Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC. Developed by Bioware. Published by Electronic Arts.
In 2007, Bioware released Mass Effect on Xbox 360 (with a PC SKU coming soon after) just after being purchased by EA. It was a decent size hit for a new RPG franchise and despite its problems, many felt it was a great first stab at a Sci-Fi RPG game from Bioware that wasn’t a Star Wars game. Some of the perceived issues with the first game: cut and paste side missions, complex RPG stat screens, poor shooting mechanics if you weren’t a hardcore RPG fan, boring first few hours, terrible MAKO driving missions, long loading screens when you’re stuck in elevators, poorer 360 version, and static conversations. I don’t agree with all of those but that’s the collective wisdom. It was also a lot of fun, had great characters and a great story and felt like a cool Star Wars game without having to pay royalties to those fuckers at Lucasfilm.
Mass Effect 2 sees Shepard (who may be imported from the first game if you wish) return literally as a new man/woman after something big that happens in the first cutscene that people may or may not decry as a spoiler but it is in the opening cutscene, dammit). With a new ship and crew, and with a mysterious new paymaster voiced by Martin Sheen, Shepard sets out to build a core team to take on the new big bad for this game. You visit planets, mine them from orbit for minerals used to power up upgrades for your skills, weapons and ships. Then you’ll land on a planet/dock with a vessel to carry out a mission or visit one of the more fleshed out locales where there are multiple missions. There aren’t that many main story missions but each member of your team has at least two missions you’ll want to undertake. The first is to recruit them to your cause, and the second is to secure their loyalty. Recruitment and loyalty missions of course are the meat of the story-based missions. Along the way you’ll encounter a few survivors from the first game (if you’ve imported a save game from ME1, it does depend on what you decided back then). Some will come with you and and some will recoil in horror from you and your new boss but in the end your team is as much a part of the game as Shepard. The team you assemble is generally composed of fairly interesting people, even if most of them are damaged in some way. And almost all of them are killers with a twist (ie crazy, semi-autistic, calm).
The action parts of the game consists of squad-based shooting (or magic if that’s the way you roll), with you and two compatriots (chosen before the start of each mission) tackling an objective that seems like something out of a shooter from a simpler age. Missions are generally short, much much shorter than the first game. Shorter than a midget at a dwarf convention. You can tell Bioware went out of their way to make the game more accessible to shooter fans than the original by the way anything screaming ‘NERD!’ is flashed by on screen quickly so we can get back to the sex and shooting. Even so, you still have to select a team that is balanced. If you’re a soldier, it makes sense that at least one member of your away team is a biotic, etc. Choose unwisely and you’ll find you’re having to take down an armoured boss all on your lonesome since your selected team only have pea-shooters unable to pierce armour and with the wrong powers levelled up. Selecting teams correctly really makes itself felt in the big climax and it’s quite possible to return to the ship with a few empty spaces if you don’t give it some thought. You can of course play as a male or female Shepard, import your character from the first game and choose to play as one of a number of classes from soldier, scout, magic user, tech, etc, but the game for me is third person so how does it play as a Gears-lite game? Not too badly. It still seems to be doing a lot “under the hood” but not as overtly where you can’t do anything in the early stages of the game (like the crime of the original). When you’re not shooting you’re exploring and talking. The exploring (on foot) is a lot simpler and navigation of the more populated areas is simple since few of the environments are all that large. Think of it like GTA but when you go to a mission-giver and accept the mission, the game whisks you straight to a loading screen and voila, you’re at the start of the mission. There’s a lot less back-tracking, fewer “Go to B talk to someone and then return to A and have a conversation” than the first game as well, which is always welcome. While I’m on the subject- Fuck GTA!
In the future, in the year 2009 (which was the fashion at the time), the year was one of releasing sequels to hit 2007 games that slavishly listened to criticism of the first game and jettisoned the stuff people hated. Uncharted 2 mixed up the gameplay more, ACII ejected the by-the-numbers repetition of missions and ME2 cut anything that got so much as a column inch of hate on a message board. So you need to scan for minerals as an upgrade imperative which is the one area this game has actually made much more boring than the first game. It may have been a bit monotonous to drive around the planets looking for blips on your radar but moving a cursor over a globe is 1000 times more boring than sitting in a dentist’s waiting room with only copy of CoD: Modern Fisherman magazine for reading material. I have spent about 38 hours playing ME2 and I would estimate a minimum of 5 hours has been taking up with scanning planets. It’s sort of zen at first but as you go through the game it really slows you down. When I felt the end was near I stopped scanning even with two dozen planets left since I still had so much mineral wealth strip-mined from various planets (some inhabited) that I felt safe I could stop and concentrate on the story and side missions. It’s money you are likely to run out of before the various minerals, and missions don’t often net you all that much. It is said that you need a fully upgraded team in terms of their abilities and your ship’s upgrades to beat the game but it may on the higher difficulties. I played on normal and found I have died much less than the first game. There are no lifts. If the game needs to load, you get a loading screen. The hub areas are much much smaller than before and moving between areas is a loading screen away rather than a long corridor. The streamlining extends to the micromanagement issues of the first game, but don’t hurt the game in any major way (unless you’re a hardcore PC RPG fan). The actual missions are a lot shorter compared to the original, which had many sprawling story missions in amongst the legion of cut and paste side missions. Really only the last mission feels long and then it’s not so long that you’re hoping for a swift death in order to use the bathroom before your bladder leaps up and chokes you from inside.
