funcom don't have a particularly great track record.

Anarchy Online was a mess, with one of the worst launches in MMO history, and died a painful death a few years back. Launches make or break MMO games. Funcom have obviously learnt a lot since then but there are already rumours lurking that AoC's launch has been far from flawless. Many were simply conned by a promise that if they pre-ordered the game they'd have been able to play a few days before every one else. Turns out you needed to pay extra for this and all the subscriptions to it sold out rather fast. Nice way of ensuring big pre-order sales that.

FPS

On the FPS front, things look promising. Let's face it: so far this year FPS games have been painfully inadequate. Vegas 2 was weak and meant that no one really moved away from Call of Duty 4. We are close to the release of Battlefield: Bad Company and from the hype this one sounds like it's aiming to do a few things differently. The crucial selling point of this game is its claim that almost 100% of the map will be destructible on and offline. The thought of being able to make your very own firing hole in a sturdy wall to snipe from just excites me. However, I have my reservations about this feature. My concern is that it will prove gimmicky or, worse still, end up meaning everyone just rolls around in tanks and blows everything up until there is no cover left in the online games. I know from experience that Battlefield games are often ruined by the behaviour of those playing and the exploits usually discovered. Dice have a good track record but seem to have sold out a little in recent years with some pretty shoddy releases. Battlefield 1942 still represents their crowning achievement but let's hope Bad Company will mark some kind of revolutionary new style of online combat.

With a little longer to wait we will soon have Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway at our fingertips. This is set to be just another clichéd WW2 FPS game loosely based on reality I'm sure. However, ignoring all the story elements, the actual combat in this game looks very promising. Back on the Xbox, the original Brothers in Arms was a breath of fresh air and was genuinely a realistic romp around occupied France. This new offering looks like it's based on the same system of hand signals and flanking orders but backed up by truly stunning graphics and promises of Co-Op. If this game proves to have implemented a decent cooperative mode with a fellow player at least then it'll be well worth the wait. I just have a feeling about this one - although that feeling has often proved fatally flawed in the past.

Other

Although I don't know a great deal about it, Left for Dead sounds very interesting. It's set to be a Co-Op survival horror game that pits four players up against the zombie hordes. The idea sounds like gold and I'm aware that this is precisely what many have been waiting years for to see in a game. It should be with us in the next few months, although no concrete release date is set.

So there we have it. Just a brief look at a few of the promising titles due out in the next few months. I'm hopeful that at least one of these will prove more playable, and ultimately tighter and of more quality, than other games released so far this year. In the meantime, I'll probably see you buzzing around Liberty City. Don't get too close to me though. I'm known to RPG all incoming vehicles with extreme prejudice.

by The Critical Alien

Extended Review: GTA IV

2008-05-10T12:38:00.017+01:00

Format: Xbox 360

Category: GTA Game
Players: 1-16 (1-4 Co-Op)
Publisher: Rockstar

Welcome to America!

I guess you know you’re getting old when you can vividly remember playing a new GTA game for the first time and being overwhelmed by it more than twice. Rockstar North games seem to evolve with society like some great parasitic borg. What was cool and hip in 1997 was acknowledged back then. What was ‘in’ during the summer of 2002 was charted in code and what’s hot in 2008 is surely somewhere in the mammoth title that is GTA IV. There is probably as many GTA IV reviews doing the rounds right now as there are pedestrians in Liberty City so my aim throughout this humble piece is to try and focus on areas of the game that haven’t been as deeply analysed or commented upon. I don’t want to laboriously delve into the plot since this has just been done to death in so many other reviews.

Off the bat, I want to establish a few things. Firstly, I’m a GTA fan but in the old school sense. I remember fondly playing a demo from a now long gone PC games magazine in 1997. That demo was of Grand Theft Auto, by BMG Interactive – now Rockstar North. Everyone was in love with this cute little thing. The 2d cars and the innovative world were a breakthrough and the game was so very playable. My early GTA gaming days then took me to London and then a downloadable Manchester (anyone else remember that?). These were the glory days where games weren’t taken so seriously and GTA became a product every gamer wanted.

A few years later and along came GTA III. Again, it blew me away. It also done something quite profound: it managed to transfer the magic of the 2d titles and place it into a 3d environment. Many old titles have failed to cross this transition and now exist only in the minds of a seasoned few. However, 2001/2 was probably about the period that I did start to move away from the GTA titles in other ways. I played III to death and simply never got into Vice City. To me, it felt like a holding pattern was developing and I sensed the ‘innovation’ days of the past may have passed. San Andreas confirmed my suspicions of this holding pattern. It was clearly a far larger game than III but was essentially the same old thing. The game mechanic had worn thin for me but clearly hadn’t for the millions of other gamers who still swear by these titles today.

My next general point is that I believe, perhaps via some crazy example of gamers’ intuition, that we are perhaps decades away from ever getting that overwhelming sense from a new game we used to in the ’90s and in ’01 with III. Technology simply won’t enable a revolution per decade. Things have slowed down in recent years and certain technological boundaries simply will not budge until gaming reaches generations ahead of our current one. I always find it funny how we speak of our ‘current next-gen consoles’. The 360 and PS3 are the current generation, and have been since 2005. Next-gen is now a slot that has been moved along our mortal timeline. So that’s that then. I’ve established I’m an old school GTA fan and have developed quite a reserved attitude when it comes to what I expect from games (particularly after Halo 3).

Sitting down with GTA IV for the first time isn’t a spiritual experience. It’s not a moment you will remember in years to come or write excessively about on forums or journals. You won’t be blown away or forced to pause the game and then take another look after a few deep breaths. There is no initial ‘wow’ factor. The introductory cut scenes pass and then you find yourself in a car with the objective of driving deeper into the city. It’s night time but you see enough initially to instantly realise a few fundamental things about GTA IV. These reactions will probably depend on whether you’re a GTA veteran or are experiencing a Rockstar game for the first time. For those later people, I actually do envy you. You will probably experience what we all experienced back in 2001. This will always be the case when it comes to any given sphere of society though. You’re either on board or left behind and desperate to catch up if you ever delve into it.

The bottom line is that GTA IV is not the ‘holodeck’. It’s a GTA game. There is no revolutionary experience to be had. It’s just the next GTA game. What I mean by that is the rules of any other GTA game apply here. Pedestrians will just walk around aimlessly, cars will move around but never park anywhere, days will go by in the blink of an eye and the radio will either have you in stitches or eager to switch it off. As you start to play GTA IV more you will notice things that constantly remind you that this is very much still just a computer game and absolutely nothing more. I’ve read some bizarre hysteria-induced reviews about this title over the last few days. Some people are even calling for a new word to describe this game; arguing it’s more than a just a regular game but not quite virtual reality. Let me be clear. It’s a game and it comes on a disc. This is not ‘infotainment’.

As you can probably sense, a part of me has been ever so slightly disappointed by IV. It’s largely down to my desperate urge to experience something utterly astonishing. I miss that feeling and I guess us gamers are always on the prowl for the ultimate digital world. However, once you accept that this is still just good old GTA things do get easier to digest. The radio, for example, is neither better nor worse than it was in previous 3d GTA games. It’s musically varied and entertaining and that’s about all you’d want from it. It starts to repeat itself after a few hours of game time has passed and it’s when this happens that I was personally more inclined to switch it off entirely – which is possible.

