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The Podcats: THREE (Uncharted 3, BF3, MW3)

Why has Uncharted 3 not impressed me? Why has Battlefield 3 not lasted that long? Why has Modern Warf… HOST MIGRATION… Synchronizing Game…are 3 kept peer-to-peer Multiplayer on PC?

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E3: The Storm before the Storm

Microsoft’s showing was a mixed bag this year (UPDATED WITH PICS AND MORE GAMES)

• So Project Natal is going to be called the Kinect. And the lineup is about as predictable as the Move. Oh dear. There’s a move enabled Forza, a Wii Sport Clone, a Wii Sports Resort clone, a Just Dance clone, a Wii Fit clone. It’s coming out in November (no pricing yet). Avatar racer Joyride is now a Kinect game.

• Star Wars and Disney titles for Kinect as well
• But the 360 has gotten a slimmer redesign with in built 802n wifi (at last) but no price cut. It’s available in stores this week in the US (Europe in July). It’s black and edgy like the cross between a sword and a marker pen.

• Halo Reach and Fable III are the 1st Party games for the gamers from MGS.
• Metal Gear Rising showed us fruit slicing skills.

• ESPN sports streaming
• Gears of War shown. 4 player co-op demoed
• New Crytek 360 only action title Kingdoms
• CoD Black Ops trailer- 360 getting all map packs first for next three CoD games.

EA probably had a line-up more in tune with what people who read blogs like this actually want.

• Need for Speed Hot Pursuit! from Criterion
• Dead Space 2
• Medal of Honor MP Beta starting soon
• Bad Company 2 Vietnam expansion
• EA MMA, EA Active 2, Tiger Woods, Madden, etc
• Sims 3 on consoles
• Crysis 2 will support 3D on consoles. PC?
• Bulletstorm details (coming Feb 2011)

Ubisoft also held a press conference with that dude from unfunny show Community. He was marginally better in this.

• Driver: San Francisco
• A cross between laser tag and a video game and a goody press conference that is more embarassing than MS’s rather goofy show.
• Ghost Recon Future Soldier looks like Modern Warfare with robots. It looks great.
• More Rabbids
• Rayman reboot. Looks greatacular. DD game
• Child of Eden is Rez with motion control
• Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood coming mid November
• Shaun White, a snowboarder, has a skateboarding game
• Innergy. Jesus Christ
• Mania Planet. Make your own Shootmania, Trackmania and Questmania
• Michael Jackson’s corpse being given another outing

REVIEW: THE SABOTEUR

Reviewed on PS3. Also on PC, Xbox 360 Developed by Pandemic. Send to to die by EA.

Pandemic’s last release before being shuttered late last year, The Saboteur is a third-person, open world action game set in Paris during the Nazi occupation of WWII. You play as Sean Devlin, a hard drinkin’, hard-lovin’, hard drivin’, hard swearin’ fecker possibly from Ireland who wreaks havoc throughout gay Paris. Released with less fanfare than a deaf marching band, The Saboteur set new records for a major release being barely marketed and therefore ignored by the buying public. It’s also a cracker of a game.

As with many Pandemic games, it’s a melting pot of other games, most notably GTA. Take GTA and set it in World War II, an idea that is surprising only in that it took so long for someone to actually do it. You’ve played GTA, right? Well add in the ability to climb up most buildings a la inFamous or Assassin’s Creed; then add the dozens of items to blow up (channeling, though not copying, Red Faction Guerrilla’s biggest thrill) and add in some rather wonky driving mechanics; add a pinch of over the top stereotypical accents and more tits than you can poke something resembling a stick at or at least something that is stick-shaped in a NSFW type of way and you have The Saboteur.

Sean Devlin is an Irish mechanic-cum-racing driver in Paris during the Nazi occupation who fast becomes the go-to guy for most of the resistance factions. You’ll meet a faction leader and they may give you a mission that’s either a side mission or one that will advance the storyline. Variety here is pretty good and you don’t get the feeling that you did the same mission for another guy earlier in the game.  Now some of the story missions have a really epic scope. Not to say they’re overly long, but you don’t that “scripted by a level designer out of available elements” feeling that many of the missions in GTA /GTA-style games engender. So you might be assassinating an informant in one mission with a sniper rifle; having to kill a German general locked up safely in an armoured car surrounded by a division on men; Or take sabotage a bridge, then kidnap a defecting scientist from the train before it reaches said bridge, all the while laying waste to Germans. Lots of laffs guaranteed. Play this game and join the Laffwaffer.

