Controller1.com Focus Test- Halo Wars
Clint overlooks he fact this wasn’t made by Bungie, Cam ignores the fact he’s to cheap to buy this and George laments its not a FPS
controller1.com
videogames and stuff
Ladies and Gentlemen: John Riccitello
A couple of weeks ago, EA shut down the Brisbane office of Pandemic. They had so much fun doing that, they shut them down again this week. Here’s the CEO of Electronic Arts and if you look into his eyes you will see a window into what’s left of his soul.
We’re read the news. EA’s had a bad financial time of it. They’ve gone from saying they will cut costs by closing 9 locations and shedding 600 jobs to closing 12 locations and 1100 jobs. So far they’ve only closed the offices of Black Box and Pandemic Brisbane. Pandemic Brisbane were given what sounded like a second chance to many. Their new Wii IP was handed to them so long as they could find a new publisher, the remaining staff given the lease, some money and their equipment. Now EA’s decided to take back the IP, sell the physical assets and turf out the remaining Pandemic staff (from a building they moved into only a few short months ago that sports a giant Pandemic sign on the exterior). Stay classy, EA.
MIRROR’S EDGE Review
Reviewed on PS3. Also on Xbox 360, PC Developed by DICE. Published by EA
Parkour is the the buzzword of the moment. So when the first person game Mirror’s Edge was announced, from the makers of the Battlefield games no less, people took notice. Platforming and First Person perspectives have never had a happy home in gaming (c1 has previously reviewed two of these- Duke 3D and Call of Juarez), and most FPS games of the last 10 years have eschewed this style of gameplay, putting it in the “too hard” basket.
Mirror’s Edge is about Faith, who’s a runner who’s a courier. She’s asian, got a tat and has an athletic figure, in stark contrast to what some on the net would prefer. The game is a platform game where you run across the tops of buildings, leaping between skyscrapers, bounding over obstacles, running through corridors, walkways, balconies, up ladders, down pipes, etc. Mostly without a gun. Your runner’s sense will show objects that you can interact with by them glowing red (I’ve made the joke many times how the faceless villains could fuck these guys up with some well placed spraypaint), ie when you need to jump to the next point- look for the pipe that’s now glowing red.
Then there’s the combat. There really doesn’t need to be much of this in the game but it helps if occasionally you knock out a guard or disarm them. Occasionally you can use their weapons against them, though there’s a popular achievement/trophy if you don’t use the guns. The combat is kinda painful though it wasn’t what put me off the game half way through. The actual raison d’etre of the game is the platforming of the trial and error variety. And what kills any joy out of doing this is the fact the checkpoints are rather sparsely placed throughout some of the levels. There are some rather painful jumps that if you miss, the amount of retreading you must undertake becomes rather repetitive.
The graphics in the game are very nice, with a steady framerate (essential to surviving the jumping without motion sickness). Sound is also a high point in the game and I can’t say I agree with some of the common presentation gripes some have with this game- namely the Flash-style animations used for some in-between level cutscenes. Faith is an appealing protagonist but I will have to see if some improvements have been made to see whether the sequel is worth the time. I had to hang up this game around half way through
So I liked the game, to a point. I couldn’t keep up with the constant trial and error and re-doing a big section just to try again and fail again by falling again so I could restart and retrace and re-fail. It’s like watching Groundhog Day in a loop.
UPDATE:
I recently started the most recent Prince of Persia game and very shortly into it I realised how much I wanted to go back and give Mirror’s Edge another try. I had given up around the 60% mark, sick of the trial and error approach to platforming. Here’s the review written after I had grown weary of the game and Fallout 3 was fast becoming an all-consuming addiction.
Coming back to Mirror’s Edge, it gelled a bit better than the first half of the game. There are still thing not quite right about the game, with waaaaay too much trial and error and combat that’s more frustrating than catering for a Vegan at a Barbecue. But I seemed to enjoy it a lot more, perhaps without the distraction of Fallout 3. The story wasn’t anything much but I did enjoy the cutscenes ending the game. Of course, Portal’s end credits song called “Still Alive” is better than Mirror’s Edge’s end credits song called “Still Alive.”
Would this game be better if it was a third person game? I don’t know, its pretty good as it is and a third person perspective would be a different kettle of fish altogether. Combat in third person would probably be better but then the game would then just be Uncharted. DICE are still to be commended for trying something so radically different from Battlefield and I hope the sequel (we can but hope) takes a lot of the criticism seriously.
Make no mistake, this is a hard game. Since I was so much wanting to see the end of the game, I bumped the difficulty down to easy for the last two chapters. As far as I can see, it made absolutely no difference in terms of making the combat less painful or the jumping (especially the penultimate leap) more predictable.
