Dead Space 2: Concluded

It's funny how often a power failure in a vast city on another planet is fixed by dismembering 3 alien creatures isn't it. Dead Space 2 doesn't often toe the line where videogame clichés are concerned, however this is the most glaring case.

In this Dead Space, at least we get to see more of Isaac Clark this time, he talks, he goes insane, he's still stooped over like an arthritic old man. Visceral use the fact that Isaac is going insane to good effect by making sure the player is never sure what's real or what's imagined. When Isaac returns to the Ishamura, the bloody thing is always whispering in his ear but, as the player, you are never sure when there's a creature behind the whispering. As a result of this the player is always kept on their toes, never sure when to relax or when one of those spindly creatures will come running at him.

Visceral clearly take a lot of pride in their presentation, this sequel has a very slick UI and similar to the previous release very sparse in-game HUD, with most of the information the player needs being placed in the world, although where it fails is for health and ammo. There's no way of telling (that I can see) if Isaac has any health packs, and if so which size they are without going into the inventory which can be dangerous if there are enemies nearby. Given the ease of use of stasis recharge packs (a light blinks when the player has a recharge pack in his inventory) it seems a bit of an oversight.

It's a scary game, but for me too much of the Wes-Craven-something-pops-out-and-makes-you-jump type of horror, not enough of the spooky psychological stuff. The game does suffer from repetition in the scare gags - never go in a lift in a space city, something is bound to pop out and make you jump.

It's an example in excellent environmental storytelling, without the need to resort to cutscenes every ten minutes. When the action is halted for a cutscene, they are generally incorporated very well into the level. Dead Space 2 suffers from very linear level design, but it's broken up by a few open spaces and hidden by the excellent presentation and visuals.

Unfortunately the ending lets the game down as a package. The final encounter is designed to take use of a particular weapon, unfortunately I never used this one weapon throughout the game so had to backtrack to find one and improve it before I could complete the level.

In short, if the future of humanity leads us to space colonies then I don't like it, and don't think I'll take part thank you.

Dead Rising 2: Concluded

Have we reached the peak of the zombie meme yet? This recently released game trailer makes me think not, however with the release of Left 4 Dead 2 and now Dead Rising 2 surely there's nothing more to offer.

I get the distinct feeling whilst playing Dead Rising 2 that it's a game of two parts. One part player against zombies, the other player versus humans. If only the part against the humans was better, this game would be excellent.

The player plays the role of moto cross star Chuck Green and is tasked with rescuing the survivors (including his daughter) of a zombie apocalypse in Las Vegas Fortune City, along with trying to get to the bottom of where all these bloody zombies came from in the first place. It uses a third person camera and is set in the malls, shops and casinos of Fortune City.


Fortune City itself is the perfect playground for Chuck to try out his maiming skills, with each and every section the player encounters (bar a few corridors and safe areas) packed to the gills with the undead - indeed Blue Castle are owed plenty of plaudits for their game engine, as rarely does the framerate drop even with (it seems) hundreds of zombies on screen at once. At first the amount of zombies can annoy but once the player begins levelling up, gaining stronger attacks and faster movement skills, the playground comes to life. Combining weapons is another feature, and soon the player is Propeller Hatting and Blambowing his way through the throngs. Using combo weapons not only allows the player to destroy more zombies, but also gives more XP points. The XP/levelling mechanic is one of the main pillars of the game and allows for quite a steep learning curve and the player hardly notices levelling up until they are a one man zombie destroye. This is definitely A Good Thing.

The marketing for the game wasn't great. I'm aware of a DLC title called DR2: Case Zero which was released before this game, and the main game was released without much fanfare. It's presentation is basic and sparse (using that font all japanese game devs use, I must find out its name), and as you'd expect the story and plot loses a bit in translation. The characters are widly over the top, but where the game tries to be funny it succeeds (mainly). The use of a trike and "female massager" stand out.

The game's structure is slightly confusing. The game allows the player time to deviate from the main story without ever explaining which is the more important task until it's too late. I had to restart my game because I didn't have enough time to complete one of the major story tasks - fair enough if I knew this was the case but it was sprung on me. Not good.

On to Chuck vs the humans. Scattered throughout Fortune City are a number of boss, or psychopath challenges. The story is that these survivors have lost it and gone mental, and Chuck has to kill them. The bosses take some time to take down, but it's not explained where this super human stamina from. Some of them are good, enjoyable even, however in the main they annoy as there are so many of them and the encounter often overlaps with another story part, or zombies get in the way.

So yes, despite its faults Dead Rising 2 is good, great even. I fancy playing through it again since you keep your XP levels for another run through. Should be fun.

Reboot

I know it's been a long time time since the blog was updated, but I've been busy with stuff on the internet mastering a game and mastering (hopefully) raising a minor.

I'm still playing games, so I'll be updating a bit more regularly. Oh, and I hope you like the new look. It's a template!