It’s a highly directed experience, albeit one in which there is a lot of choice. In giving you the choice, Bioware have learned from the rather static staging of many conversations in the first game cinematics are a hell of a lot more dynamic, both in terms of animation and how choices change the flow of action. It’s almost a quick time event but without seeming like a cop out or having David Cage’s lawyers on the phone. You can follow the various prompts for Paragon or Renegade actions. The difference between Paragon and Renegade conversation options is a choice between touchy-feely and snark. The difference between Paragon and Renegade actions will stop someone being killed or something less lethal.
This being a Bioware game (and it has the hallmarks of almost every Bioware game of the last 10 years), there are romances to be had- at least four ladies are open to the idea of a relationship with Shepard (mine, as you can tell from the pics, is a smooth talking newspaper man from the 50’s). I was able to score with two difference ladies in the game. Well, at least I think they’re ladies. One looked like Natalie Portman from V for Vendetta who got drunk one night and now spends her nights looking up Laser Tattoo removal in the Yellow Pages; and the other looks like, well I don’t know. It was kinky with masks and antibiotics and such like.
The presentation is excellent with this being an incredibly polished title. So many of the rough edges that made it to the first game have been polished down so much they shine brighter than a sun surrounded by giant mirrors. On 360, there are few textures that look a little blurry , usually on minor character’s uniforms in cutscene close-ups but apart from that the game is smoother than a bottle of smooth peanut butter dropped from a plane. The frame rate is constant, slowing slightly in cutscenes but never lagging like a first gen 360 title (or even the first game could sometimes do).
Audio is also great with fantastic sound effects and a stellar voice cast. Yes, the trait of having every alien speak with standard US accents is a bit annoying but the impressive voice cast: Martin Sheen, Tricia Helfer, Adam Baldwin, Carrie-Anne Moss and of course Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski (not only the voice of Miranda, but providing the basis of her character’s visuals, with Dat Ass added through CG magic) joining the lesser known but equally impressive cast filling out the major roles. The only audio disappointment is the JMJ/John Carpenter-esque/early 80’s horror synth soundtrack of the original has been replaced with a more standard semi-orchestral score. It’s good, just not as memorable.
One thing to note. The game comes on two discs which will take 12 gigs on your HDD if you install both discs. I installed but I did have to swap discs twice in nearly 40 hours. There’s a serious amount of content here. EA has also added a sweetener to buy this game new instead of used. New owners have the option to download an extra mission, as well another playable character (who’s ok but superfluous) and a free gun and some armour, none of which is all that earth shattering (but if it’s free, why not?”) but not worth the money EA will charge people who buy used down the track. Installing is recommended if you have enough space. I would have preferred if disc swapping wasn’t necessary but you do this less than if you bought three separate games that took the same time to play.
There’s a lot in this game and there’s much I’ve glossed over. It’s just a great experience (no pun intended) for a game. Mass Effect 2 proves Bioware’s still got it. If you like RPG’s of a western bent, you will like this. If you like shooters with a bit more than fragging noobs, you will like this. If you have two lungs, you will like this. Perhaps not you, Raspy One-Lunger with your ventolin, but two lunged creatures will find much over which to be breathe heavily.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: PS3, PC. Developed by Gearbox. Published by 2k Games.
So Borderlands is one of those games that shouldn’t. It shouldn’t have sold as well as it has. It shouldn’t be as much fun as it is. But it is. Gearbox, known previously for Brothers in Arms and a lot of good porting work had been showing the game for quite a while before a massive revamp in art style took place. Realism was replaced by a unique cel-shaded graphic novel look. And it obviously worked. Even though the games features many similarities with Fallout 3, Borderlands manages to escape many direct comparisons by being it’s own beast.
So you’re on this planet Pandora (Seems to be a lot of that going around these days), and while it’s a failed colony of sorts, you can’t help thinking that you’re playing Fallout 3 with better gunplay. In fact, it’s like the bastard offspring of Fallout 3, Mad Max and Firefly. It’s an open world first person shooter with a decent RPG feel so levelling whores (which, since WoW and CoD4, is almost everyone). So you pick one of four characters- the usual soldier, sniper, engineer, chick with super powers, etc and off you go, going from mission to mission (and a few side missions) looking for The Vault. You can play it by yourself or party up with up to 3 other players to explore the world and kill and loot to your heart’s content like all good social experiences. Most believe that’s the way to play this game but I concentrated on single player. Me being the solitary loner that I am, I played the game all the time thinking of the sling and arrows I suffered as a child and how I burned them all and pissed on their remains and… anyhoo.
The world of Pandora is a cel-shaded desert full of wackos and doof doof droids. You visit someone who gives you a mission, follow the way point to your mission, beat it, and then return to the mission giver to collect your reward either in the form of experience points or money or hopefully both. Missions are varied with some kill all of the xxx here, some collect all of the yyy (which usually means killing some xxx along the way) or make your way to zzz, kill aaa after you’ve killed all of the xxx). In other words, it can get just a tad repetitive after 10+ hours which is why the co-op would really lift this game if it’s an option open to you.