I’m glad I made the effort to go back and finish the game, despite its difficult last few levels. Even though the levels all seem to be variations on the same thing, it never felt boring apart from those occasions where you are trying a difficult jump. Usually it comes down to you doing it wrong.
Original Controller1.com rating 1/3 (This game epitomises ‘Your Mileage May Vary’)
UPDATED Controller1.com rating 2/3
NOW PLAYING: KILLZONE 2 Demo, FALLOUT 3
Two system exclusive demoes were released onto their respective systems late last week. One was for the first big 360 only game of 2009, Halo Wars and the other was for Sony’s Great White Hope, Killzone 2. Halo Wars demo we will Focus Test soon, but since I plan to buy the full KZ2 game, we aren’t go FT the demo. Here are some impressions of the Killzone 2 demo. Let’s preface this by saying I played 2/3 of the original game was unimpressed to say the least which is why I’ve not boarded the hype machine for the sequel. Good looking doesn’t mean great games, especially when the developers, Guerrilla Games, have yet to prove they can make something fun.
The demo starts off with you attacking a beach held by Helgast troops, then you move inside. Then some slo mo opera happens and you see a video trumpeting the high review scores the game has received so far (the game’s been in the can for a while, possibly held back so to avoid cannibalising sales from Resistance 2). See the picture below for a taster
More about the actual demo, though.
The good: Its pretty. Its got some very nice lighting effects. The score is magnificent and the sounds mostly great (if a little muted).
The bad: People laughed at Gears 2′s “10 shitloads” dialogue and it looks like KZ2 is trying to go down the same path. It’s just generic .
Gameplay: the demo doesn’t do anything you have seen a bazillion times before but I think it does it ok. It’s just not very responsive to control though.I’m actually less enthusiastic about the game since playing the demo but I hear its mostly good and I think I need a shooter. Fallout 3 is kinda shooter but not quite.
Fallout 3 got a good going over this past weekend (up to level 11 and around the 22 hour mark- not counting many many restarts. I had a few issues where I would find a new area, went exploring and then found i wasted two hours on an area where I have to trigger a mission elsewhere first. So after a while I decided I would just map the thing. I literally spent about 3 hours walking around the map so that I can now fast travel anywhere and get to a location with a minute or two. I really want to go onto another game but F3 just does everything that Mass Effect didn’t.
One thing still bothers me about Fallout 3. There are many places where people make homes in various places that are still habitable. But no one has cleaned up. The war was years earlier yes people have lost many things: love ones, their homes and it seems their brooms.
OFF ON A TANGENT- WASTED YOUTH
A bit off topic for today’s post. Unrelated to gaming in anyway but I found it interesting. Last night the lady wife and I went with a mate to see a movie. There wasn’t a lot on we all wanted to see but Bryan Singer’s new Tom Cruise flick Valkyrie got the nod. The movie itself is decent. Not the best thing any of these guys have done but far from the worst. Its a thriller, but a talky thriller rather than an action movie. But something weird happened that’s never happened in any movie I’ve ever seen before. Not even in all of the really bad ones like Punisher (I didn’t kill his family so why was I punished?), Van Helsing (actually makes that other movie with Jackman and Wenham seem tolerable) or even Krull back in the day.
About half way through a not too long 120 minute movie, two guys, maybe about 18-22 years old, walked out. The stood up in their trendy baggy shorts and flip flops, shaggy goofball afro hairdos with baseball caps perched on top like a cowboy on top of a bull at the rodeo, and walked out muttering about ‘boring.’ Apart from the attitude of “We don’t like it so we can stop you from enjoying the movie” they paid money for a movie and walked out. I know movie audiences in the US (I recall a fella in a Santa Monica theater hollering “The French are gay” when the Merovingian turned up during Matrix Reloaded) are more vocal but here its considered bad form to annoy other patrons. Its the fact that they bought tickets to this movie and were bored so much they had to leave. 15 minutes before the end, a couple left and through the gloom I guessed they were around the same age as the first two ADHD crippled idiots. Hey, the movie wasn’t bad, nor was it excellent. It’s say it was a good solid film. I didn’t think the advertising for the movie was misrepresenting the final product. So… WHAT THE FUCK DID THESE FUCKING COCKSUCKERS EXPECT?