The next reality check with this game is that it’s based on the same old mission system of former games. You go meet people and accept jobs. You must do them to proceed and they are often scripted. I have a problem with this. For me, the idea of an open-world game is all about total freedom. GTA doesn’t offer this. It offers freedom within the framework of doing compulsory missions. This goes back to what I was saying earlier about generational limitations. Perhaps in ten years time games won’t work in this manner. I’m hinting towards a time when games, like life, have no framework besides the laws of physics and the context you are in.

Most of the missions are exciting and really cinematic. Gone are the ridiculous types of mission from previous games (like remote controlling mini-helicopters within a strict time limit etc). Virtually every mission consists of driving somewhere and killing someone. There is very little variety. When the game does experiment with other tasks there is a sense of it only doing it to show you something that is possible in the game. It’s the gravity gun syndrome all over again but this time with things like being able to throw bricks at windows, date people online, and buy a shirt and tie. I’m not criticising the game for this but I was continuously reminded of Oblivion. That game represented how an open world ought to be and how to deeply vary missions/quests in a way that doesn’t seem forced or contrived.

There are also too many chase missions in IV. Way too many. Target vehicles speed away at impossible speed and then slow down to a halt after a few minutes of darting across the map. The whole car chase mechanic is done to death and proves repetitive. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could actually formulate elaborate ways of preventing them from reaching their cars in the first place and clocking them early on. The problem is this isn’t possible as the chase is always a scripted event.

It is worth mentioning here one very positive difference of this game to the former GTAs. Most of the missions will inevitably spark the attention of the police. This is often scripted but will also tend to just happen due to your antics getting reported by a random onlooker or a patrol car spotting your brawling. When you do get into police chases in this game the general experience far exceeds expectation. It actually feels like a realistic encounter, particularly with a 3 or 4 star wanted level. The police will chase you as always but if you drive down an alley and remain out of view they will often drive by you and lose you in the process. This adds a warm and cinematic sense to police confrontations - even when on foot. It feels like something out of the movie, Shooter, or even the Bourne Trilogy at times and is certainly one of the highlights for me. You can bail into the ocean and hide under a boat, run into a random building and then dive from a fire escape, even flee in a helicopter if you can find one. No longer are the authorities omnipresent; although with higher wanted levels things do tend to get more predictable.

When you’re not chasing cars or running from the fuzz you’re in the thick of some pretty intense firefights. My initial reaction to these was that they were ruined by the auto-targeting system. I then realised you could switch that off and swiftly done so. I also turned the reticule to a basic dot in the options. I hate overly complex and visible icons in any game. Once I’d done this I started to enjoy the combat. It looks cinematic and often quite brutal. It’s not tactical though, or particularly challenging. It’s also repetitive once you’ve sussed the crucial rule of play: use cover and be patient. The game has a cover system and it’s acceptable but not particularly well implemented. I think this whole cover system mechanic is so vital to get right now for any combat game. Rockstar obviously knew it was important to implement but unfortunately failed to get it right. The biggest issue is that you have to hold down the trigger and keep firing whenever you’re peeking out of cover or you’ll return to cover. This makes using pistols particularly awkward and always means that ammo will be eaten up unnecessarily.

When you take this rather sluggish combat system online it really starts to irritate you. The way cover is often approached and rested against from the wrong angle to the way you are facing will literally get you killed. The way you drill shots every time you step out of cover is the biggest foul up though. The driving system, on the other hand, is perfect as far as I’m concerned. Cars feel weighty and speed is handled well. However, online this falls apart. Lag sometimes means that breaking will be delayed and, although this might be my imagination, I just am convinced the physics are somehow downgraded in multiplayer. They are still impressive though and I’ve won many a race due to my perfected driving skills.

This is probably a good time to look to the multiplayer in general. The way I see it is if you’re reading this you know most of what there is to tell about what this game offers online. I want to focus on whether it’s any good. The answer is that some modes work and some don’t. GTA Race is easily the best mode as far as I’m concerned. It lets you either run havoc and sabotage other players’ chances of winning or just drive like a stig and hit the finish line. The reason I love this mode so much is because it’s precisely what I wished was possible whilst hitting GTA in 1997. Instead, back then I would often ‘dial up’ my friend and connect to his hosted game session on the PC. Although it actually did work back then you were generally a) eating money b) lagging like mad and, c) only with one other person (like a phone call).

Other notable modes include Cops ’n Crooks, which is undeniably fun when with the right people, the Co-Op missions, and Free Roam. The other modes are just bog standard stuff in comparison but still workable. To start with Co-Op, it’s really only a taster of something that you absolutely want to see far more of. There are only three missions available. I hope Rockstar release more as downloadable content but I don’t take this into account when I review. I believe this game needed far more Co-Op in general but these three missions are really good fun to play through and can be repeated over and over. Cops ’n Crooks is an inspired inclusion. It works perfectly and not many other games would have a chance with pulling a mode like this off. It really is like playing an epic game of ‘tag’ online.

Free Roam or Free Mode is obviously a brilliant option to have available. The problem with it is that you can’t do that much besides drive around aimlessly, kill cops, and turn things into a deathmatch. Since the map is from the single player there is no exploration factor and everything from the campaign mode that is marked on the HUD is locked and unavailable online. So, for example, you can’t go to the strip club with friends or even play a game of pool together. This is a serious oversight by Rockstar. People were expecting a lot more from Free Roam and I think that’s probably why the developers were so quiet about it in the first place. It just got slipped in as an extra. It feels half-baked and lacking. The other problem with it is you can’t specify enough as the host. Sure, you can set the time of day and the game length but you can’t assign wanted levels for instant cop battling or even decide on the guns to start off with. Instead, you must find the guns you want and work up a wanted level from scratch every time you die.

I also want to mention my utter dissatisfaction with the ‘customisation’ options available for your online avatar. It is so basic that it’s hardly worth raising as a game feature in a review. You can rank up and unlock more clothing and hair styles than the limited amount you start with but even then you are limited with appearance options. When will it be taken as red by developers that gamers want features such as deep character customisation in any online game? It’s almost an instinctual requirement of a human being. In a game like IV, where there are thousands of varied pedestrians in the game wearing limitless types of clothing and boasting all manner of bodily frames, it should have been relatively easy to create one beast of a character creation system comparable to something like The Sims 2. Also, it is just irritating that many modes simply don’t use your player model in them anyway; substituting them for generic mobsters or cops.

It is important to stress that, when played online, the ‘living and breathing’ city of IV is turned into a silent, lifeless, dull and eerily empty world in most places. Even with traffic and pedestrian levels set for high things still don’t seem to hussle like they do offline. I can accept all this though – just making the point. What I can’t accept is the way confrontations with the police (about all you can do in Free Roam) actually ruin the game’s illusion of being a grand step forward. That old phrase, ‘the emperor has no clothes’, comes to mind. I actually decided to stop playing Free Roam because every time I went on it my fondness for the game chipped away some more. You see the game mechanics in a bare form and it hurts to see it. It all starts to look like GTA III/Vice City/San Andreas with improved graphics and a cover system. Also, the frame rate drops to unplayable levels with a 5 or 6 star wanted level when online. It’s almost as if you are teased with something when you play Free Roam. It’s like a taster of the future of online gaming – we are just not there yet.