The game is put together well and has a fairly polished feel. Levelling and using the menus are nice and easy with a controller though I can’t help feel the checkpoint system and save system needs some work. Several times I saved a game and the game didn’t restart from the last checkpoint I was at. Another thing to note: this game respawns enemies. So when you leave Fyrestone, your jumping-off point, expect the same two or three bandits to attack you from exactly the same spots. This does tend to make the game more tiresome than it needs to be, but it least means that there will always be something to kill to get more XP. That said, the enemies scale with you, meaning it’s easy enough to go wherever you like and do missions in almost any order. The mission briefings even tell you what level you should be at and the difficulty of each mission before you make the attempt. A few corners may have been cut with animations, as briefings tend to be a text screen but the text is full of a wry sense of humour. It might just be the cel shading but this game reminds me somewhat of XIII from the PS2/ Xbox era (one of those first of a franchise games that never went any further.
Traversing the large world is made easier when relatively early on, you gain access to vehicles. While these may control like a golf cart driven by a drunken one-legged midget with blisters on his feet, they offer a decent amount of firepower to make mincemeat of respawning foes in encampments. You can get some sick air with these on ramps with your boost enabled. Just like Pedro.
Of course, one of the big draws are all the weapons you collect in this game, somewhere in the order of 3+ million. And some are good and others not so much, so you can drop them, buy them or sell them at vending machines around the world. You can buy upgrades to the capacity of the weapons and even upgrade how many you can carry and have equipped at once. There are lots of guns in this game. A lot. There are more guns in this game than there are HDTV owners who know how to change aspect ratios when watching old movies (“Say, Honey. Doesn’t Orson Wells look a lot fatter on this new TV?”).
Cel-shaded or not, the game has a unique vibe in its presentation, despite a few blurry textures here and there. The world looks like an early 90’s graphic novel come alive, the framerate is mainly solid and the audio presented well, if you can stomach the comic accents. The game could have used a slightly less old fashioned looking menu system and a bit less repeated dialogue (YES, I UNDERSTAND YOU ARE DANCING. THANKS FOR REMINDING ME, AGAIN)
It’s nice to see Gearbox try something other than trying to convince us Brothers in Arms is a popular, fun-to-play franchise. The difference is, this is fun. Is it essential? No, but if you have a lull in your schedule and can time it to coincide with a friend in the same predicament, give Borderlands a shot.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Published by Ubisoft.
In 2007, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed, a much hyped open world game set during the Crusades. Known before release equally for producer Jade Raymond’s appealing smile and interesting premise, the game received mixed reviews and sold like gangbusters anyway. Despite the problems (a very by the numbers mission system and repetition), a sequel was assured and two years later, we have Assassin’s Creed II.
Pic- Ezio Auditore- Assassin, lover, pickpocket. Hey! My wallet!
Assassin’s Creed II builds on the strong fundamentals from the original game in a way not seen often enough in videogames. Desmond is now free of Abstergo and working with a fish lipped Kristen Bell avatar and Switch from the Matrix and Wesley Windom Pryce from Angel, using their own Animus to delve into the world of the Templars. Here, Desmond enters the mind of Ezio Auditore, a Renaissance lad-about-town in 15th century Florence. Ezio becomes an Assassin and immediately sets off on a quest of revenge, intrigue and adventure. Make no mistake, this is firmly rooted in the world of Ezio with the ‘modern world’ only coming into a play a few times.
The free-roaming and combat have been refined slightly- they were pretty well done in the first game but polished a bit more here. You have high profile and low profile actions. Low profile means walking and gently pushing people out of the way, high profile means parkour, sprinting and battle and being badder-assed than Charles Bronson on a Jest Ski. It also will pique the interest of guards- they were profiling even back then. Climb on the roof and the fuckers will hunt you down like a dawg. You will gather an array of weapons throughout your playtime such as hidden knives, daggers, swords, etc and can earn money to buy them from Blacksmiths in each town. You can also buy better armour as you progress, change the colour of your robes, buy maps and even paintings to display in your villa (more later).
So if you played the first game you know how it all works. Here you don’t need to go to the Assassin’s Guild in order to be given a target, it happens far more organically. There’s more of a story being told, even if it’s the same deal- kill ‘x’ targets bit it doesn’t feel anywhere as quantized as the original game. Unlike the first one, missions are more asymmetric in that you don’t have three towns each rigidly cut up into three quarters and there are the same numbers of each type of mission in each area. Here you visit half a dozen locations but some are larger and more important than others. You will be spending most of your time in Florence and Venice with some sojourns to other places such as Tuscany, Forli and your family Villa in Monteriggioni.
Story missions are far more varied this time around with a good mix of things to do. Early on at least, you will will want to earn some money so side quests are useful if you want to be a courier, assassinate someone for money, beat-up a straying husband or race someone.
Pic- Ezio hangs out with his homes
If you don’t feel like doing that, the world is ridden with treasure chests, maps of which are available from art dealers. There are many many things to collect such as feathers for your catatonic mother, but most interesting are the six tombs which are necessary for the story’s resolution but not part of the main quest. Some tombs focus on combat, some on puzzles and others on tricky platforming. This mix of things to do and collect means you can spend quite a lot of time in this world or sneakcraft. Another of the non-optional collectibles are the codex pages, which help you on your quest via health and equipment upgrades from your friend, Lenny DV. The beauty of ACII is that the game gives you enormous freedom and lots of ways to achieve your goal (and hide from the law afterward). You can blend with crowds, hire mercenaries, thieves and courtesans to lure guards away, use bombs to get in close to an objective, etc. It’s a well designed game in almost every way. Just one question. WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE DONE THIS TWO YEARS AGO, UBISOFT ?!?!