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune: Concluded

The biggest problem with growing up with the Indiana Jones movies is that every experience that presents itself as ‘Indiana Jones-like’ is bound to be a letdown. Movies and games that try to reproduce the Indy experience very rarely hit the highs of the movies, so Uncharted was a pleasant surprise.

Everything feels right in Uncharted, there are very few times that the game experience is ruined by a bug or poorly coded AI behaviour. I’ve done a bit of research into Naughty Dog’s impressive production techniques, well worth a read if you can dig them out – the proof is in the pudding and when such good production techniques yield such a good game, you know they’re doing things right.

If I was being overly critical I’d say the game is around a third too long; Naughty Dog could have ended the game before introducing the cave-dwelling monsters and I’d have been happy. Oh, and the very end of the game is amazingly frustrating – without spoiling it for the few that might not yet have played it, the end sequence takes the mechanics you’ve been using throughout the last 8 or 9 hours and pops them straight in the bin, to introduce a new way of doing things right before the game ends.

Uncharted is a real boys-own adventure game, it’s polished to a high standard and a great introduction to the franchise. Roll on Uncharted 2!

PS3

You may or may not have noticed a few PS3 games have crept onto the playlist. That's right, I'm the proud owner of a shiny 250gb PS3 slim. After buying a used PS3 from ebay, it turning up broken, and the nightmare of having to return it for a refund, I decided to trade in a few old games to get myself this new one.

Ghostbusters: Concluded

Since the baby came along I've found less and less time to play games, which isn't ideal because a) the more games I play, the better I become at my job, and b) I still love playing games. Balancing time between games, work, and home is becoming increasingly difficult. But then Ghostbusters came along.

Let me begin by saying that I've been waiting what feels like my whole life for this game. Ghostbusters is a constant in my life. Other favourite films come and go (The Big Lebowski, Aliens ... I could go on), but I can put Ghostbusters on at any time, in any mood, and I'll love it like I loved it as a youngster watching at the Curzon cinema in Manchester, my mum telling me to cover my eyes before the librarian ghost flies at the camera. My expectations couldn't have been higher.

Ghostbusters fans have been harshly treated over the years. I have hazy recollections of an old plaform game (probably on the Amiga) disappointing me, but other than that Ghostbusters games have been thin on the ground. Zootfly released footage a few years ago that peaked attention, but that game appeared to die after the news broke that there was no official license. Shame as the footage looked excellent.

Fast forward to 2009, and after a few years in development Ghostbusters: The Videogame is released by Terminal Reality, a developer few people had previously heard of. Due to some complicated legal wrangling between Sony, Atari and Activision the game has a staggered release, meaning I have to pay over the odds for an American import version which works on PAL 360s.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson: my thoughts.

Ghostbusters: The Videogame is as good as Terminal Reality, or anyone else, could have made. It's very difficult to see how they could have made anything different, given the source material: it ticks all the boxes but feels a little sterile.

The bad:

Lip sync is terrible, the characters seem intent on showing that they have teeth.
The PKE image capture mechanic feels very tacked on, as if someone in Production decided the game needs something else, so they throw in the equivalent of a digital camera and expect the player to photograph every ghost, even in the heat of battle.

The game design is very old school. Expect locked doors and invisible walls.

AI is not so good either, expect huge gameplay pauses while you wait for them to do what their supposed to do, and for them to stare blankly until you do your thing. Peeking behind the curtain indeed.

The setting is a strange one. Obviously to get the best effect the game had to be set close after the end of the second movie (which would place it in the early 90s), however all the actors are now in their 60's, and sound like it. This gives quite the juxtaposition when you see the fresh young face of Egon Spengler on screen, but hear the voice of the 65 year old Harold Ramis.

Talking of the voices, Bill Murray could not sound less interested. I think he rang in his lines on a mobile phone from the bath. Sounds like it.

Overall it gives a decent spooky experience, with a few high points (sta puft is brilliant), but I'm afraid I'm going to have to end this with a terrible cliche: if you're a fan of Ghostbusters you'll love it, if not you'll think it an average videogame. As I've explained I'm a fan, so back off man, I'm a scientist.

The Path: Concluded

At it's heart, The Path is an adventure game that breaks design tradition by tempting the player away from the most obvious correct route. The player plays one of several red riding hoods, and the game presents the player with a path through the forest with a house at the end where Grandma awaits.

Rather unfairly, the player fails if they go straight to the house. The aim is to explore the forest away from the path, learning more about each character and the forest itself.

Audio cues and ghostly images populate the forest and give it a deeply unsettling atmosphere, giving The Path very much a feeling of the Blair Witch Project.

The presentation is consciously arty, a trick which can impress if used correctly but I'm not sure it works here. Art for arts sake? Maybe. The game would feel exactly the same were it to have a standard front end and in-game UI.