I wasn’t going to raise this but decided to at a late stage of churning out this review. A big problem with GTA IV online is that it requires a lot of organisational skills to achieve a fun and hassle free session with friends. It is like the interface works against you in a host of sly ways. Party mode at first looks promising but then you realise that it will just constantly throw you into rooms with far smaller (or larger) groups and then hang until more people join. They never do and the only way back is to leave the game, which disbands your party, and start from scratch. This is utterly infuriating since your average Xbox Live (or PSN) user is not know for their patience. In these pre Call of Duty 4 days we are not used to struggling to get a good game on the go. With GTA IV it is a challenge and requires a lot of fiddling. Many of the problems seem to be with NAT restrictions on many gamers' routers. Personally, I just think the game should mention this somewhere like Halo 3 manages to when it detects you’re on a strict or closed network.

My concern here is also that IV fails the ‘J Test’. WTF is that I hear you ask? Well, it’s not something you will ever see mentioned on IGN that’s for sure. Basically, it’s something I’ve observed over the years I’ve played over Xbox Live. The test is: is it possible to play this game online with friends after a few joints or does it become an exercise in futility? Yes, that’s right. After a toke of the smoke, a puff of the chronic, whatever you like to call it. Sure, it’s not something developers are likely to take into consideration but the reality is that to play IV online with friends requires a level of focus and attention that many gamers simply don’t have at 1am when this stuff is usually kicking off.

You can, alternatively, use the private match function of the game to ensure you play with your friends and your friends only. You must set maximum private slots for this to work. Unfortunately though once you decide on a game type you can’t cancel it without the whole thing closing down, which requires you to start it all up again. It’s just small things like this that tend to screw with you when online. Let’s hope for a patch at least.

At the user end of this game you will become very frustrated by the army of whiny 13-year olds out there to annoy you. GTA IV is an 18 certificate game, and never in gaming history has this been more applicable to a title, yet online this is a kidathon. In fact, when I was on very recently a 5-year old entered into our lobby alongside another slightly older child! The level of parenting out there beggars belief and I truly was shocked by this blatant and undeniable reality; GTA IV is played almost exclusively by children online.

So, you rely on your friends lists more than with any other game I can remember. Ultimately, the gaming experience depends on who you play with. It is very hard to convince people to work as a team or coordinate anything. Very few are prepared to really experiment with much – particularly in the Free Mode. This is a shame but is always an issue with games that fail to spoon feed you in that way many are used to. On a side note though it is well worth organising a bunch of players to fly choppers onto skyscrapers with and then RPG the police down below. Good luck!

You may have noted that I’ve been quite critical about IV so far. The truth is I’m very fond of this game but wanted to highlight its weaknesses rather than jump onto the bandwagon and go on at length about every positive point. I can now mention some of them though. For me the absolute gem of this game is the Euphoria motion system for all pedestrians and non-player characters. It is noticeably a vast improvement over ragdoll technology and is spookily lifelike in so many ways. For a start, in gunfights you will often see wounded enemies run away whilst clutching their stomach or a limb. They will limp away and yell for help. They will even sometimes clutch their hand if you shoot their weapon from their grip. I’ve not seen this level of animation in any other game before. That’s because this is the first game to use Euphoria, which is a system developed by an entirely separate company to Rockstar. There is no doubt that we will see this system used in every form of war or combat game made from this point onwards. It’s simply that good.

Another great inclusion comes with the quality of mediums such as the in-game television and entertainment venues. The TV shows are particularly humorous and very watchable. Some are parodies on other video games (Republican Space Rangers has all sorts of Halo references) whilst others are tongue-in-cheek takes on American history and popular culture. All of this represents a great take on Anglophone society. I’m note sure how the rest of the world will respond to it all but I’m sure it’ll prove popular everywhere outside of English speaking society. There is a great mix of British/American cultural references and all of this is remarkably entertaining. The fake internet is also fantastic and very cleverly done. It parodies every net culture reference imaginable and also manages to seem genuinely ‘online’ somehow at times. It is perhaps missing one treat though; a form of ‘YouTube’ or video sharing website would have clearly been an inspired idea for short and deliberately bad clips of the in-game inhabitants doing wacky things.

The comedy clubs are equally awesome although most of the Ricky Gervais stuff just consists of old gags from his tour DVDs such as Politics and Animals. The rest of the venues you can attend aren’t so great though. You can’t, for example, enter a bar or nightclub. You just walk up to them and then it goes dark and reloads with you walking out as a drunkard. The strip club is pretty cool, particularly when the controller vibrates during private dances! However, it’s not much different to the clubs you could venture into in San Andreas.

There are many great tweaks in this game that improve the GTA model. The most notable is the taxi system that allows you to travel as a fair and skip to the destination. Looking out of the window of the back seat of a cab was one of my highlights of playing this game. I know it doesn’t sound like a great deal, but being able to just sit and study the world outside is quite an experience because it does start to blur that line between reality and a game. You see the pedestrians living their life and behaving like you’d expect people to. They talk on phones, drink coffee, litter, lean against walls, sweep roads, even scratch themselves and talk in groups.

The problem is this is all an illusion. It is the gaming equivalent of The Truman Show. It all seems real but upon closer inspection is artificial and hollow. No-one in GTA IV is ‘living a life’ like they did in Oblivion. They are on a set path and will repeat it for eternity. The pedestrians themselves look very varied and realistic. Every kind of archetypal figure imaginable roams these streets. However, eventually you start to spot the same figures again and again and realise that these figures are actually clones and are not unique. I was a little disappointed by this the first time I realised it and it was confirmed for me.

Going back to the taxi, even this feature often highlights various issues with the game. That feeling of being in a taxi cab in a bustling city is instantly smashed when said taxi cab driver starts to crash into walls and reverse onto pavements recklessly. Once, my taxi ended up so damaged I had to get out half way into a journey. The A.I does bizarre stuff and behaviour like this acts to remind you of the fact you’re playing a GTA game.

I haven’t touched on the story in this review like so many others have. All I will say is that the character you play is a cool and likeable anti-hero; a sort of dried up killer of a man. You feel bad ass in all the right ways. Kudos to Rockstar for nailing this. The story itself is believable but suffers from being linear. There are multiple endings but no sense of forging your own way like there is in true open-world games. I wanted to say ‘no’ to some missions and do others in ways the script didn’t allow. Sometimes this game feels like it is too mission heavy. Traditionally, GTA has always been about just doing your own thing. Personally, I believe Rockstar should have focused on this element more and made missions something you actually discover for yourself as opposed to them being fed to you. I would have liked to have that sense of discovering obscure figures in bars offering shady work. You don’t get this. It’s all pre-determined for gamer.

The friend management system is pointless and rather tedious. I have no idea why Rockstar rolled with this Japanese style dating game feature. In reality a cold killer like Niko wouldn’t do niceties like playing darts with an innocent girl or taking low level crooks for a drive to a show. By about the half way stage of playing you are already the alpha man in the city anyway. You’ve got money coming out of your ears and more guns than a NRA convention. Once you’ve had ‘sex’ (heard it at least) with Michelle there’s no incentive left. I didn’t need Little Jacob’s guns or Roman’s cabs. I wanted to mute my phone in the end.