Some of these side missions can be done easily by hijacking a gun emplacement or unlocking certain weapons, others can be exercises in frustration as you attempt to escape from hordes of Nazis. And I mean hordes. Not so much at the start, but around the time you hit the game’s halfway point, there is a marked spike in Nazi aggression to the point where mission restarts become commonplace. There are at least checkpoints during missions which often (but not always) lessen the sting of death.

The next type of mission is a sort of target-of-opportunity called Freeplay. This basically means that many signs of Nazi occupation, whether it’s a stationery armoured vehicle, a German general, propaganda speakers, AA gun, guard tower, etc can be blown up with dynamite or a remote detonator. And there are hundreds of these across the maps you can atatck at any time, even during missions. They are invaluable for collecting contraband and the like; though so of these targets, such as gun emplacements, can be more useful to keep around since you can use them yourself to blow up other targets or pursuing soldiers (even the Zeppelin’s hovering over Paris’ skyline). They are also a massive distraction whenever you are out and about as blowing them up becomes somewhat addictive, and working out ways to get everything in a clustered area before you are overrun by pursuing Germans is a hell of a lot of fun. Best thing is, as long as the game registers the destruction of the target before you die, you can respawn from your last checkpoint or safehouse.

Being a Saboteur implies some sort of stealth and this game uses stealth in a variety of ways. Unlike Liberty City, this is a town occupied by soldiers. If you are just walking around with no guns on show, you’ll be fine. But if you start waving your piece around, or worse, pull out a gun near a Nazi, the soldiers will often react. If this happens you can try and lower their suspicion level by walking in the other direction but if they get too hyped up, they will call for backup and that’s where the fun starts. Climbing or running near troops can also raise the suspicion level, but somehow you seem able to get close enough to parked vehicle to set a charge even with two guards nearby. They will be roused by the explosion but you have to be right on top of them for them to spot you. If you destroy Freeplay targets clustered together (as often they are), you may find the Alert level rising faster than a Swiss Banker denying rightful owners of their gold fillings. This generally means guards with bigger weapons, airships and even the odd Messerschmidt fighter attacking you with a vigour not seen since the French rush to surrender in 1940. The Germans get plenty pissed and you can get away either by driving (or running) out of the area of investigation indicated on your minimap or find a hiding place (also marked on your map). Alternatively you can find an alarm button and as long as you aren’t being watched by a German, you can deactivate the alarm. Later on, you can lead the Germans into areas where your resistance friends are fighting Germans in the streets and join them. Once you’ve killed a number of Germans,  the alarm is over and you can continue with the mayhem. If you despatch a German soldier using stealth tactics or unarmed combat, you can borrow his uniform if  no one’s about. This will also cancel alerts so it’s quite a good habit to get into, even if it isn’t as polished as it should be. A number of missions reply on the disguise mechanic to get you into even more trouble. You hold a button down to walk like a Nazi, which reduces the distance around you where you will be spotted as a  spy, but you can get further this way that rolling in guns blazing. You can’t get too close as Germans are smarter than the average Fascist.

The Saboteur also adds free climbing into the mix, handy for evading pursuers as you seem to take less damage from enemy fire whilst climbing. It’s not as fluid as the climbing in inFamous or ACII, but it works relatively well and adds verticality to a game world that is very open. The game handily highlights what you can grab onto next but unfortunately doesn’t handle an eave or a protruding ledge quite as nicely as ACII does. If every game did things as nicely as ACII, we wouldn’t need the 2010 Assassin’s Creed II-2 that seems to be coming out.

Everything you achieve earns you contraband, the game’s currency (I can’t see why francs or marks couldn’t have been used), whether it’s the reward for successfully completing a mission, freeplay target destruction or just finding a crate from an OSS drop. Contraband can be used to unlock maps showing freeplay targets, new weapons car upgrades, etc. Or you can gamble with it in the boob room (more on that later). There are a lot of freeplay targets in this game but the reason seems to be the contraband you get for things is rather measly. A few missions need you to have a certain amount in order to bribe a black market operator which will usually mean stocking up on dynamite and going fishing. A pleasant drive through the Parisian burbs later and I’ve destroyed two sniper towers, a fuel dump, an AA gun, three propaganda speakers and two searchlights. And collected several hundred in contraband.

There are also races. I hate races. Most of them are optional apart from the few that aren’t. I hate races.

One element I’ve not found a use for, nor be able to get to work is you can apparently call back up from resistance members. Every time I try to use it, I get a big fat zip in response. Oh well.

