Changes

by
The Critical Alien

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

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

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

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.