Combat has many options such as being able to block, dodge, disarm enemies, etc. But you don’t need half of them since you can have so many health boosts that you can get by with just pressing the same attack button over and over if that’s your bag. I suppose if you want more of a challenge, don’t upgrade your medicine pouch’s carrying ability at the tailor.
Since you earn money, one of the things you can do is upgrade the town of Monteriggioni. Why? Your renovations increase the value of the town and as Lord of the manor, you earn money this way. Later in the game you earn so much from missions and finding treasure and your rental income from the villa exceeds what you need to stock up on consumables like medicine, poison and the like that you can also end up collecting artworks. And that all adds to the brilliant atmosphere conjured by UbiMon. You feel like you’re there so much that some gamers have taken to playing the game with Italian audio on. This option does also cancel out Kristen Bell’s voice in the modern scenes, and unfortunately, Uncharted Guy.
Uncharted 2 has garnered many awards for beautiful graphics but I think ACII is right up there with it’s open world that’s not only technically brilliant but gorgeous to look at. The only major graphical sin is some fairly obvious pop-in when moving though the cities, even with the games fantastic draw distance (evident when you synchronize on a viewpoint). The framerate is smooth throughout though the latter stages of the game (like many games) do tend to have some areas where scripting and cutscenes seems somewhat rushed.
The sound is also worthy of consideration as it’s very slickly produced and although there’s still way too much repetition from some of the NPC’s, it’s not as bad as the first game where you had the exact same lines been repeated in different accents depending on which area you were in. I do know Luigi the fish merchant can’t be beaten for prices or the freshness of his catch. That much I have learned from this game. Here, almost everyone has an Italian accent, mostly convincing ones at that. And no matter what language you play the game in, the script features copious amounts of Italian dialogue which is why the subtitles come in (I did think the line “what, no fucking ziti?” was out of place). Ezio may sound like a reject from The Godfather but it never grates the way Altair’s bland American accent did in the first game. Ezio has passion and sensitivity. Altair was a cock. Of course, in the few short present days scenes outside of the Animus we have the voices of Kristen Bell and Nolan North AGAIN (we was also Prince of Persia and Drake and Shadow Complex guy).
Pic- Of course, Ezio is unlikley to appear in the next game so here he is carrying his stuff home in a cardboard box after he was let go.
If Uncharted 2 hadn’t been so great, I could have seen this is as a GOTY 2009 quite easily. Why? It’s a very good game that fixes almost everything that was broken in the first game. ACII is a must play.
Controller1.com rating 3/3
Available on iPhone and as a Flash game for web and Flash capable devices.
I thought that Gamespot was being pretty edgy when they picked the fringe title Demon’s Souls to win their Game of the Year award, but then I thought, “Wait! They still got it wrong!”
Canabalt should have won it. It’s a simple game: you run, and you jump, and that’s it. You don’t even press anything to run. You touch anywhere on the screen to jump. It was the best game of 2009.
This is just my opinion, you know. You should know that my personal video game Hall of Fame is full of weirdos like Canabalt. My favorite game of 2007 was Shark! Shark! for the Mattel Intellivision, a precursor to PopCap’s Feeding Frenzy. My favorite game of all time is Total Carnage by Midway, which is an ultraviolent shooting game that can be played from start to finish in an hour. The only GOTY in there that swims with the hype-currents is Fallout 3, though I’m only talking about the original game: the out of the box version without none of the vestigial DLC tainting it. It excels all on its own, though it’s a tad easy.
The fact is that every time I start playing Canabalt, I have a hard time stopping. It’s a game that doesn’t end until you die, and then, all you have to do to start playing again is touch the screen. There is no loading or screen transition; the game simply starts again and you play it some more.
When you start playing, a little man in a business suit appears in a hallway in a tall office building. He runs to the right, crashes over an office chair and a box, and then plunges out of the window. The game world is bleakly gray. Its limited shades make the game look like it should be on a first-generation Game Boy. The little guy lands on the rooftop of a neighboring building and continues running to the right. Soon he runs out of rooftop to run on, and you, the player, must make him jump so he doesn’t fall. You simply touch the screen to do this. The longer you touch the screen, the higher he jumps. As the little man lands on successive rooftops and continues his dash, his speed increases, and it becomes trickier to keep him under control. Your job is to keep him from dying for as long as possible. On some tries you’ll succeed at this for a long time. On other tries you’ll last only for a few seconds. The game is randomized, so there’s no memorization allowed here. Your only assets are your reflexes.
Canabalt has no real story beyond what is shown during play. The game’s background shows a skyline with weird, enormous figures stalking about, plumes of smoke rising, and spacecraft zipping by at high speeds. Combined with the player-character’s insane rooftop run, the backgrounds make it clear that something terrible is happening here. Backgrounds in video games are powerful things, and it’s sad that 3D games, with their dynamic cameras, can’t really capture that bystander effect the way that 2D games can. Games like Half-Life 2 have tried, but they always have to contrive some kind of barrier, like a grumpy policeman or a line of rocks, to corral the player and hold them away from the sights they’re not meant to touch. Canabalt’s story is not entirely clear, of course, but it doesn’t have to be, and that’s what makes it so great. There is no text explaining what’s going on or why your character is motivated to leap across a series of rooftops. That’s left up to your imagination, where it’s sure to be more exciting than anything a programmer could dream up.
