I was putting off COD 5. It's been there for months, sitting there on the shelf, baiting me. "Put aside the thoughts of your grandpa fighting the Germans in WWII, old wars are entertainment now" it was saying.
I discussed this issue with my grandma a while back, when another high profile WWII game was released. She was oblivious of the fact that past wars pass as entertainment these days in games, TV and films; a nice easy way to kill time. Juxtapose that with the thought of her working in the factory, assembling weapons that were used by my Grandpa and his fellow soldiers to kill other men simply because they happen to be a thousand miles apart, and you maybe begin to see where I'm coming from, and why I'm not such a big fan of games of this ilk. Anyway, that's a discussion for another time.
COD 5 is pretty much at the pinnacle of modern FPS games, I fail to see how it could be improved. It ticks all the 'old war' FPS boxes ... where next? Inevitably COD 6 which should be a Modern Warfare 2, but where next for Treyarch and their old weapons? I shouldn't complain, this franchise along with Guitar Hero keeps me and my Activision siblings in a job.
Gameplay wise, for me COD 5 was a slog at times, however I enjoyed the city based levels a lot more than the countryside trench ones. Unfortunately it suffers from that old nutshell, the death (through grenade or otherwise), and retry. I lost count of how many times the protagonist eats a grenade, or dies at the hands of one of the hoard of unlimited respawned Germans until a trigger box is reached, then retry. Honestly I don't see what purpose these retries serve, if not to prolong the time it takes to complete the level.
If it wasn't for the achievement points, and the fact that I got it for free I doubt I would have played COD 5, even though I thoroughly enjoyed COD 4. It's not in the same era, sure, but it's not even in the same league.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Plants vs Zombies: Concluded
Popcap have done it again.
After the casual masterpiece that is Peggle, Popcap have released Plants vs Zombies, another attempt to steal all my spare time. And it worked.
Plants vs Zombies is fantastic. The game has rock-solid mechanics, is polished to a massive extent, has a sense of humour ... and taps into a very popular meme, namely zombies. What more does any game need?
Popcap's twist on the classic tower defence genre gives the player an ever increasing amount of plants to defend their house from waves of different types of zombies. Each different type of zombie has it's own distinct personality and skill, from the bog standard brain-eater to the Michael Jackson-esque dancing zombie who resurrects four of his pals with a Thriller-esque pirhouette, and as with the zombies, each plant brings something different to the table.
The game is played out on a 6x6 grid, and the currency used to 'buy' plants is sunlight, which drops from the sky, or can be generated using sunflowers, and mushrooms in later levels. This introduces a new mechanic to the genre, and gives PvZ a unique twist. As well as placing your plants, keeping an eye on any approaching zombies, and collecting any coins dropped, the player must also watch out for sunlight to collect. It's frantic at times, and completely brilliant.
One tiny criticism is difficulty, or lack of. As always, Popcap's learning curve is second to none, but as you play through the game you never get the feeling that a level is close to impossible to complete. In my whole playthrough, I only failed twice (on the very last level), but I guess this is what happens with casual games. Once completed, the game continues to give, with a whole host of new modes and minigames.
Let me repeat myself ... Plants vs Zombies is fantastic, and after reading the credits I can't believe it only took four people to develop. If only all games were like this.
After the casual masterpiece that is Peggle, Popcap have released Plants vs Zombies, another attempt to steal all my spare time. And it worked.
Plants vs Zombies is fantastic. The game has rock-solid mechanics, is polished to a massive extent, has a sense of humour ... and taps into a very popular meme, namely zombies. What more does any game need?
Popcap's twist on the classic tower defence genre gives the player an ever increasing amount of plants to defend their house from waves of different types of zombies. Each different type of zombie has it's own distinct personality and skill, from the bog standard brain-eater to the Michael Jackson-esque dancing zombie who resurrects four of his pals with a Thriller-esque pirhouette, and as with the zombies, each plant brings something different to the table.
The game is played out on a 6x6 grid, and the currency used to 'buy' plants is sunlight, which drops from the sky, or can be generated using sunflowers, and mushrooms in later levels. This introduces a new mechanic to the genre, and gives PvZ a unique twist. As well as placing your plants, keeping an eye on any approaching zombies, and collecting any coins dropped, the player must also watch out for sunlight to collect. It's frantic at times, and completely brilliant.
One tiny criticism is difficulty, or lack of. As always, Popcap's learning curve is second to none, but as you play through the game you never get the feeling that a level is close to impossible to complete. In my whole playthrough, I only failed twice (on the very last level), but I guess this is what happens with casual games. Once completed, the game continues to give, with a whole host of new modes and minigames.
Let me repeat myself ... Plants vs Zombies is fantastic, and after reading the credits I can't believe it only took four people to develop. If only all games were like this.
Friday, 10 April 2009
Dead Space: Concluded
Dead Space had quite a hard time of it. A new IP released in the Christmas scrum of 2008, it lost out somewhat in the race for review column inches, along with Mirrors Edge.
