The Podcats: Reach and Move
Talking about Move whilst playing Halo Reach
Just a note: I will be on holiday for the next month. There are scheduled updates (at least one a week) until I’m back at home.
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Review: HALO REACH
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Bungie. Published by Microsoft
After five Halo games, Bungie are riding off into the sunset, off to work on multi-platform games with Activision. Reach is their swansong to the franchise that took them from a Mac game developer to makers of the defining console FPS franchise. Bought by Microsoft and later gaining their independence, Reach is the best thing Bungie have done, and that’s no mean feat.
A prequel of sorts to the Masterchief starring trilogy of Halo 1-3, Reach puts you in the suit of Noble 6, replacement trooper in a squad stationed on the planet Reach. At the start you think you’re dealing with rebel colonists but things get shitty very quickly when you find yourself defending against a Covenant invasion. Being a prequel, it’s not a spoiler to say things don’t end well for Reach, but Halo Reach is a game where the journey is its own rewards.
Being a Halo game, you can shoot and melee opponents, drive vehicles (and steal them from foes), activate the odd switch and take control of some turrets. Reach adds new weapons and new vehicles to the Halo formula, but also adds armour abilities such as jet-packs, sprinting, holograms (to draw fire away from yourself), shields and armour lockdown (and no, I still can’t work out what the hell that last one does). If you’ve played a Halo before, you know pretty much what to expect. Bungie have given fans what they expect, but added new elements to the mix.
Each Halo game seems to have fun in rebalancing the weapons in the game. Reach gives us the DMR, which is more like an M1 or M14 semi-automatic rifle than the battle rifle of old and occasionally the grenade launcher which fires a bouncing shell. There’s still the standard assault rifle, a scoped pistol, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and a new grenade launcher on the human side, but it’s the Covenant who have received the most munitions upgrades. Easily my favourite is the Needle Rifle which is like the Needler but with a slower rate of fire, a scope and longer range. The Beam rifle and the carbine don’t seem to be in Reach in any form but the plasma rifle now has an automatic rifle version in the form of the Plasma repeater. The energy sword from Halo 2 and the Gravity Hammer for Halo 3 are back. Like ODST, there is again no dual wielding of pistols.
The above-mentioned new things include being able to drive more prosaic vehicles like Forklifts and trucks as well as Covenant Revenant (which replaces the Choppers from Halo 3) but the big ticket item are the Space Battles. Yes, you get to fly a starfighter and for about 20 minutes the game becomes Ace Combat or Rogue Squadron. While the game seems to made it very easy for you to hit anything, it is very well done and just shows that Bungie have taken the “cut and paste” design criticism over the years to hear and taken positive action.
So that’s the single-player. There’s this other thing that I hear the kids are into called co-op. Four friends can apparently play through the single-player campaign as a team, though with difficulty that scales with the extra players. I haven’t tried Reach with coop but I did find Coop useful for beating tough areas in Halo 3. There’s also Firefight which is an extension of the mode from ODST (really the only new thing ODST brought to Halo’s multiplayer), now with matchmaking.
But while I ignore most games’ online components, Halo isn’t one of them. These days, most games offer ‘new takes’ on multiplayer but in the end, most gamers stick to one or two favourite modes. Reach, whilst keeping the best of earlier games in the series, has a fair few new modes worth investigating. The beta introduced players to the objective-based Invasion mode, which pitted Spartans Vs Elites for the first time in Halo multiplayer. There’s also my new favourite, Headhunter, which is like a mix of Team Deathmatch, Headquarters and Capture the Flag. Each time you kill someone, they drop a flaming skull. To actually score points, you have to collect the skull and head to the randomly appearing collection zones for your score to be counted. Of course, if you die, those skulls fall wherever and you score nothing. And anyone can collect your fallen skulls and claim them. This is fun until all the kiddies start stealing your skulls. Mates don’t steal Mate’s skulls. Mate!
There has been some criticism of the number of maps included, some of which are all created on Forge World (bundled tools allowing you to build your own levels) but at the end of the day, whilst MS probably have designs on selling a few map packs, they are also allowing you to play other people’s maps for free (hi, Activision). Bungie have, by far, the best console network code outside of games using dedicated servers and the matches I’ve had have all been lag- free so far, even when my connection wasn’t always optimum (ie- my wife watching streaming videos on her computer-”Honey, I’ve taken out the trash but you may possibly be lagging me, dear”). A large local player-base probably helps reduce lag as well and I hope MoH and CoD developers remember to add those filters into their matchmaking solutions at launch (it took Infinity Ward several months to patch MW2 with that ‘feature’).