On random occasions, while playing Canabalt, you might hear a thump. That means, “Watch out, because a volatile chunk of metal is going to crash into the next building.” Touch that volatile chunk of metal, and your little guy blows up. Sometimes the buildings in your path are so tall that you can only make it through them by jumping precisely through a narrow window. There are boxes strewn about on some rooftops that will slow your little man down if he crashes into them, and sometimes you might want him to crash into them, either because you want to keep him at a reasonable speed, or because jumping the boxes will screw with your rhythm. Sometimes the building you’re running across will crumble beneath your feet, leaving you only a sliver of time to clear the next gap. None of these environmental features are preset. They just appear sometimes. There are some players who despise this kind of randomness in games. I eat it up. You see, I don’t dig “performance games,” games that require hours of practice to play perfectly, the way a complex song demands practice from a musician. Mirror’s Edge, probably the only game that can be fairly compared to Canabalt, is a performance game. Its levels require time, memorization, and a multitude of player deaths to master, and while I’m sure that skill is involved in completing it, it seems to me that players would benefit more from patience and perseverance. Any game with level design is going to require some memorization to master, but when the game becomes less about playing around and more about performing well, you might as well give it up and start playing Dragon’s Lair. Given the choice between playing Dragon’s Lair and playing Tetris, I’d pick Tetris any day.
There were a lot of good games out this year, and it might seem strange that I would prefer to play a 2D, one-button, sprite-based iPhone game over something like Uncharted 2. The fact is, though, that I really do play it more than any other game that came out last year. I think it’s because Canabalt excels at the few simple things it does. Its 2D, sprite-based graphics are sharp, evocative, and tell a fascinating story. Its single control functions flawlessly, making possible a wide range of jumps to deal with the game’s obstacles. Most interestingly, it doesn’t end; it cannot be won, and it’s only finished when you’re finished with it. It is not a game that you can consume and then put away. There are leaderboards, if you consider getting a high score to be a manner of winning, but you’re not thinking about them when you’re in the heat of the run. In Canabalt, all that matters is the game, and its many, many thrilling moments of unscripted death-defiance which change every time you play. I don’t know when we’re going to get another game like this; you’d better start playing it now.
Reviewed on Xbox 360 and PC. Also on PS3. Developed by Infinity Ward. Published by Activision
Call of Duty’s beginnings as more or less a straight copy of Medal of Honor Allied Assault (which was more or less made by most of IW when they were at 2015) don’t really set the scene for this latest game. Call of Duty was never a popular franchise with the hardcore player who were more interested in Counterstrike, Quake III, Battlefield and Unreal games. It was a hit, but with the people who enjoyed Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers- a more casual type of PC gamer. It was a mainstream hit, but always looked down on by people who were in clans or lugged their 21 inch CRT monitors to LAN parties, fragfests and virginal circle-jerks. All that changed with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare which ditched the WWII setting of the previous CoD games and sold more copies than a street vendor in Moscow selling genuine Rolex watches.
CoD4 was a surprise hit with the hardcore and even the Treyarch WWII-based World at War sold well. So MW2 was so big that almost every publisher put back a large number of their biggest titles to early 2010 just to get out of MW2’s way. But how does it play?
SINGLE PLAYER (may contains traces of nuts and spoilers)
The single player story had a lot to live up to. The WWII CoD games had a basic story to get you into a mission but the overall theme was “defeat the Axis powers before the end of 1945.” CoD4, not being based on anything in particular (parallel to the current wars around the world), need a more defined story. MW2 takes that, runs with it, amps up to 11, char-grills it, over-inflates the bouncy castle and just generally makes the stakes higher. Before we had a nuke going off in an unnamed Middle Eastern country of GAFghanistan, a main character dieing and a race to stop things getting worse. In MW2, it gets worse. An undercover American operative being implicated in a terrorist massacre of civilians in Moscow causes an all-out war. The story is told in two parts with half of the game played from the perspective of SAS operatives and the other half as a US army Private attempting to de-red dawnify the Continental United States. The scale of the story is rather undersold since most of the set-up is done in the form of rather dry voice overs during the loading screens that lack the punch of the similar screens during WaW’s load screens. And it’s way too tempting to just skip these as soon as possible.
The actual game itself is great even though it’s the same as the original MW. Just different settings and perhaps a tad more over the top in its scale. The game is intense for most of the time you’re playing, which isn’t all that long. IW have thrown in a lot of things to mix things up constantly, from snow mobiles to rafting. But mainly, there are lots of levels that make you think “Hmm, I did this on CoD4.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Graphics are crisp and clear with a constant 60fps on 360 and since it’s an enhanced version of the engine used on CoD4, it will run well on most medium spec computers. Sound is the usual fantastic mix of effects and voice, now with added Hans Zimmer music. Even though the game on consoles runs at technically a sub HD resolution, there is very little to indicate low resolution. It looks crisp and runs smoother than peanut butter at a gigolo convention. The only major gripe is the jam gun the enemies fire at you. This is the new blood effect that splatters across the screen to let you know you’ve been injured. Fall from a reasonable height and you will tear a major artery in your eyes.
