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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