I’m not sure why so many people are waxing lyrical about the mobile phone itself in this game. It’s basically an interface for the options. It’s well implemented but is not as big of a deal as so many would have you believe.

Soundtrack wise I think IV is just going to be a subjective thing. I was a little disappointed by the soundtrack on offer. It’s probably about now that Rockstar should start thinking of new ways to implement radio into GTA titles. I’m thinking streaming content or at least updatable track listings. I listened to beat 102 more than anything else because it just felt right somehow. The rest is okay though – but this is where the 360’s custom soundtrack feature truly shines. The sound and graphics are great and do the job well. My only criticism comes with the gun sound effects. They don’t come over heavy enough, particularly with the MP5.

I really need to round this one up. I knew it would be a long review and deservedly so. This is clearly the best GTA game ever made, although many I’m sure will maintain there own personal take on this. Being the best GTA game is clearly a big deal but the world has moved on considerably since 2001. Has GTA IV managed to do enough to truly take this franchise into our ‘current’ generation? I would say it has. It’s an entertaining game and genuinely gripping in a few places. However, it’s no ‘holodeck’ and has many issues.

This is not the best open-world game. As far as I’m concerned Oblivion is hands down still the best in this genre. It isn’t a shooter that can touch Gears of War, or a racer that could contend with something like… Forza?? (I know zilch about racing games). What this game represents is a mash of every genre.

For me the main shining point of this game is Euphoria; a feature that cannot truly be solely associated with the game itself. This motion technology is what drives the lifelike activities of the pedestrians, the realistic reactions to entry wounds, and the animation within cut scenes. Without it I honestly believe that in terms of the feel and atmosphere of the game IV would be almost identical to San Andreas bar the major graphical improvements.

With every GTA game the quality of each of its parts is improved upon and the quantity is carried through. Here, a compromise was made between that quality and quantity balance. I believe that one day, perhaps years away or perhaps decades, a GTA game will ultimately come out that is not only of utter quality but has the sheer quantity of something like San Andreas to boot. GTA IV is the start of something but it’s not the great masterpiece that will no doubt be on the way in the future. This is one stunning game but it’s far from perfect.

Summary

+Constant glimpses of something profound
+Very impressive animation and NPC behaviours
+Varied and entertaining offline activities/mediums
+/-This is still a GTA game in every sense
-All the old GTA problems with A.I
-Multiplayer does feel like an afterthought

9.3 / 10

For all its faults it's still one of the best games in recent years

by The Critical Alien
© 2008

Rating System

2008-05-09T15:05:00.005+01:00

Just for clarity and ease of access, here is the rating system used for all reviews for gamesreview.co.uk:

Scale

10 - GOD himself made a computer game on the 8th day and saw that it was good but this holy relic still remains to be discovered.

9.5 - 9.9 - An awesome game, worthy of the highest of praise, yet oh so rare.

9.0 - 9.5 - Emeralds of gaming bliss yet there remains the scratches of slight imperfection.

8.0 - 9.0 - Superb, brilliant, but also not quite groundbreaking, with issues and the odd bug.

7.0 - 8.0 - Good, solid games but maybe stability was an issue with large bugs or glitches.

5.0 - 7.0 - Getting a little dodgy now with major problems and annoyances, yet still sound.

3.0 - 5.0 - Hmm, entering the zone of shoddiness with general weaknesses and harsh bugs/issues.

2.0 - 3.0 - Weak games but maybe someone, somewhere, will love them?

1.0 - 2.0 - Bad, very bad. The developers were doing pot and rushed a flimsy project.

Under 1.0 - Bordering on criminal; evil, appalling, rushed and total junk.

0.0 - In the future people may look back on these games, laughing. Utterly abysmal games, absolutely shocking - however it's rare a game is this bad.

-0.0 - Survivor: The Interactive Game (see here)

by The Critical Alien

Review: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Three: Vegas 2

2008-05-02T17:43:00.013+01:00

Format: Xbox 360

Category: FPS
Players: 1-16 (1-4 Co-Op)
Publisher: Ubisoft

Vegas, baby!

A while back, in my review of Ghost Recon 2, I made constant reference to the 2006 hit, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Three: Vegas. The original Vegas was a decent, tactical, and reasonably realistic FPS. I digged it for the well implemented cover system, cinematic combat, and impressive multiplayer. Also worthy of praise was the unique customisation options you had at your disposal. Not only could you select your primary and secondary weapons, you could fully customise your avatar’s appearance. For an FPS game, this level of customisation was simply unprecedented. It felt more like a Sims game and was awesome. Although this was really just a glossy feature the actual gameplay of the original was also solid. The story mode was good fun and reasonably interesting to follow. The classic Terrorist Hunt mode was great fun and also very challenging. And then there was the adversarial multiplayer; as good as anything that was on offer all those years ago. So, here we go again with Vegas 2.

Being a sequel, Vegas 2 promotes itself as a vast improvement over the original. It boasts smarter A.I, a much more dramatic campaign mode, deeper customisation options, and vastly improved graphics. It was released as part of Ubisoft’s 10 years of Rainbow Six celebration. Everyone was eager to play and primed for the latest Clancy instalment. I’ll admit I was excited. Very few games have ever captured the level of tactical realism seen in Clancy titles. From the hype it sounded like Vegas 2 was going to be tight and firing on all cylinders. Well, turns out it isn't.

Like so many sequels nowadays, this game suffers from being arguably inferior to its original. Vegas 2 advances very little here. It transfers most of the features that were good about the original and places them neatly into its body of code. The problem is it simply fails to implement anything particularly new. What is new is the ‘persistent elite creation’ system. This is essentially a very awkward way of describing what is in essence an old idea; transferring your single player character across to multiplayer. It’s certainly good to see and clearly better than having no persistent character system. However, it has allowed for a system that can be easily exploited. Players are able to max out their weapons-based skill sets very quickly offline. This simply then means you’ll have access to every weapon in the game. Separate to this is the actual ranking system, which is also persistent. The problem is even this mode is now exploited by players finding ways to reach Elite status very quickly via campaign mode bugs and A.I respawning glitches on a particular level.

I’m not going to dwell on the exploits because it’s not entirely fair to rate a game negatively based on such obscure bugs. Unfortunately, many gamers have too much time on their hands and factors like this are often a problem with online worlds. The ranking system is basically a slightly improved version of the original version. It suffers from starting off fast and then turning into a painful slog through the vast number of Sergeant ranks. However, if it ain't broke don't fix it springs to mind. It was always a cool system and remains so here.

The game itself is basically just a very bog standard affair. It feels dated and in many ways inferior to Vegas. Firstly, the campaign mode is dull… oh so dull. In Vegas, one minute you were in Mexico battling through caves. Another minute you were fighting through neon lit streets surrounded by SUVs, and then all of a sudden you found yourself tackling a mighty dam facility. Vegas 2 offers a variety of warehouses, dark alley ways, abandoned convention centres, and bizarre private estates to do battle in. Every half decent location is a homage and remake of a stage from a former Clancy game. Most of them come from the classic Raven Shield. Any segment that is new to Vegas 2 is boring, uninspired, and downright tedious to play through.