EA Redwood/Visceral Games have done a fantastic job of picking and choosing which parts to replicate from their huge list of influences, and adding just enough to the mix to make Dead Space feel like a new adventure. There's a highly polished feel running through all areas from the excellent visuals and audio to the UI and front end ... however, there's a 'but' coming along ...
EA Redwood/Visceral Games have done a fantastic job of picking and choosing which parts to replicate from their huge list of influences, and adding just enough to the mix to make Dead Space feel like a new adventure. There's a highly polished feel running through all areas from the excellent visuals and audio to the UI and front end ... however, there's a 'but' coming along ...
Below the high sheen lies a slightly rotten core. I encountered numerous bugs, from crashes to character and environment glitches, but nothing would prepare me for the bug that ended my participation in the Dead Space universe.
One chapter has Isaac Clarke collecting a number of navcards in order to access the shuttle to escape off the Ishimura. The total amount of cards was never documented (as far as I was aware), but no big deal right? It took around an hour to find the navcards, there was no fanfare or notification when each navcard was collected so I was never fully aware how many I had and how many I needed. The number of cards wasn't even listed on the inventory screen. 90 minutes in, I Clarke approached the shuttle, went to insert the navcards only to be blocke: NO ENTRY. Right, what? I tried backtracking, but was hampered by 1) the in-game naigation marker always taking me back to the shuttle, 2) save overwrites and 3) numerous blockers stopping me. I found only one mention of this on the internet here, so I guess I found a pretty rare bug. Great.
I sold the game at work the next day for £20, needless to say I never mentioned this glitch to the buyer!
Visually the game is stunning, if a little brown, but the enemies are a little disappointing. As so much work has clearly gone into the environments I found the characters a bit of a let-down, they appear to have come straight out of The Thing, 70's visuals and all.
The audio is particularly deserving of a mention, in fact I think Dead Space won numerous awards for it. On a Dolby Digital system I’ve never heard anything quite like it.
Overall, Dead Space is worth a play, but make sure you collect those damn navcards.
Friday, 3 April 2009
Inner Space
I'm the last person I know still playing Dead Space. Everyone else has fallen by the wayside.
"Too boring"
"Repetitive"
"All you do is retrace your own steps"
"It's buggy"
The last one's mine by the way, but I disagree with the other criticisms, so far at least. I've had a few arguments at work, defending EA's effort at survival horror against a barrage of criticisms ... my argument being that even though Dead Space is highly derivitive, it still includes enough new features that make it an excellent game. Will I feel different in a few days when I complete it? Who knows.
"Too boring"
"Repetitive"
"All you do is retrace your own steps"
"It's buggy"
The last one's mine by the way, but I disagree with the other criticisms, so far at least. I've had a few arguments at work, defending EA's effort at survival horror against a barrage of criticisms ... my argument being that even though Dead Space is highly derivitive, it still includes enough new features that make it an excellent game. Will I feel different in a few days when I complete it? Who knows.
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Blogs are old hat
Here's a link you may or may not be interested in - Is Twitter Replacing Blogging?
As you can gather from the title it's discussing the rise of Twitter and Facebook as a blogging tool. There are a lot of blogging tools available: Blogger (host of the fine blog you're reading now) and Wordpress, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter to name but a few. Twitter and Facebook both facilitate"micro-blogging" - limiting the user's text entry capacity (Twitter, for example, allows a maximum of140 characters) to a much smaller amount than previously possible. The current topic du jour is how these micro blogging sites render the other fully fledged tools redundant, cutting the bloat and fat of the wordy post down to it's component information.
As far as Game Concluded's opinion - I think there's room for both, however I'm a bit wary of limiting what people want to say. This already happens in the world of SMS, with many people carrying over their text-speak to real life - I've lost count of the amount of times I've received an email or IM in reduced text-speak and it's a real shame. We need less compression, more expansion. More eloquence, more story telling, more English.
Out of interest I ran Game Concluded through a blog post word count tool, and it averages 300 words per post which is below average. My aim for the blog is for it to be as succinct and to the point as possible without being too wordy. Hopefully I'm on track.
Anyway, I'm about to board a tram to the Engineering Deck of the USG Ishimura. C U L8TR.
As you can gather from the title it's discussing the rise of Twitter and Facebook as a blogging tool. There are a lot of blogging tools available: Blogger (host of the fine blog you're reading now) and Wordpress, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter to name but a few. Twitter and Facebook both facilitate"micro-blogging" - limiting the user's text entry capacity (Twitter, for example, allows a maximum of140 characters) to a much smaller amount than previously possible. The current topic du jour is how these micro blogging sites render the other fully fledged tools redundant, cutting the bloat and fat of the wordy post down to it's component information.
As far as Game Concluded's opinion - I think there's room for both, however I'm a bit wary of limiting what people want to say. This already happens in the world of SMS, with many people carrying over their text-speak to real life - I've lost count of the amount of times I've received an email or IM in reduced text-speak and it's a real shame. We need less compression, more expansion. More eloquence, more story telling, more English.
Out of interest I ran Game Concluded through a blog post word count tool, and it averages 300 words per post which is below average. My aim for the blog is for it to be as succinct and to the point as possible without being too wordy. Hopefully I'm on track.