What is the goddamned thought process going through their tiny idle lazy Gen Y minds? “Oh look a movie with Tom Cruise in it. Dude, he got an eyepatch.” Why the hell didn’t they go and see shit like Yes Man? That’s why people pay $40 a seat for Gold Class seats (very fancy seats where they serve you food during the movie- its like flying first class)- they just want to watch the movie in peace. I think I’m going to skip Zack and Miri Make a Porno at the cinema and just get the BluRay. I may be on the edges of the target audience but ground zero is full of cunts.
2009 Sales Predictions-With Graphs
2009 has only just begun and is a blank slate in terms of how well games will sell world wide. Last year, the Wii sold more consoles than Sony and MS did. In 2009, we predict that this trend will continue. The top games for 2009 are also predicted. NOTE: Predictions are made based on serious scientific analysis and stuff and crap and everything like that and stuff.
The Wii’s sales trajectory is projected to upswing at a rate higher than the combined downswing of its co-belligerent parties. In layperson’s terms, the Wii will be hotter than dogshit on a pre-heated stove. The Wii audience will also be expanded past its traditional base of soccer moms, pensioners and disappointed Nintendo fans. In 2009, we expect the Wii to start selling more units to the following socio- economic groups: Pawn-brokers, scroungers in WWII PoW camps, chimpanzees and actors. Seriously, even that Dooce.com chick has a Wii. You can see by the graph that Nintendo will soon have more money than God (especially since the Bernie Madoff affair).
When reached for comment, Nintendo of America’s president, Reggie Fils-Aime, merely screamed down the phone line deafening our correspondent. Nintendo have a large number of terrific products heading to retail in 2009. Yes, they are just reprints of Wii Sport, Wiifit, WiiPlay as well as some new games like Gamecube Mario Tennis and Pikmin with motion controls. Nintendo also released the statement speaking to hardcore gamers: ” We haven’t forgotten core gamers. We often openly mock them around the office.”
So looking to the Xbox 360. We are expecting double digit growth in people buying a more reliable ‘Jasper’ model now that the launch units with its ‘DepressedLemmingOnCliffTop’ are now beyond their extended three year RROD warranty. We also believe the second-hand value of those launch units to spiral into a downward falling-type deal trajectory concurrent with their perceived chance of being fixed for free.
Sony’s fortunes, failing faster than a 360 wrapped in a towel, seem to have a more complicated prognosticatory prediction template. PS2, in its 9th year, has seen sales starting to tail off but PSP sales are rising, despite the supposed fact the last PSP game to turn a profit was the PS2 port of GTA Liberty City Stories (Gamestop’s recent trial of not printing out receipts has paid off).
PS3 is not having an easy run in the market place. Here’s a graph of PS3 sales expectations launch-to-date.
Of course you can prove all sorts of things with statistics, but you can prove even more unbelievable shit with graphs and charts.
NOW PLAYING: FALLOUT 3, Day of Defeat Source
‘S funny because a week ago I was getting kinda sick of getting nowhere in Fallout 3. Turns out that despite the fact its an open world game that scales enemies with you, there is definitely a lot to be said for sticking to the script rather than just wandering aimlessly. Now I’m back on track and have banished the thoughts I had a week ago of giving the game away after 10 hours.
10 hours was as much as I got into Oblivion, but I later regretted not keeping the game and going back to it later. Fallout 3′s setting is much more palatable to my more SF influenced mind. Cyrodil as fun to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. Not to say post-apocalyptic Washington DC is much better, but it just speaks to me more than pseudo Tolkien. I’m glad I left a bit of a buffer in between playing Fable II and this because my lack of attention and disposable time meant the commitment you need to make in order to get the most out of Fallout 3 is large.
Fallout 3 is definitely not a hopeful game. You can’t save the world because its already been mostly destroyed. So there’s often a hint of sadness in a lot of your wanderings. If emo teens ever discover this game, there’d be a severe razor blade shortage worldwide. I’m invested enough in the game now that its currently my intention to finish the main story. We shall see. Looks like Prince of Persia and Banjo will have to wait a little longer. There’s not a shitload of new games I’m interested in coming out (apart from Killzone 2) so maybe there’s nothing to be gained by rushing.
Day of Defeat Source has been getting the afterwork PC gaming bug out of my system. There’s maybe one server I can connect to, though I’d probably prefer to go and give the older Call of Duty games a bit of a spin but there’s not a huge community for those anymore. For some reason, anytime there’s a major change to DoD, there’s always a TF2 update at the same time. Why- because in many ways TF2 is a very similar game. I have some time each day where I have a high powered HP PC as my timewaster and I’ve been trawling Steam for some interesting older games to play but nothing’s really taken my fancy.
controller1.com © 2009.
Theme Squared created by Rodrigo Ghedin.