MULTIPLAYER
Well, since a large number of people skipped the single player of CoD4 entirely and have been playing the multiplayer fairly solidly for two years, you’d think IW would just make new maps and be done (after all, that’s more or less what Treyarch did for WaW). But no. IW have ramped it up to the nth degree. CoD 4: MW’s ranking and perks system helped extend the appeal of the multiplayer modes in this post WoW/ achievement whore world we live. MW2 takes that, jolts it 50, 000 volts up each leg and give it a raise. Now you have a far bigger combination of perks and weapon options, customization kill streaks, emblems (though I’ve yet to see anyone not use the pot leaf), tags and so forth. So not only can you select which killstreak rewards you receive, you can also have a deathstreak, which helps you out if you get spawn-raped by a camping sniper noob who’s been playing for 17 hours and hates the game. This thing will have legs since the number of combinations means it will be a while before everyone just uses the same three or four combos as they did in CoD4.
The netcode is probably a bit better than CoD4 and WaW, but the matchmaking still is a pain since it will routinely hook you up to a game where everyone else in another country- something that doesn’t make the game all that much fun. They could learn a thing for two from Bungie when making peer-to-peer networked games work. Of course, MW2 also brings the PC player into a realm they don’t normally visit: p2p networking without the latest episode of Lost to show for it. In my brief playthough on PC game online, I had no issues, but I did only play two rounds. The problem is you can’t play on a dedicated server as you can for most other PC games, nor can you choose what server you are on- It’s all Matchmaking with one player as the host (whether they like it or not). So far the main issue is listening to the whingeing of the master race (though they have a point- the best online console experiences -Halo 3 aside- have been those with the dedicated server model). My CoD4-playing colleagues at work have been entertaining me with their attempts at playing the game together at lunch. They don’t want to play private games since they won’t get XP. Oh well. Infinity Ward! You got some ’splaining to do!
There’s also a third mode called Spec Ops which can either be played solo or coop (either splitscreen or online). I haven’t tried it since I can’t see any reason to play this with so much crap in Multiplayer to unlock.
So there you have it. Game of the Year? Well, it’s certainly the shooter of the year and the multiplayer game of the year, for me at least. It’s knocked down on PC simply there’s no reason for the basic server stuff to have been stripped out unless Activision want to start charging for maps on PC as well. Which is likely.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3, PS3, Wii, DS. Developed by Treyarch. Published by Activision
Mock if you must but for the next few days at least I’m going to party like it’s 2008. I saw a couple of cheap games that I’d been interesting in playing during a lull SO LONG AS THEY WERE CHEAP. The other week I saw Quantum of Solace and 50 cent Blood on the Sand for cheap (AU $30 ea) and I thought “why the fuck not?”
I needed something relatively simple to cleanse my gaming palette after the majesty that was Uncharted 2 and before Modern Warfare 2. Something cheap, short and can’t be looked down as anything other than dumb fun. Quantum of Solace fits that bill quite well. I like James Bond films but I still don’t really know what to make of Quantum of Solace the movie. The title comes from an Ian Fleming short story where Bond is told a story by some stuffy diplomat-type over a cognac, a story about some couple who grew to hate each other. And it’s really quite dull. If I was Bond in the story I would have shot the guy telling the story for being boring. So the movie QoS followed on from 2006’s excellent Casino Royale movie. And then proceeded to ignore all of the lessons of Casino Royale. People didn’t want far fetched Bond plots in 2008.
Why is this important? Well, this game is actually two thirds a Casino Royale game and one third a Quantum of Solace game. A bit of context doesn’t hurt. So you take the Call o Duty 4 engine, give it to Treyarch who were making the better-than-everyone-was-expecting Call of Duty World at War at the same time as this and what do you get? Something that’ s okay rather than great.
As so many games from movies do, any location that appears in the movie is fair game for a full on corridor shooter fest that takes 20-30 minutes to complete. The final scene from Casino Royale is turned into the intro level to this game. Move through level, kill enemies, pick up cell phone’s convenient dotted around the map for intelligence useful (but by no means vital) to your mission. So despite this using the CoD4 engine, it doesn’t necessarily play just like Call of Duty. You run and gun in much the same way but you don’t have melee in the same way. If you get close to an enemy, you can click on the right stick and to trigger a quick time event where you have to press a face button (a different one each time) to takedown an enemy in a nicely animated unarmed
attack.
It feels as though this game took a lot of cues from the first Uncharted game, especially with 3rd person cover and action scenes. You can balance on beams (looking like Treyarch re-purposed some manual meter code from one of their Tony Hawk ports) jump over things and make leaps of faith just because the game says you can press ‘Y’ to jump. You have some hacking minigames which aren’t anything special but then this is a game designed for a very casual audience. That’s code for saying Normal is actually pretty easy.
So how does it actually play? Well it’s fun for a bit and it is thankfully fairly short. In so many ways you think you are playing a game from five years ago in terms of design and quite often the visuals. It also doesn’t run at Call of Duty 4’s standard 60fps frame rate, so it’s hard to see where the extra fidelity is going.