The weak level design could have been forgotten about if it were not for the major flaws of Vegas 2. The big screw up comes with the popular Terrorist Hunt mode. For a start the maps, being based on the story mode, are really bad. They are just boring and lifeless. Terrorist Hunt was always about knowing the map in other Rainbow Six games. Maps in the original Vegas such as the Campus stage were a prime example of tight design. In Vegas 2, the few maps that are any good are from former games (such as the downloadable Streets) and are, as a result, played to death by everyone.

The real problem with Terrorist Hunt mode though is not the lacklustre selection of maps. It’s the awful way the A.I terrorists now spawn in the most frustrating of ways. Now in the classic PC Clancy titles this never happened. The enemy were placed randomly and the skill was in sweeping room to room and hunting them down. In Vegas, this was the case with slight alterations. In Vegas 2, it goes Star Trek style. You’ll find yourself isolated and convinced a room is clear only to then receive an AK-47 round in the face once an enemy spawns directly behind you. You will also constantly get sniped by seemingly omnipresent SPAS 12 snipers. Shotgun buck will claim you nine times of out ten in Vegas 2.

This bug/console compromise/downgrade to any other Rainbow Six games' Terrorist Hunt mode is utterly unforgivable. As a Rainbow Six veteran, I was shocked and deeply frustrated by this ridiculous issue. It essentially ruins the most popular mode and, topped with the lack of good maps, means that many players have already switched back to the original.

I don’t really have much more to say about Vegas 2. Not only is it a prime example of a 1.5 title trying to pretend it’s a fully fledged sequel, it's a disappointing one at that. Vegas 2 is a weak expansion pack of ideas. Graphically, it actually seems worse than the 2006 game of the same name. There is no evidence of it looking any better, that’s for sure. The sounds are identical to the original, as is the questionable adversarial mode. In truth, the bar has been considerably raised for online FPS games ever since the release of Call of Duty 4. However, this is no excuse for half-baked attempts.

Vegas 2 has no party system – meaning you can’t play with friends without the hassle and sheer stress of trying to either host a room and send invites or just hope you will all find a public server with enough free slots. If you do manage to clamber into a public room (hosted by a stranger) then be prepared to get booted for no reason, lagged out to the lobby, and forever waiting for a host to launch. Fortunately, we have generally moved on from the days of gaming when this was all too common. Unfortunately, Vegas 2 still insists on doing things the old way. The game needed a party mode alongside this host/join system. It's that simple.

My last comment is probably a criticism that about sums this game up. Unlike in Vegas, this game only supports two player co-op for the story mode. This is because the developers seem to think people would prefer poor HUD-based cutscenes over having three other friends playing alongside them. Laughably, it was also hyped that the two A.I operatives will now stay with you even if another player joins. This system works badly as the A.I will ignore the second player and treat them like an underling; constantly barging by them and stealing cover.

Ubisoft seem to think people care about the story… they don’t. The story is just a framework for the action. It is nothing more. They have sacrificed four player co-op for cutscenes that are viewable for any potential second player and the inclusion of the A.I when this someone else joins. They also claimed that the levels were simply not designed for four players. As far as I was concerned they were hardly designed for one player. This game needed four player co-op. End of discussion.

Vegas 2 isn’t worth the full retail price. If you can, pick it up when it’s cheaper or perhaps rent it. It really isn’t sequel material. It’s just Vegas with a few new features minus four player co-op and a workable Terrorist Hunt. The golden standard of Rogue Spear and Raven Shield has demonstrably vanished and this apple has fallen very far from the tree made by that great original development team, Red Storm Entertainment.

by The Critical Alien
© 2008

A new blog!

2008-05-02T13:54:00.007+01:00

Well, I've finally switched my focus for reviewing towards the blogosphere. From this point on all new reviews from www.gamesreview.co.uk will be posted directly onto this blog. It was time to 'evolve' and adapt! I put it off for long enough.

Stay tuned for updates! Admin.

by The Critical Alien

For a look at older reviews, including the odd in-depth study of a few titles, please see http://www.gamesreview.co.uk

Archive Review: Halo 3

2007-11-06T17:53:00.001Z

(Xbox 360 Review)

(Note: This is a far longer review than is the standard on this website. Due to the grand status of this title it has proved vital to extend the usual length to cover every area.)

Finishing the fight

I’ve identified a growing pattern emerging from within the relatively young industry of computer gaming. The pattern is obvious, unhidden, and perhaps rather troublesome when we consider the implications. It has only become apparent in recent years because it has taken just over a decade for the industry to grow and find its prominent place in the hearts and minds of the younger generations.

Halo 3, Bungie’s beast, is a good example of the pattern. Here we have a computer game that was, is, and probably will continue to be dubbed by many as the very paragon of the medium. Countless internet forums, e-communities, blogs, and magazines are ablaze with talk of this title. But why? Is it just yet another example of expertly employed marketing and hype; driven ultimately by the Leviathan that is Gates’ Microsoft? Or is this an example of the gaming world yet again seeking a holy relic, a true masterpiece, in which they can proclaim to be the medium’s Magnum Opus?

If you are bored of this review already then you have two choices: either go back and stop reading here or scroll down a few paragraphs – I am in analysis mode. The pattern I am talking about is the constant declaration of greatness thrown at a title and swallowed up by the masses of gamers eager and desperate for the one real, beyond dispute, true God-game. We saw it with Halo in 2001, we saw it with Halo 2 in 2004, and by Grayskull we are seeing it with Halo 3 in 2007! Through perhaps a mixture of the processes I outlined above this game has been heralded as a masterpiece. But is it really? Via a mix of viral marketing, media hype, and fanboy hysteria Microsoft has succeeded in its plan and no doubt Halo 3 will sell with record-slamming velocity over the next few weeks leading up to Christmas '07. The burning question then is whether the game deserves the attention? We shall see.

In 2004 I sat up, like the suggestible, young naïve thing I was back then, and read the Bungie forums well into the early hours. It was release night and I wanted to read all the initial comments from those whom had camped it out to grab a copy. I remember it well; those dreams of impossible expectations being slowly shattered with every new comment. Halo 2, after all the spin, was only marginally better than the original – and even that remains a contentious line.

This time around I kept well away from the forums. I made no effort to read up on Halo 3’s development and attain some little gem of information that no one else knew about. I refused to watch the po-faced, superfluous movies available over Xbox Live and Bungie.net of the development team trying to come over all “rad” and in touch with the community whilst secretly working under the watchful eye of M$. In fact, it was only with a week to go until release that I even learnt of the fact the game had a co-op mode – something which Halo 2 seriously lacked at the time.

So, when the game finally arrived (who am I kidding, I went and bought it at 8am on release day) I was not expecting greatness. Been there, done that, I said to myself. Instead, I was open to the experience and had no idea what to expect. Within twenty minutes I laughed to myself; the game was Halo 2 with a paint job.

Firstly, let me dwell on single player. I went straight for heroic mode and hit the first level. Soon I was on the second, then third. I kept telling myself the tough, intense moments of crazy combat that we all associate Halo games with were around the corner. I kept on telling myself that for half the game, and then some. To put it bluntly Halo 3 is easy for any 'serious' gamer. By that I mean it just doesn’t require much in the way of skill, experimentation, tactic, or luck. It’s just not like the former two games in this regard.