Anyway, I'm about to board a tram to the Engineering Deck of the USG Ishimura. C U L8TR.
Monday, 16 March 2009
Far Cry 2: Concluded
I have to admit defeat.
I can't continue.
It's too much for me, too repetitive.
All my previous concerns with Far Cry 2 were proved valid, and when I was told yesterday that after having played for 12 hours I was only 14% through, I cracked. I very rarely don't complete a game, even the worst of games must be completed in my eyes (this is partly a value for money thing, partly an OCD completeness thing) but I just could face slogging through another mission, another attack on the same old compound facing the same old enemies laid out in exactly the same way.
I must have played about 15 missions, each one followed the same path: go to this place to get briefed. During the 5-or-so minute drive encounter exactly the checkpoint populated by exactly the same enemy. Slaughter everyone, continue through another checkpoint. Meet contact. Repeat all previous encounters until the "base" or "depot" is reached, slaughter everyone and blow stuff up.
It really feels like no love has gone into the the game. I'll give you a little example: save points. There are save points all over the place, one would expect to be able to go over to one, press a button and call up auto-save. Not in Far Cry 2, expect at least four button presses to save your progress. In fact this spreads to the whole UI, it's clunky and very un-user friendly, continuing along the same path as the gameplay.
I'm reminded of my thoughts on GTA IV "The Lost and Damned" here, because Ubisoft Montreal have created a fantastic Africa (as I mentioned in my previous post), similar in quality to Liberty City. Why one works so well as a game world and the other doesn't, I don't know.
I may go back to Far Cry 2 but I doubt it. Dead Space is calling me from the deepest darkest reaches of space.
Sunday, 15 March 2009
GTA IV: The Lost and Damned: Concluded
Well, that was a disappointment.
GTA IV was completed to 100% in the Thorne household. 43 hours. 50 stunt jumps. Every damn last pigeon. I enjoyed every minute of it, and couldn't wait to get stuck in to the downloadable content episode "The Lost and Damned". In hindsight maybe I was setting myself up for a fall. Hindsight's a wonderful thing.
Where do I begin with TLAD? The characters? All carbon copies of each other, none with the sublety previously seen in Niko, Roman et al. New mechanics? Most of the battles in TLAD are now squad based, and you're supposed to give a shit about protecting your comrades. On paper this is a good idea, but when one Lost member is replaced by faceless replica minus a bit of barely noticeable skill, it becomes difficult to care. Another new mechanic is another one that again on paper works, but doesn't in practise. When riding in formation a badge is displayed on the ground. The player is supposed ride on the badge and gain some kind of reward, but it's not obvious what the reward is, so here's another feature to ignore.
I suppose I should preface this next paragraph with a spoiler warning, although you'd have to be pretty slow to not see it coming. The main problem I found with TLAD, and I never thought I'd say this about a Rockstar game, is that it feels ever so slightly rushed. That's right, I said it. Rushed. A little example: along with the main story, as with GTA IV there are side missions - one of these is called Gang Warfare which is an excuse for The Lost have a running battle with a rival gang. Again, on paper, fine. However, as the Lost disband at the end of the game, you would have thought here would be no more gang warfare. Wrong. The Lost continue their gang warfare oblivious, even though they don't exist anymore.
Ultimately though, TLAD still works and here's why: Liberty City is the most realistic and believable game environment created ever, so you could throw any old hackneyed story, badly imagined characters or even shoddy design into it and it would still work.
GTA IV was completed to 100% in the Thorne household. 43 hours. 50 stunt jumps. Every damn last pigeon. I enjoyed every minute of it, and couldn't wait to get stuck in to the downloadable content episode "The Lost and Damned". In hindsight maybe I was setting myself up for a fall. Hindsight's a wonderful thing.
Where do I begin with TLAD? The characters? All carbon copies of each other, none with the sublety previously seen in Niko, Roman et al. New mechanics? Most of the battles in TLAD are now squad based, and you're supposed to give a shit about protecting your comrades. On paper this is a good idea, but when one Lost member is replaced by faceless replica minus a bit of barely noticeable skill, it becomes difficult to care. Another new mechanic is another one that again on paper works, but doesn't in practise. When riding in formation a badge is displayed on the ground. The player is supposed ride on the badge and gain some kind of reward, but it's not obvious what the reward is, so here's another feature to ignore.
I suppose I should preface this next paragraph with a spoiler warning, although you'd have to be pretty slow to not see it coming. The main problem I found with TLAD, and I never thought I'd say this about a Rockstar game, is that it feels ever so slightly rushed. That's right, I said it. Rushed. A little example: along with the main story, as with GTA IV there are side missions - one of these is called Gang Warfare which is an excuse for The Lost have a running battle with a rival gang. Again, on paper, fine. However, as the Lost disband at the end of the game, you would have thought here would be no more gang warfare. Wrong. The Lost continue their gang warfare oblivious, even though they don't exist anymore.
Ultimately though, TLAD still works and here's why: Liberty City is the most realistic and believable game environment created ever, so you could throw any old hackneyed story, badly imagined characters or even shoddy design into it and it would still work.
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