Presentation is fine for a licensed game but it isn’t going to wow anyone in this day and age. We have many of the cast members from Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, including a bored Dame Judi and Dame Daniel. Gunfire sounds are somewhat lacking, however, but at least the James Bond theme is used in a more restrained way than some of the EA games on PS2.
So overall- cheap filler when you want something quick to snack on in between the ‘great’ games but there’s no reason to go out of your way to play it.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3 and PC. Developed by Techland. Published by Ubisoft.
I’ll keep this short and sweet. As a fan of the original game, I’ve found this prequel to be highly disappointing. The original filled a gap in gaming- the well done western FPS. The sequel seems half-hearted in many ways while being more assured in execution. It’s rather lacking in something that for the sake of being descriptive I shall call soul.
In BiB you play as Confederate Brothers Ray or Thomas. In the aftermath of the South’s loss, these two become a pale parody of a spaghetti western protagonist. You usually choose which of the two you’ll play as at the start of a level with the other tagging along as a computer controlled ally. Ray (who becomes Reverend Ray, star of the first game) is the stronger of the two, able to dual wield pistols and be generally Cardassian. Thomas replaces Billy and is the more agile of the two, able to jump higher and use a lasso to scale some obstacles. Both characters have concentration mode, which is a fancy bullet-time mode that works differently for each of the brothers.
There are story missions and some optional side missions in this game but to be honest they aren’t particularly compelling to play compared to the original. Seemingly, most end in a one on one duel mechanic that is painful in the extreme to beat. Even though there is a save point just before it you have to move your guy so that your opponent is in a specific point (more or less the centre of the screen) . It’s shittier than a constipated ox that has eaten curry for a week and suddenly been exposed to very cold air.
So apart from the fights, the rest of the game is put together well but it’s just missing that hunger to do stuff that was in the first game. This is too by-the-numbers to be more than a time-waster while you wait for better games to be released. You go somewhere, and basically kill everyone who attacks you. But you don’t do in it an interesting way. The first game had a mix of stealth, climbing, Ray going off his nut and quoting the bible while he killed baddies. Here you just kill everything. In between chapters you are able to go off and do some side missions but these are more of the same- go and kill everyone and often ending in another annoying duel.
The multiplayer is not too bad and with more of a community, could have been a fun diversion for a while. It’s definitely better than the MP portion of Wolfenstein (a wasted opportunity if ever there was one) with multiple modes. I played a few rounds of a mode where you played as either the outlaws or the law. I was an outlaw, sticking it to the man as I blew up various safes and vaults in a delightful western town circa 1890-ish. Of course, know where the next objectives are are just an invitation to the Law -abiding team to just camp with rifles but it was fun while it lasted. Probably the most fun part of the game since it doesn’t rely on Techland’s half-hearted design.
So while the original was a breath of fresh air, the sequel is as stale as a box of donuts left in the back seat for a month. Looks brand new but probably best left unopened
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PC. Developed by id, Raven, Endrant, Threewave Software. Published by Activision (ORLY?)
Wolfenstein is your virtual grandpa’s axe when it comes to the first person genre. A sequel of sorts for 2000’s well received Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the latest game is just Wolfenstein (“It’s pronounced WOLFENSTEEN!) and was released to consoles and PC’s in a wave of silent apathy. You’ll hear a lot of “I heard that was crap,” from people who haven’t played it but that’s par for the course. Look at the number of different developers and you’ll see why this game has a split personality. Firstly single player…
So you know it’s a WWII-set first person shooter, right? You still play as BJ Blaskowitz, an American agent behind enemy lines, kicking ass and taking names. In past games, the Nazi’s have been secretly developing supernatural and occult weapons. Here, the results of those experiments are walking around town in clear view, sipping cappuccinos in the sidewalk cafe’s. As well as the usual assortment of WWII-era weapons and a few SF additions, you also have four ‘Veil’ powers which grant you a shield, bullet-time, super powered bullets and the ability to see secret areas. Fortunately, the game doesn’t expect you to rely on either conventional weapons or Veil powers throughout, though it’s rare you will ever be far from a place to recharge your Veil power meter. Of course, that’s if you’re not in an area with a Veil Inhibitor active…
There is a somewhat ‘open world” vibe to the hub area, but one that hasn’t been fully developed so there is still some loading between areas of the city. There are also three factions of ‘resistance’ operatives where you can buy upgrades and be given missions (GTA-style). However, the town is almost completely devoid of life apart from resistance fighters and Nazi troops. On the up side, there’s an impressive amount of destructibility in the world. Not Red Faction: Guerrilla levels but enough to make things interesting. You can’t fight City Hall but you can blow the shit out of anything not nailed down.
It plays well. Very well. It’s a lot of fun to run and gun, use your veil powers and cause havoc in the heart of the Third Reich. The difficulty level is mostly well-balanced, apart from the odd checkpoint that’s just a little further away than would be ideal. The shooter part is quite solid, if slightly old-skool feeling but it’s the addition of the Veil powers that mixes things up a bit. Since the game is designed around you needing the powers to conquer certain areas, it fits in well.
I would call it surprise of the year, even more so than Red Faction: Guerrilla which at least had some marketing behind it. When Activision cock-blocks somethings- they go go all out. If you do manage to find Activision’s marketing for this title (at the bottom of locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with the a sign on the door saying “beware of the leopard”), expect about eight hours of single-player goodness unless you’re either expecting to hunt down the collectibles (which will take longer) or you have superhuman reflexes (in which case, why are you playing games when you could be out there saving lives? Haven’t you seen Heroes: Season One?).