So, I asked myself why it could possibly be that this game just didn’t seem very challenging. Perhaps it was down to the fact I’m just that much l33ter now, my FPS skills entering the realm of godliness. Maybe it was something far more majestic than this. Was it that in these last few years there had been some form of paradigm shift amongst our species, enabling us to excel in this field of digital battle? Nah. I soon realised what the cause was. Like always, the truth was simple and based on an undeniable fact: there were no Elites.

I’m willing to bet that at some point during the development of Halo 3, perhaps in the early stages, there was a debate and point of conflict over the implications on gameplay the omission of the Elites would have. Some, I’m sure, knew that without this ub3r covenant adversary Halo 3 would suck. Others, I guess, would insist that new enemies would take their place. These were likely programmers that had little to do with the previous games' development.

Bottom line: the new enemy that constitute the vast majority of the foes you face in the game, being the brutes, completely suck in all manner of ways. They were re-designed for this game as they were very poorly implemented in Halo 2 but they are nothing like I would have hoped to see. One must ignore the hype. Bungie insist they act as a group, the pack mentality, and do all manor of cool and intelligent stuff. They will insist but their assurances do not equate to reality. In reality the brutes just seem like a generic enemy, a fill em’ with lead target. They are dull, uninspired, and simply nothing like as challenging as the Elites were in previous games.

The chief and Sergeant classes of the brute race are significantly tougher than the standard ones but do not appear often enough. When they do show up they are often part of a mash of covenant forces and you rarely feel the sense of imposing struggle like you did whenever you encountered a dual plasma wielding Elite on legendary or heroic in the earlier games. A lot of this is down to the fact that brutes, unlike Elites, do not have re-generative shields akin to Master Chief’s. However, this is not the only reason. I am convinced the A.I of the Elites simply was better in the former games.

I don’t pretend to know much about the inner workings of my Xbox 360, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a Chinese man lived inside, but I get the impression things integral to Halo 1 and 2 were changed in the third game; the difference being the transition from Xbox platform to 360 platform. Perhaps the code was altered in ways that truly did affect the A.I. It just seems to me that even the friendly marines do stuff in this game that raises the unimpressed eyebrow of the gamers’ collective. The enemy, in all its form, tends to act defensively; rarely assaulting your position and instead playing the “lame” card and camping whilst either deploying bubble shields (brutes) or just spamming you with all manner of grenades (grunts).

Halo 3 tends to play out like this during almost every stage of the campaign. You continually find yourself being forced to flush the enemy out from behind crates and dark corridors. In the previous Halo games this simply didn’t occur. Instead, Elites would often lead attacks and bring the fight directly to you. They would also do more than just nade spam and often seemed as intelligent and unpredicable as a human opponent in online play.

In more general, review-like, terms I will sum the campaign element of Halo 3 up and then focus on the real body of this game, the multiplayer. Campaign mode can either be attempted solo or co-operatively with up to four players. Let me be clear about this: co-op mode turns what would otherwise be quite a generic affair into an awesome experience. Now I have completed the game co-operatively on legendary (the hardest setting) I have absolutely no intention or desire to go back and play the game solo. Why? Because there is nothing particularly exciting, shocking, dramatic, or even fresh about it. It’s the same old thing, essentially: ‘Master Chief, we suck and need you to complete every tactical objective by yourself with limited backup.’

In co-op mode it’s fun to play but you find yourself ploughing through in no time. Within hours campaign is conquered and you’ve, ‘finished the fight.’ There were points during the campaign where I was more inclined to stand around idle and just chat through my headset to my fellow players than actually truly immerse myself into the battle. For this reason I will conclude that campaign mode is really just nothing that special. Some levels plain suck, including the first few, whilst others are better but too short. An example of this is a level on a large highway. All looks cool as you storm off up the road in a warthog, but then suddenly the road comes to an end and it’s yet again time to enter a cutscene.

The cutscenes in this game, or whatever you want to call them, are just not that great. The graphics are only marginally better than I recall seing in Halo 2 (i.e. they suck essentially) but perhaps the most important point is that they are just not engrossing enough. During seminal plot moments myself and my Live buddies were chatting over the mic, eventually pretty oblivious to the story. We knew it before we saw it. I slowly started to realise this game was probably aimed at the mentality of those whom would find this gripping. This was all designed with kids in mind.

Once again, the big issue with the campaign mode is the constant repetition of locations. However, this time around it’s so blatant and unchecked you wonder if the majority of Bungie employees actually have the minds of goldfish; forgetting everything they programmed up until eight seconds ago. With Halo 3 not only do we see the usual repetition of interior corridors, rooms, and sections, which is an issue widely associated with the previous games, but we also see repetition of entire stages from the earlier titles. Once or twice I’d have simply considered this a mild homage to those, perhaps classic, moments from the other games. However, by the tenth time you or a buddy you are playing with spot yet another point where everything seems strangely familiar you are ready to annouce it a case of classic digital recycling.

The story tries hard to justify the repeated sections but fails. The intrinsic nuances of the world you inhabit have been designed so as to justify repeated interiors. I’m talking here about the way the covenant intentionally design their large ships via control + paste industrial processes.

If it were not enough that corridors etc are constantly repeated we also see with this title a new evil, and one in which I don’t recall encountering since the pre-CD days of gaming. This evil is one part laziness, two parts time constraint. Throughout the campaign you are constantly being ordered to go back the way you came, head on back through the route you just took, and reach the door you were closer to twenty minutes ago. In typical computer-game fashion, upon turning around, to essentially play out the whole level again but whilst facing it from the other direction, low and behold! The enemy has re-appeared in full force. Bungie rely on combat and combat alone to prevent boredom here. The problem is, without Elites, combat is just a case of nade spamming and waiting for brutes’ bubble shields to puff out.

We see the flood once again. I cried. Some will insist they are more fun to do battle with this time. That’s simply not the case. It’s exactly the same experience as in previous Halo games.

All one needs to do is check out Halo 3’s metacritic page to behold the insane, hall-of-fame, greatness being associated with this title by almost every major online review site and gaming magazine. I can state categorically that this is chiefly down to the multiplayer. It’s in the online action where this game shines. Campaign was clearly seen as less of a priority by Bungie this time around, more so than even with Halo 2. All the painstaking effort seems to have gone on the features of Forge, Theatre, and good old Matchmaking.

Forge

To sum forge up is rather easy. Think Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis. Remember that cheat when you could turn Sonic into any game item and then spam that item into the gameworld? Well, that’s forge – bar Master Chief turning into an item but instead becoming a godlike ball of creation.

Forge allows thirteen-year-old wannabe “haxxorz” (the vast majority of the Xbox Live community) to pretend they are great sages of code. They can, and will, host forge games where they patrol the skies of Valhalla and drop Scorpion tanks onto you from just below the altitude borders. Myself and my online buddies have had a good few laughs mucking around with forge in this manner. However, it simply fails as a seminal feature of online play. Bungie wax lyrical about how forge can be used to entirely alter maps, create wacky memes, and craft unique gametypes. In truth it’s just something to do at 3am after the fifth joint and a hard session on social slayer.