So whilst the gameplay in Halo has always been lauded, on area that hasn’t always had an easy ride was graphics. The first two games looked great on the original Xbox (though Halo 2 did have that horrid texture pop where the high resolution texture would load a little later than was optimum), but Halo 3‘s graphics had a far more mixed reception with horrid looking human characters. Reach looks, in a word, superb. Every model looks great, every texture detailed and apart from a few minor framerate hitches, the game runs near perfectly. And at 720p (Halo 3 was derided by pixel counters for its sub-HD resolution). The particle effects have also had a noticeable jump in quality and apart from a motion blur effect that takes some time to adjust to, this game looks better than not only all previous Halo titles, but almost any other Xbox 360 game. Gears of War, with it’s corridor based gameplay, still has the edge but without having to draw the vast open-air vistas as seen in Reach.
Sound is again great. We have an almost totally new score from Marty O’Donnell which only occasionally cribs from the Halo catalogue and some top-notch voice work all round. But the sound effects, always a high point of the series, sound beefier here than any previous game. Also, the low-gravity level has some serious audio processing that gives that space so much more atmospheric than you’d normally find (despite the literal lack of atmosphere in that level).
After playing it, you can’t help feel this is what Halo 2 needed to be, a Halo game that everyone felt beat the original game. I didn’t feel the buzz that I got when I got the first Halo game, but I didn’t feel shortchanged in the way that some fans felt they were by Halo 2, Halo 3 and ODST. It offers an excellent single player with replayability, co-op, firefight and excellent multiplayer. You sure get a lot out of your $60 (OK- add a few bucks for XBL Gold).
Controller1.com Rating 3/3 (Get this unless you really dislike Halo for whatever reason, or you can’t stand shooters)
The Podcats: Crossover Interests. Again.
Shorther than a Vegas prize-fight, it’s a talk about interests crossing over from games to real life and vice versa
Ignore the fact this is almost the same topic as Podcats episode 17.
Now Playing: Go on. You’ll Never Guess
First Impressions
Graphics Upgrade
Single player
Can teach Guerrilla a thing or three hundred about how to make a fun shooter
Halo 3 in comparison
Sound
Multiplayer
All in All
Now Playing: Anything with Halo in the title but not Reach
Yes, I’m that guy. The one replaying Halo 3 and Halo:ODST before Reach. As I write this, it’s now two days since Reach was released and my copy has just turned up. But I have the last two bits of ODST to replay and I liked them so much I just want to give it another go.
HALO 3
The thing that struck me playing through Halo 3 again was not how ugly the human faces are. Nor the the occasionally stiff animation. What leapt out was the fact that the levels nearly always followed the same formula. Start at point A- go to point B. Then go back to point A. From a production point of view its fantastic since you get to reuse the assets without the sections being cut and paste (another Bungie favourite). But the Halo deja vu persists.
Of course, Halo 3 has one of my favourite additions to the series- The scarab battles. I loved these first time around because Halo is one of the few games where replaying a large-scale battle can be fun until you beat them. The second playthrough (on Normal again since my first attempt to replay on Heroic met with failure) was easier and I tended not to get stuck going through the same section again and again. I still feel Bungie has made these huge levels, filled them with enemies, yet made it too easier to skip over some great battles.
HALO: ODST
2009′s full price expansion is still controversial in its brevity. But there are some who absolutely love the campaign that’s shorter than the average height of the finalists of the Herve Villechaise Cosplay contest. And I am one of them. ODST breaks up the action into sections of traversing the overworld and then intense battles told in flashback. The overworld is rather meh but the flashback battles are fantastic and are some of my favourite in the series. Oh dear, the facial models are uglier than the Elephant Man’s stuntman. Even ones modelled after Tricia Helfer and Nathan Fillion (he’s so dreamy). While hiring expensive voice actors (and their likenesses) for an expansion pack (we have three of the stars of TV’s Firefly here) might seem excessive, they do a very nice job.
I still like ODST but I’m powering through since I’ve heard only good things about Reach. Another 45 minutes and I can start!