You are able to upgrade your weapons and Veil powers with the money you collect during the game by adding better barrels, scopes, reducing recoil etc, but the game makes you choose by not making not possible to buy everything. The more SF weapons are particularly satisfying to use on some of the harder enemies but the Veil powers coupled with a standard assault rifle are not to be underestimated.
And then there’s the multiplayer- the videogaming equivalent of Back to the Future part 2: You’re looking at something that looks like an early XBox1 game but has one or two new things bolted on but ultimately is just a confusing dated mess. It has three modes but is worth avoiding altogether if you have any affinity for the original MP for RtCW or ET. It’s a pity because it could have been great but will cause so many older Wolfenstein fans to denounce the game as without any value. Multiplayer is without any value in this title.
The graphics and sound are a mixed mag. The graphics are eye-bleedingly bad in MP but in SP they vary between adequately nice and very nice. Some areas look a little plain while others are very ‘whoa.’ It’s not until you get the veil powers you realise why some environments don’t ‘pop.’ Activate the Veil and the visuals change quite markedly with different lighting effects, howling winds, floating spectral creatures called Geists and more- including lots of secret areas. The sound is mostly very good though there’s just something about the character speech of the resistance fighters that bothers me. They mostly have convincing German accents though the acting is a little too stilted- something you can get if you use actors rather than actors who do lots of video gaming voice-overs. Also, the lines repeat waaaaaaaaaay too much and much too soon.
Overall this is a solid title that should give you a fun single player experience with a dip your toe in MP experience (though I would just stick with BF1943 if you want WWII multiplayer). I do feel that there are some underused elements- such as the hub world which could have offered many more missions than the game ultimately did (I guess we’ll have to wait for Saboteur for an open-world WWII game). The game is generally quite polished and runs well on consoles. Wolfenstein doesn’t go on for two long nor does it feel insanely easy or too hard. Recommended
Controller1.com rating 2/3 (for singleplayer only. Multiplayer is shittier than a dirty nappy)
Reviewed n Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PC Developed by DICE. Published by EA
Back in 2002, Battlefield 1942 shook up the PC multiplayer shooter world with its blend of infantry and vehicle based combat. Carving out a rather large chunk of the market, EA and DICE never managed to achieve the same level of devotion to its follow-ups to 1942 set in Vietnam, the present day to the future. Bad Company was a recent console-only attempt that wowed those who tried it and the free to play PC title Battlefield Heroes hasn’t really found the huge audience was expecting. It’s a testament to the power of the original 1942 title when a downloadable remake using the Bad Company Frostbite engine that only features three (now four) maps managed to spur on 600, 000 downloads in its first few weeks.
So we have three Pacific theatre campaigns (with a fourth now unlocked) which are very close remakes of Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Coral Sea (a plane-only map unlocked after 43 millions kills on each platform) and Wake Island. They are almost identical to those found in the original release but with substantially upgrade graphics and sound. The pace of the gameplay has been upped with infantry weapons actually quite useful and respawns being much faster than the PC original. Regenerating health and explosives are another key difference. The objective of each game is to capture and hold the bases on each map with each capture and each kill removing tickets from the enemy team’s score.
There are three classes to choose from. The Rifleman has a semi automatic rifle, rifle grenade (which is possibly a little overpowered- the opposite of the firecracker in Bad Company’s rifle grenades), bayonet and a few grenades. The heavy assault has a sub machine gun, and a bazooka whilst the sniper has a scoped bolt action rifle, explosives and detonator and a sword/dagger for melee. Of course, any of these guys can get into a tank or plane and ruin the game for everyone else but 1943 seems a lot more fun to play as infantry than some past PC BF games. Tanks aren’t as invulnerable to infantry attacks (well, when I’m in one they seem to be made out of newsprint) and there are many anti-aircraft cannons dotting the maps.
A nice touch is the ability for each team to call in an airstrike. When the airstrike is available, all you have to do is enter the radar bunker and then you can guide the trio of bombers to their target (much simpler than actually flying a plane but more involved than just point a cursor at a map).
Overall, the game does not punish you for being on foot as much as previous BF games which makes this one the BF that managed to get it right on consoles and be recognised. Of course, if you’re like us and gave Bad Company a chance last year, you already know DICE have the console side figured out pretty well. Added to that is EA’s use of server backed games proves that P2P (only Halo’s P2P code has ever been really playable for me) means that this game can hold its head high in the online arena. You still have vehicle campers and people who’s idea of teamwork is to shoot you so that you don’t get the plane but this has been fairly well restrained (but it’s still there).
Of course, Bad Company, the first game to use the Frostbite engine showed that DICE nows how to make a pretty console game that looks sounds and above all runs very well. It’s in no way a primitive looking game and is polished to the extreme. The sounds are impressive in the same way they were on BC. You wouldn’t think this was a re-skin of a seven year-old game just by playing it. There’s obviously been a lot of attention paid to this game and it shows.
Overall, its one of the better online experiences around at the moment. It might even stop me from forking over any more money for World at War map packs.
High recommended if you have Live, PSN (or a PC, whenever that version is released)