Forge also has some pretty serious limitations. You can’t, for instance, literally create a map. In other words, a map making tool forge is not. Wouldn’t it have been great to be able to design maps for Halo 3 via the 360 console? Instead, we can swirl the radio antenna around in mid-air whilst in edit mode. We can also create omg ramps that send warthogs high into the sky. The problem is it just gets boring, fast. It’s a novelty. End of discussion.

Theatre

At first I was quite unsure about the idea of having every last moment of my Halo 3 gaming recorded and stored for all to see (if they were also part of that game). Living in Blair’s (now Brown’s) Britain I am accustomed to being surveyed by CCTV everywhere I turn. But now everything I do in a game can also be logged. In ten years time I predict that digital reality will be as surveyed as the real world. This is the beginning of a new phase of gaming – the phase of total accountability. Soon no one will be able to lie about their amazing killing sprees on any platform or game.

Using technology that doesn’t exist Bungie have managed to devise a system akin to magic. It records you. Every moment of your Halo 3 time can be viewed, edited, slowed down, sped up, paused, and even shared. It’s a brilliant feature. Already, my Live inbox has been influxed by contacts wishing to show me their moments of hilarity. There are flaws to this system though. Firstly, campaign videos cannot be edited, fast-forwarded, or re-wound. Apparently, for this to have been possible, according to Bungie, three fifths of the world’s resources would have been depleted by Microsoft mega-systems within two seconds. Also, the matrix probably would have become unstable and God forced to intervene.

Theatre mode is all about recording short clips of your team deathmatch moments. You can then attach them as a video to a Live message and add a comment with the file. Unfortunately, Bungie didn’t truly implement this feature like they should have. For a start they continue to go on about how theatre mode will essentially prove a meme creation tool. The problem is you can’t add music or a voice-over to your video. In other words, you can’t truly edit it – merely crop clips from a master file. You can’t do that much besides record moments. I was hoping for more myself.

The fact every game is recorded is clearly of no blemish to Halo 3. It is a very impressive feature. It’s just not a particularly integral one to the gaming experience. Again, this is a novelty. What really matters is the game itself – not the tools that come with it.

Matchmaking

I soon realised upon hitting Matchmaking with my large party of comrades on the release night of Halo 3 that it was essentially Halo 2 with bubble shields and an inferior proximity voice system. The classic lobby-side bitchtalk of Halo 2 has been 360fied, with a seemingly even larger army of thirteen-year-old whiny pro-gamers to annoy consumer with. Thankfully, this time around you can set Matchmaking to search for opponents with good connections over searching solely to ensure quick results. This seems to work well and most of the time you will find you are playing with those players relatively geographically close to you. That is, of course, if you are in the US or UK. As the neat view of the globe Bungie have placed on the Matchmaking screen shows, Halo 3 is very much an Anglo-American affair. Isolated bands of gamers seem to be active in the far reaches of the yurals, and at least one player can be spotted in Africa, but on the whole it would seem the love affair with Halo 3 is not so much a universal phenomenon as it is an Anglo-American fetish.

It all seems in order connectivity wise. Lag is rarely an issue, but the same old server or client side biases to the ping rate which were seen in Halo 2 are often apparent here. It’s not a big deal though. Everything is essentially the same as it was in Halo 2. There are no great differences. Certain new game types, such as Infection, are great attributions but rarely see much play time.

The major issue here comes with the maps, or lack of good ones. With only one sixteen player specific map, being Valhalla, Halo 3 can hardly boast particularly large scale battles. Most of the time it’s a four versus four affair. Personally, I am shocked there are no new maps of any worth. Bungie were no doubt too busy working on Forge and Theatre mode to realise Halo 3 needed about ten new, large and decent maps.

Another factor here comes with the proximity voice system. I adored the way in Halo 2 you could not only talk to your team via the headset (teamchat) but could also, when not tapping the transmit button, yell out and hear your voice play through the speakers. It would seem that in Halo 3 the system is literally inferior to this 2004 title. Teamchat is no different but proximity does not let you hear teammates, only the enemy. On paper this may not sound like a big deal, but it is. No longer is it possible to run around alongside your team and annoy them with rap or deranged noises through proximity. Now they only hear you on the headset and you only hear the enemy via proximity voice when they are talking through their own teamchat channel. I was very unimpressed by this. Apparently down to “beta feedback” Bungie altered the system during the early stages. Real shame. It's also strange that in the wording of the voice options screen within the game it plainly claims one can potentially hear proximity voice from both friends and foes. Don't be fooled. This is not the case.

On the whole Matchmaking works well and is a great laugh. No other 360 title has this level of ease when it comes to playing within a party of friends and keeping together all night. But in this regard it’s no different to Halo 2. Sure it’s glossier but better? That is contentious I would suggest. About the only truly new feature here, besides the numerous but mostly unpopular new weapons, is the ability to slightly customise your avatar. As in Halo 2 you can select from an Elite or Master Chief and eventually unluck new helmets, armour, etc. It's neat but after playing a game like Tom Clancy's Vegas you won't be blown away by anything on offer here.

I get the impression Bungie were eager to supply gamer with that sense of finishing the fight. The story is conclusive but in that Pitch Black way where, deep down, you know some capitalist somewhere will eventually drag it all back up again. As far as I'm concerned the story was too alike to the Alien(s) movies and at points I even found this an annoyance. Without giving anything away I want to add that the actual ending to the game is about as satisfying as any Steven Seagal flick. There's this weird sense of it not being quite as it should, but then you realise Bungie clearly were briefed to only semi-conclude the tale. The last level is a love/hate affair I am guessing. I hated it, my co-op allies loved it. To me the old generic gaming template of basing a final stage on some race against time through exploding, collapsing, sets of platforms and/or interiors is too formulaic. However, I did get the short straw here and sat in the passenger seat whilst egging our driver on to completion. But when it came I felt no sense of just experiencing something ground-breaking.

Well, it’s time to round up this institution of a computer-game. When Ridley Scott was asked to direct Halo the movie he took one look at the script and immediately turned down the offer. I suspect I know why. The story is Robocop in space, and perhaps that makes the game an ‘80s cliché on the 360. Designed with fanboy kids in mind, this is just another corporate product. I don’t care what the major review networks will tell us, whilst counting the bribe money no doubt; Halo 3 is a plain average game, ill-deserved of its highly esteemed status. Technologically, I don’t deny the game is a marvel. However, in terms of gameplay and playability (those old gaming words often now forgotten) this is just nothing truly special.

SUMMARY

+ Impressive Forge

+ Theatre

+ Good old Halo greatness

- (being alot like Halo 2)

- Lacklustre Campaign mode

8.9 / 10

This game is not the Messiah

by The Critical Alien
© 2007

Archive Review: Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2

2007-05-19T17:49:00.001+01:00

(Xbox 360 Review)

Do you believe in ghosts?

In what seems like yet another round of highly anticipated fps games hitting our gaming consoles and PCs I have surfed the wave of initial euphoria and happily danced many a night away playing several of the titles on offer. In recent months my gaming has branched out as I have hit Xbox Live via my 360 and one of the main games I have really been giving my attention since its release has been GRAW 2. To be honest I actually had to flip a coin over what to review here for I have also been playing a heck of a lot of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Vegas.