The Podcats: Ressurrection
The Duke lives and so does this podcats. Let’s look at game series that have come back from the dead.
Review: Lara Croft: Guardians of Light
Reviewed on Xbox 360 (soon on PS3, PC). Developed by Crystal Dynamics. Published by SquareEnix/ Eidos
Once upon a time, Lara Croft’s breasts were the biggest thing in gaming. She was featured in commercials, model shoots and Hollywood movies. And apparently there were nine videogames in there as well. Lara Croft: Guardians of Light is as radical departure from your typical Tomb Raider as you can get and still have Lara Croft front and centre. Except she’s not so much front and centre more from above and to the left. Isometric Lara Croft is a mix of platforming, puzzles and twin stick combat in a way that makes everyone think “Why did this take so long?”
So Lara’s in some South American jungle ridden with underground temples littered with fiendish traps from a bygone civilisation. So if the ancient Aztecs, Mayans and Toltecs were so smart, as is depicted in games like this, how come they never invented a bulletproof vest before the likes of Cortez and Pizarro turned up? There’s a coop character who appears if you play through with a friend but I played this as single player game so you infinitely old chum Totec didn’t figure too much in my playthrough outside of the odd cinematic.
With a new perspective that puts less emphasis on minge-cam and more of gameplay, you direct Lara to jump between platforms, manipulate giant stone balls, use an infinite supply of spears to create jumping points, pull levers, etc to progress through the level. Along the way there will be optional side rooms that allow you to pick up a collectible that may also help increase your health or ammo stats, as well. The game is a compulsive’s dream as there are red crystal skulls to collect in each level (collect ‘em all to increase your real-world wealth), a number of challenges that don’t affect the outcome of the game in any way but give you a reason to retry sections over and over (which increases the size of your genitals in real life), time attacks and weapon upgrades. Each level has its own weapon upgrade from pistols to assault rifles, rocket launchers and more. It gets almost silly how much Lara can carry tucked into her bra.
Thanks to well thought out level design, mostly tight controls and generous checkpoints, the game plays well and is fun to boot. Occasionally you’ll get a puzzle that makes you scratch your head for a bit but solving it only adds to the sense of achievement the game engenders. I did have one bit of scripting break the game and I had to restart the level but that wasn’t too much of a hardship. Ingenious use of Lara’s available tools (my favourite are the infinite bombs) in the puzzle design and the wider field of view makes this feel like how Tomb Raider games should have been all along. There’s coop with Totec with online functionality added after launch. How this changes the gameplay I can’t says since the single player doesn’t feature the second character as an AI character.
Graphics are very pretty and sound gets a good rap too. In short it’s a quality product for $15 that will easily take 6-8 hours on a playthrough, more if you attempt to beat a number of challenges. CD say a’proper’ Tomb Raider game is in the works but I think I’ll wait for the inevitable sequel to this title.
Overall, this is this one of the stronger DDD games on XBLA (And eventually PS3 and PC). It’s not an absolutely essential purchase but it is worth the 1200 points/ $15 Square are asking for.
Controller1.com Rating 2/3
The Podcats: Compulsion
Today, we talk compulsions in gaming- addictions, achievement/trophy whoring and piles of shame
Picture: My place before Kinect and Move
Review: Crackdown 2
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Ruffian. Published by Microsoft.
The tale of the making of this game is a saga in it’s own right. The first Crackdown came out in in mid 2007 bundled with the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. Once the beta was over, some of those people actually tried the game and found they had a fun superhero game rather than just a lukewarm open-world cop game promised by the demo. Demand for the game, driven initially by the Halo 3 beta, kept ticking over and the game eventually sold over 1.5 million copies. Of course, this slow burn meant Crackdown developers Real-Time Worlds moved on to APB (and their eventual demise) and a new studio, Ruffian, was set up to make a sequel. Ruffian, located close to RTW in Dundee in Scotland, hired several ex-RTW staffers to quickly make the DLC mission pack re-skin expansion pack full priced sequel.
At the end of the original game, there was a twist (of sorts) but here we are back in the same Pacific City ten years later. In the years since you cleaned out the three gangs terrorising the place, a resistance group called The Cell have taken over large chunks of the city, broadcasting propaganda and shooting at you as you go about running your agility orb collection business. Also, a plague has created the zombie-like Freaks that swarm the city during night time hours. You play as a new agent backed up by the dulcet tones of Crackdown Guy (he also plays almost the same role in Red Faction: Guerrilla) whose job is to clear up Pacific City. Again.