The presentation is interesting. At the start of the game, most of Paris is black and white with the colour returning to an area after you’ve beaten a major mission. Apparently the locals are inspired by your actions to resist the Nazi’s. These areas are now in full colour and feature points mentioned earlier in the review where you can cancel an alarm by picking off a set number of  Germans. So sounds great when you first see the game, and then progressively less so when you can’t see a fucking thing on the screen (especially in some night time scenes). You’re totally fucked if your screen gets lots of reflections (such as the glass screen on a Plasma or a somputer with a glossy monitor) The graphics (on PS3) are crisp and the frame rate usually behaves itself though after a recent firmware update, I did have a problem where the game constantly hard locked the PS3 (about 4 times in an hour) but it’s behaved itself since then. The audio is mostly excellent save for for the outrageously fake accents sported by most of the cast.

The main character is voiced by actor is Robin Atkin-Downes, who Babylon 5 fans may remember as the much vilified Bryon in that show’s last season but fear not her could star in a Father Ted remake. Lots of shits, feckers and pronouncing ‘I’ as ‘Oi.’ Also, UNCHARTED GUY is in here as a bald Frenchman with a hook! Nolan North represent! The worst voice is a character called Mingo, who seems like winning a race for bass with Paul Robeson. The initial safehouse is in a burlesque theatre, so there are lots of scantily clad, if not topless, ladies with really bad accents but surprisingly modern lingerie and could best be described as ‘pert gallic.’ Lastly, the history in this game is only slightly more reliable that that featured in Inglourious Basterds.

This being an EA game, it features, like Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2 and Bad Company 2, a coupon inside the box with a redeemable one-use code meant for the person who buys the game new. Mass Effect 2 gave you some items and an extra character with some missions. Battlefield gave you a weapon. The Saboteur takes a different tack. There is a secret passage in the Burlesque theatre called The Midnight Room that is only accessible with the code which you can enter for free if you buy new or EA would like to charge you $15 to buy online if you buy pre-owned. Now, since the new price of the game has actually fallen to only marginally more than the DLC, let me tell you what you get. A speakeasy with even more topless girls, one (admittedly fun)betting game combining alcohol, knives and Wheel of Fortune; and a bunch of topless girls who will dance for you in close-up. YMMV.

So the design is ambitious and Pandemic manages to tie it together well for the most part. Like any open world game there will be a few annoyances in there but I’ve been mostly impressed by how Pandemic dealt with those. Fast Travel between hideouts might have been nice but overall it’s a credible effort. There are a few edges that could use a bit of sandpaper, but nothing you could cut yourself on. I’m actually surprised how polished it is considering Pandemic’s fate. It’s not an essential purchase, by any means. But if you do spring for it, it is a good time and it’s also now a cheap date as well.

You don’t hate WWII games, like Pandemic’s output, like open world games with a ton of things to do and blow up? Then get this.

Controller1.com Rating 2/3

Get it if you liked Just Cause 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, Medal of Honor Underground, GTA, Saint’s Row, Red Faction Guerilla.

Don’t get it if you like: Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Imagine: Nazis

REVIEW: BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2

Reviewed on PC. Also on: Xbox 360, PS3. Developed by DICE. Published by EA

Sweden’s DICE are back to the Battlefields with their latest release. It’s an interesting release for various reasons and it’s also one of the better games in the series. The first game in the series came out for PC in 2002 with two decent expansion packs before the law of diminishing returns started to kick in and we had the unloved Battlefield Vietnam and that’s where things went all over the place. There was the somewhat-loved Battlefield 2 with a DLC fragmented player base, its late to the party console versions BF: Modern Combat and the best forgotten Battlefield: 2142 and Battlefield Heroes. The first Battlefield Bad Company was DICE’s first designed for console-only title and was loved by most of those who played it, though the lack of a PC version was bemoaned by many (which is fair considering it was a defining game franchise in the PC shooter space). Bad Company was sold as a single player-focused game with a multiplayer component, but it felt like a single player shoehorned into the wide-open multiplayer maps. BC’s multiplayer was excellent (I played it on PS3/PSN) with its infantry combat now being useful and not 100% dominated by whoever camped long enough for a Tank or can fly a chopper for more than 20 seconds without crashing. It also brought with it the excellent Gold Rush mode, where one team attacks and the other defends its bases. Once two crates in each base had been destroyed, the action moved to the next base until the defender’s bases were all destroyed or the tickets of the attackers had exhausted. That said, it was unfortunately ignored by a lot of long-time BF fans w. many of whom aren’t interested in FPS games on a console. The still console-only but soon to be PC Battlefield 1943, which remade 3 maps from the original game using the Bad Company Frostbite engine, made a of those people sit up and take notice (BF1943 is apparently the first game on XBLA to sell over 1 million units. This also sold well on PSN, so that’s a lot of people taking notice).