I was keen to review Vegas but ultimately felt I had more to say about this title. For the record though I will say that I do actually prefer Vegas and will be explaining why throughout. GRAW 2 is essentially a third-person shooter with a short but sweet single player experience and extensive multiplayer. My review is entirely based on the 360/Live version of the game and therefore I have omitted any reference here to the PC version which I can only presume is better. So on with it.

I never played the original GRAW so can't compare this sequel to the popular original. However I can tell from the general views of players that this really seems like GRAW 1.5 as opposed to some true sequel. I think it is safe to say this is the case. As a straight-out-the-box, no expectations, game GRAW 2 delivers. Graphically this game shines and represents some of the very best of what we have seen so far on the 360. Also the sound is decent with the expected Tom Clancy realism of gun sounds, bullet tracing, yells of agony, and cheesy American voices. Ubisoft Paris are responsible for this title and it seems clear that most of the cliched' dialogue that consists of the single player story is deliberately over the top and tongue-in-cheek. I suspect most American gamers, however, will not cotton onto this little insider joke.

The single player can be summed up rather succinctly. It is short, even shorter than the short campaign of Vegas, and rather repetitive. It is also quite a straight forward affair with only one point near the end of the game that proves tough to beat. On the whole it is enjoyable though and there are many "cool" moments where you feel immersed and want to know what is coming next. The story itself is just a framework necessity for the action, don't expect many twists.

There isn't much else to say here except that it is polished and quite bug free. Level design is pretty linear and scripted sequences come with predictable exigency. For the seasoned FPS/TPS shooters out there this whole campaign will prove a breeze. That is, of course, if you ever even bother to experience it for GRAW 2 makes no secret of the fact it is really entirely about the online action. Headsets on then...

Actually no before we put our headsets on let me say a few brief more things about the single player. The A.I. of your three teammates is quite impressive but I am convinced the A.I. boys from Vegas would teach these artificial pretenders a thing or two about proper use of cover and actually acting without your permission to do every damn thing. Sure these guys fire away once told they can but why the need to keep ordering them to "follow" or in reality catch up with player? The amount of micro-management here becomes tedious and for me it got to the point where I looked forward to being solo. The feature of being able to "control" vehicles is half-baked. In fact it was left out of the oven. All you do is order the driver to progress up a set path leading to a designated stop point plainly visible on your HUD map. The vehicle (a Bradley tank I think) doesn't really help out and more often than not you just don't bother ordering it to move. Once you get good at GRAW 2 you can pretty much own the enemy in hordes by your self.

We also see extensive use here of scripted "riding shotgun" moments straight out of the Call of Duty school of retro shooting-range style action. It is overdone to the point of sacrilege to gaming in GRAW 2. The sound of that chopper mounted chaingun will eventually drive you quite crazy.

About the only really neat element of the single player is the cover system but I want to add at this stage that the cover system here is no way near as good as in Vegas (sensing a pattern?). You can lean against walls Gears of War style and generally peak around corners etc. However you can't blind fire. It manages to keep the gunfights playable and cinematic knowing you can hop into cover and also it has simply now just become a requirement of shooter games as far as I'm concerned.

A rather philosophical question has continued to be asked in countless Ubisoft forums since the release of GRAW 2. That question will now be reprinted here for all to see: "Why is there no cover system in the multiplayer?" Many have pondered with the question but about the best, and only, answer to emerge from the depths of the basement dwellers has been because it prevents GRAW 2 playing out like some slower paced affair... Hmmm. Let us look to Vegas and Gears of War. Are these "slowed paced" games?* The truth is GRAW 2 immensely lacks from the omission of a cover system in the multiplayer and it has proved a deal breaker for at least two of my Live buddies. Go take note Ubi.

(* - No, lol, they are fast like jets.)

Forgetting about the cover system (or lack of) the multiplayer is quite good here. It is only quite good though. It is not, "wow this was worth £39.99 good". Customisation options for your online identity are frankly wtf bad. Compared to Vegas (lol) they suck. They really are not worth raising as a game feature. Select from a helmet and gender. Nice. Play wise every type of match conceivable is available and match customisation options are truly extensive. The problem here is very few people actually bother setting up the more obscure types of match possible. For example in helicopter hunt mode you cooperatively shoot up swarms of evil Russian made Hind-D attack choppers. It gets old very quickly. In reality all the more novel match modes are not that fun. Co-op mode in its more general sense is very good though. It is addictive and really requires solid teamwork as enemy troops tend to swarm you and do a good job at putting up a fight. Team deathmatch simply does not appeal to me here because of the lack of a cover system.

It plays out too much like a sniper-fest with every other weapon in GRAW 2 possessing a scope. It really is all about the co-op modes in my humble opinion. Clan matches and the clan system are well implemented but it's the same story, sniper battles. Now don't get me wrong, I love sniping. The problem is in GRAW 2 so does everybody else! The weapons list is pretty much endless and that is an awesome feature. It is just a shame sniping is so easy to perform with even a basic assault rifle.

So I have established it is all about co-op. The burning question is whether it plays as well as the co-op in Vegas? Well it is certainly more of a polished and implemented feature in GRAW 2. The dominant modes are mission, defend, and essentially a terrorist hunt. Mission is an 8 player tour of 6 co-op only maps. Story is limited to a man dressed as a General telling you in a small box in your HUD to blow up a boat or some such target. No one cares. Oh yeah and that reminds me, the HUD is just overly flashy and takes up too much screen space. The pointless blue lines going around your borders of visibility are just stupid and really irritating. Thanks.

Defend is a nice feature but plays out like a poorly programmed nightmare for gamer. It is fun but soon the realisation of an unlimited horde of A.I. rebels charging your defend point from one specific road or doorway gets tedious. The enemy makes no effort to flank you or apply smoke etc. They charge and die whilst you fire, run out of ammo, die, respawn and lose due to the time it takes to reach the zone. Some maps are better suited for defend than others. Most are not suitable.

There are "Black Hawk Down" moments here where you feel desperately outnumbered and surrounded and get a nice sensation of "being in the shit" with your pals but it lasts about 2-3 minutes then you run out of ammo and die. It just is as basic as that. It is a shame no more was down here to truly create a sense of defending something against an organised horde.

Terrorist hunt speaks for itself. It really just is a simplified version of mission mode. Co-op is great fun and you really feel like you are a team up against it. However more times than not it is the LAG you are up against and not the Mexican rebels. I have yet to experience an 8 player game due to netcode flaws and have had to settle with 3 player co-op most of the time. This seriously limits GRAW 2 online - and this is Live we are talking about, the apparent future of online gaming etc. I ignore the rumours of patches for this review is based on the out-of-the-box product. There are elements of this game I really like and these were mostly linked to the co-op modes. The weapons, graphics, level design, and general atmosphere are great and surpass most games I have played on my 360 so far. However on the whole I preferred Vegas both on and offline and suspect most people will.

If we had a cover system for online games, a netcode that actually performed, and a level of character customisation for appearance purposes GRAW 2 would be an essential game for any action junky. As it stands this title is just an average glossy shooter with little tactical emphasis. It is a shame but I doubt I will be playing GRAW 2 again anytime soon and that about sums it all up.

SUMMARY

+ Decent Co-op elements

+ Quick fix single player

- Lack of cover system online

- Lag/connection issues

7.8 / 10