Now we come to completely unfair arbitrary death that the player will suffer many times. I still don't know how to avoid these (which seem to crop up with most forest encounters), however I understand that it's a mechanic to further the story. There's nothing worse in a game to fail and not know why, because it's impossible to learn from such encounters.

Is The Path important like Jason Rohr's work, Braid, or Ico? I don't have the answers, go ask Roger Ebert.

Dear Esther: Concluded

Dear Esther is a lonely ... experience (I hesitate to call it a game for reasons explained below). In essence it's an interactive ghost story, the character the player inhabits appears to also be the narrator. The experience goes a little like this: you wander around an isolated (Scottish) island listening to the story, but as the story gets creepier you get drawn in both physically and emotionally. It reminded me a little of a story I read that was linked from SomethingAwful (yes, I'm a goon), The Cave. I can highly recommend it.

The Chinese Room have done a fantastic job of teasing out every last bit of performance from the ageing Half Life 2 engine, and the audio is on par with the visuals.

Exploration with nothing to find.

A FPS without the S. Try it, you might like it.

Baby Break: Concluded

Well I certainly never expected it to be this difficult.

The one gripe I have about the whole baby thing is honesty. No-one is honest when it comes to their own offspring. "Labour's a magical experience". "You'll cherish every second of your newborn".

It's not, it's very difficult. All of it.

Anyway let's get back on track. I managed to get through a few games over the last three months (what else is paternity time for?) so I'll post my thoughts over the coming weeks.

Baby break

According to Google Analytics this announcement will be of interest to roughly 12 people, but I might as well post anyway.

The blog is offline for a while now because of this little disturbance:

Internet, meet Evan George. I'm not sure if he likes video games yet, I'm sure he'll let me know in due course.

Call of Duty: World at War: Concluded

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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Far Cry 2/The Lost and Damned

I'm about halfway through the GTA 4 DLC expansion "The Lost and Damned", and Far Cry 2.

I started Far Cry 2 two week before The Lost and Damned was released so I could complete and get it out of the way, but to be honest I've struggled a bit, hence why I'mplaying both at the same time. The problem I found with Far Cry 2 is that there's not much of game there.

Technically it's astonishing. It really looks and sounds like you're roaming across the plains of Africa, and the weather (although not real time) is marvellously well implemented. The fire effect, too, is unlike anything I've seen in a game before. The AI is a bit dumb and buggy and as a consequence ruins the illusion slightly, but the big problem I've found so far is the lack of game. It feels more like a tech demo than a game to me.

The small towns, settlements, guard posts and open plains are very realistic, but I wonder how much input the design team had in the environment. It feels like realism was favoured over fun, but I suppose videogames have been going that way for some time now.

That said, I am only hafway through so maybe I'll feel differently when (if) I manage to finish.

Braid: Concluded

Braid's beautiful, but too hard.

I never used to find 2d platformers hard. Flashback, Klonoa, any and all Marios (including spin-offs: Wario, Yoshi etc), Mega Man, Heart Of Darkness, Donkey Kong Country ... etc ... I could go on.

Granted, Braid has a unique mechanic: time control. As far as I'm aware, I don't recall having the ability to rewind time in a 2d platformer before and as such this contributes to making Braid an excellent game. All the legacy platformer features are there: pixel perfect jumps, gravity, keys & doors ... but Braid still manages to feel fresh. Maybe it's the superb art direction: Braid is a gorgeous, gorgeous game, dripping and oozing quality from every pore. Perhaps it's the level design: it feels like Jonathan Blow and co have spent decades planning and polishing each and every level. The sound design is excellent too, and the game as a package feels very polished.

Maybe I don't have the correct aptitude to be able to comprehend reversing time, maybe I've just become shit at platformers, who knows, too many sojourns into 3D territory. Unfortunately my inferior brain lead to me having to use gamefaqs toward the end, an admission which makes me feel ashamed.

Braid is too hard, but I enjoyed every frustrating, how-the-fuck-do-I-do-this teeth-grinding second of it.

Fable 2: Concluded

I finished Fable 2 around 3 months after starting it, which made me realise that the GTA 4 reference stands also in respect to the length of the game, although I had a lot more fun on the streets of Liberty City than in the woods of Albion.

Up until the end I wasn't really enjoying Fable 2, nor was it a drag ... I was just playing it. I was getting the feeling that the next mission will be amazing, the next task will be an outstanding setpiece but it just kind of ... existed.

But then the end came and I was blown away. Previously I've mentioned the lack of perceived choice in Fable 2, but the end forces you into the matter with a choice between three ways of continuing (I won't spoil it for you. Well, maybe a little.). Suffice it to say I spent a while considering my options, but ended up with the lesser of three evils. This simple ending dramatically changed my whole experience of the game, and with it my opinion. I can't see myself going back to Fable 2, but it was one of the more enjoyable games I've played recently.

Oh, and the dog gets shot.