BC2 came out early in 2010 and brought with it a PC version. Before release, the PC diehards were still waiting for a true sequel to Battlefield, but having played the PC version to death since release, they need not wait as this is what they need. I do, however, find the need to write a review to attempt to extricate myself from its charms and its vices.

BC2 has several modes. Single player feels like a fun version of a scripted classic Medal of Honor or CoD single player experience, though here, instead of tough and gruff professional soldiers, we have a bunch of whiny slackers. The single player campaign on its own is not worth buying the game for but could be a pleasant enough diversion if you find yourself unable to connect to EA’s servers (which occasionally happens). The real meat and potatoes (or tofu and potatoes for vegetarian readers) is in going online in Rush mode. Yes, there’s BF’s traditional conquest mode, plus Squad Deathmatch, Squad Rush, etc but I’ve only played Rush. It’s a pity that there aren’t more playing Rush on PC (surprise, surprise- more PC players are playing Conquest). Rush offers and intense experience that Modern Warfare 2 removed by going down that arcadey, badly networked path; an experience that targets the action very well, funnels you to the action quickly without having to walk across the entire map due to a poor spawn choice. Squads, first introduced in BF2, allow you to spawn alongside people already in the thick of it which can save valuable battle time. It also means, you can spawn in the middle of a mortar strike or your opponents spawning squad members in the middle of a pistol duel can shift the balance very quickly.

There are four classes you can play as in BC2. The grunt with the assault rifle and grenade launcher is not as overpowered as in MW2, though the grenade launcher is at least usable in BC2 (it was so incredibly weak in BC). The Engineer has a sub machine gun, can repair vehicles and carry mines or a rocket launcher to take out tanks and APCs. The Medic runs around with an light machine gun and drop medkits and later on can revive fallen team-mates so they can go back into battle and get shot again by the same enemy within 3 seconds or resurrection. The last class is the recon, AKA sniper AKA sniping fuckers. Snipers will generally sit back in their ghillie suits and snipe from a very long way away and pepper the field of battle with mortar strikes. Even with BC2 making sniping trickier by having bullets falling away, a good sniper will be able to make a defending team’s life miserable. However, due to the perception that sniping is easy, you sometimes end up in a game where all of the attackers are sniping, meaning no one gets around to setting charges. Oh well.
The more you play the more gadgets and weapons you can unlock. Unlike MW2, if you unlock a new sniper scope, you can equip it the next time you respawn rather than between matches (on PC, anyway). The progress and unlocks does encourage farming. I recall one sparsely populated server where there 5 members of the one clan used a public server to unlock a boating medal. That’s fine, we just used them to farm our sniping stats.

Of course, there are vehicles in BC2. You have a few tanks, armoured personnel carriers, mobile anti aircraft, jeeps, quad bikes, boats, jetskis and helicopters. And unlike previous games, you have far better tools, as ground forces, to deal with them. Some of which are improved by improving your stats to unlock specialties, better vehicle armour, improved reload times, etc. Missing, are the artillery batteries but we have the UAV which is a remote controlled chopper that can be used to send in a missile strike. Fortunately, Tamiya doesn’t build them very strong so a few hits from an M16 should see them right. Engineers can use a variety of rocket launchers to take out vehicles, Snipers can use mortar strikes or place charges on a tank, Engineers can use the LMG to pound the choppers plus there are a profusion of mounted machine guns and stationary rocket launchers dotted around the maps. It’s not like the original game where you were totally fucked once someone who could fly got into a cockpit of a Zero.

An online game is only as good as your community and it seems all popular games are going to be full of dickheads. BC2 started off well in the first few weeks when everyone was learning the ropes, but once the tricks start emerging, most games quickly degenerate. With BC2, it depends on the server you’re on but generally seems to have far fewer abusive players (or maybe the worst ones are the ones with headsets, which I have muted anyway).
The Frostbite engine produces great graphics and the sound for BC has a unique real world sound you don’t hear often in games. It sounds loud even when it’s not.One technical aspect that has cast a vast shadow over this game is network code. It’s just not as god as you’d expect from DICE on a PC title. Back wen I played the older games on PC on bog standard 512k ADSL, a ping of 70 was average for a server in the same country as me. Years later with much much faster ADSL 2+, pings of less than 150 are wishful thinking. That said, you can have a decent game playing with people in other countries, so long as you don’t use sniper rifles. The server browser was not working that well at launch and I took to using the matchmaking for a week or two.

It’s certainly a pretty game that runs well, plays well and you will have fun playing. Until the fucking snipers get you. Spawn and again. Overall, if you like shooting games, BF games and are sick of MW2 and/or the extortionate price of the ‘stimulus to Kotick’s wallet,’ give BC2 a spin.