Like the first game, you have 500 agility orbs to collect and can level up other stats by driving, using melee attacks, etc. There are also the rooftop races and car races to help with stat-building. Later on your agent can even glide and this ability can be levelled up by glider races where you fly through rings. Crackdown was one of those games that catered to OCD by having 500 agility orbs to collect. CD2, whilst being a decent open-world game, is also a decent collectathon if you so wish. There’s the agility orbs, online only co-op orbs, hidden orbs and, in taking ironically a pointer from inFamous, audio logs which flesh out the fiction of Pacific City. There are types of renegade orbs, which are orbs that move away from you forcing you chase after them if you want to collect them.
Instead of the three gangs whose bosses you are looking to take down, you have the Freaks and the Cell. The Cell are in charge during the day and Freaks play after dark and the game is structured so you take on both. The cure for the freaks is Project Sunburst, which involves you powering up the network of nodes in each area so that you can enter a Freak lair (typically underground) and face the horde whilst a power beacon (think EMP for Freaks) charges up. If both the beacon and your agent survive the onslaught, the resulting flash will instantly obliterate all traces of Freakdom in the area. You also have to face off against the Cell in their strongholds which amounts to killing x number of enemies without moving too far from the start point. This is the main point of differentiation between the original game and the sequel and it’s one area where the original way is best. You don’t get that element of working your way towards the boss at any stage and the game doesn’t really give you many clues as to your progress without digging around in the menus.
You can upgrade weapons by picking them up from fallen foes and calling in a chopper to save (the closest thing to the safehouses from the original game), and you can do likewise with vehicles. I barely bothered with cars, something I always liked about Crackdown, since the cars aren’t necessary to beat the game, that’s just how I roll. On foot. There’s the assortment of assault rifles, shotguns and machine guns with a few grenade/ rocket launcher weapons as well as standard grenades and mines. There’s also the UV shotgun, harmless to humans, but devastating to Freaks but even better is the harpoon/crossbow which shoots a lethal metal bolt at your foes. There are also mounted turrets around the place you can detach and become walking artillery shooting up the place like something out of a Sam Peckinpah film. Also of note- collateral damage is not something you’re going to find easy to avoid. Just take Crackdown Guy’s remonstrations in your stride. By the end of the game, you will have no choice but to use Rocket Launchers to clear out Cell strongholds and any civvies or peacekeepers who get too close will just have to die. It’s the price of cleaning up the city.
GTAIII and GTAIV are both set in something called Liberty City but they feature different takes on the same place. Pacific City is the same in both CD games, just that in CD2- it’s a little more rundown. Buildings that housed massive gang hideouts are now nearly derelict and it’s kind of cool to see how things have changed. But if you’re someone who’s run through the original more than once (or even just recently), you might find the similarities a bit of a cheat. It doesn’t feel like it’s the same game but it doesn’t feel like a full sequel, more an expansion pack using the same code and assets as the original. It’s not worse than the original, but it does lack that wow that many felt after getting into the original back in 2007.
There’s a strong co-op component to the game- evidenced by the co-op orbs around the place. I found Cameron’s story where, after having just started to play the game he went online and some stranger who was able to get to the final level joined the game and finished Cam’s game for him. I actually find that anecdote to be a good reason for changing your online options to friends only.
The graphics are still in Crackdown’s cel shaded style but the overall look is slightly dated. In it’s favor is the sweeping vistas the game offers when you can literally see forever. Things run at a stable clip and I only once noticed some slowdown in proceedings (others have had it worse). The sound is the same quality as the first game, which is to say, very good. I did, however, find Crackdown guy to be rather verbose this time around. Funnier, but sometimes he just won’t SFTU. He’s also got a bit of a potty mouth this time around, which is fun. The Audio Logs you collect are nice because they give the game some more voices to listen to. Sure, the crowds can get quite chatty, but for the most part you want to hear more than Crackdown Guy talk about online orbs.
Overall it’s fun package and should give you at least 12 hours of fun, which is a decent amount. I say if you like open world games, you’d like Crackdown 2. It’s not an essential game that you simply must play but it is a good one.
Controller1.com rating 2/3
(1/3 if you fear deja vu or 3/3 if you have more than one Commodore 64 in your cupboard)
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