Controller1.com rating 3/3

Play if you like Bad Company, Battlefield Modern Combat, Battlefield 1943, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Modern Warfare 2

Don’t play if you like: Single player, Final Fantasy XIII, Heavy Rain, Tetris

REVIEW: MASS EFFECT 2

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.

Controller1.com rating 3/3

The Top Games of 2009 According to this Site

Controller1.com’s top games of this past year.

Sleeper of the Year (aka The game that came out of nowhere, the one you expected to ignore but couldn’t because of the great word of mouth)
RED FACTION: GUERRILLA. Volition and THQ’s third RF game came out of nowhere to be one hell of a blast of supercharged entertainment. Sure, Volition misunderstood the difference between easy and insane. But the core mechanics of the game and the freedom you had to progress meant few stumbling blocks to gaming nirvana. I have no idea what the story was about so let’s assume it’s rather ordinary and skip to the good bits: blowing things up. I can’t name a game where destruction has been done better.
Runner Up: Borderlands

Overhyped Game of the Year (AKA The game that was expected to make coffee, bend time and rule all but in the end was a bit meh)
KILLZONE 2. Sony and Guerrilla Game’s follow up to the justifiably ignored Killzone was meant to be many things. Here’s what it was and wasn’t.
IT WAS: A decent FPS, put together well and looked beautiful.
IT WASN’T: a system seller, or a particularly great game.
Year of PS3 got off to a false start and was almost disqualified from the race with KZ2.
Runner up: Scribblenaughts

Most Disappointing Game (AKA Games with buzz and hope that just didn’t deliver)
Wolfenstein Coulda, should but didna. Wolfenstein squandered the hope that long term fans had for a worthwhile follow up to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. What they got was a good single player that seemed to need a teeny bit more polish and content and a terrrrrrrrrible multiplayer. Do you get this game? Do you like MP more than SP? Flip a coin.
Runner Up: Modern Warfare 2

MOST IMPROVED (AKA They fixed the shit in the first one that was busted)
Assassin’s Creed II. Oh Lord is it ever so much better than the first game. In every single way, this game is more fun than the original. The content is better organised so that the game is not “here are 10 things you can do, go do each of them 500 times.” The whole concept is still a bit silly and Kristen Bell’s character looks like she had a lip transplant from the original Kryten but overall any game that has Uncharted Guy doing voices is good.
Runner Up: Uncharted 2

BEST DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT: SHADOW COMPLEX

BF1943, GTA episodes and Trials were there but Shadow Complex was by far the best DL only game released in 2009. A Metroidvania that’s probably more palatable to a modern audience (since it has Uncharted Guy doing voices, of course), the game managed to astound, entertain, stir up controversy and offer a good few hours of gameplay.
Runner Up: Halo 3 ODST (no, not really, but it should have been)

Best Game Only on Wii: NEW SUPER MARIO BROTHERS WII
OK, so it was really only one of two Wii games I bought this year. But it was the one I didn’t sell (HotD: Overkill). It’s frustrating as all fuck, has a save system that’s as pointless as the one in Dead Rising and I’m not playing it right now. Why am I not playing this right now? I don’t know.

Best Game Only on PS3: UNCHARTED 2
Sony had two really good games this year. Uncharted 2 and Infamous. Infamous is blown out of the water by Uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 is the quintessential adventure game. Whereas the first game promised platforming but delivered a gears of War Clone, the sequel mixes things up so successfully that you never realise when the game is going to go from one style to another. yes, you know at least once per chapter there will be something you’re standing in collapsing around you leaving you hanging from one arm but that’s beside the point.

Best Game Only on Xbox 360: SHADOW COMPLEX The 360 almost had a gap year with the only big exclusives being Forza 3 (which a LOT of people love and recognise as the driving game of 2009 to play), Halo 3: ODST which really was just a bit too much recycling with such a short single player campaign.

Best Game Only on PC- this is the year 2009.

Best Game on Everything: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. IW may have pissed off as many people as they please with MW2. There’s the story that eschews any semblance of realism for moments of turkey-slapping-a-sleeping-lion thrills, OTT Multiplayer perks and combos, poor matchmaking and the various PC issues that made the game into a must play for many into a meh for some.

Best Pissing Away Goodwill. TIE: Infinity Ward and Activision.
Infinity Ward for doing the dirty on PC gamers and Activision for driving Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero into the ground. Oh, and splitting Starcraft II into three different games.

Most Improved: Sony. They cut the PS3 price from hysterical to merely funny (after three years it’s finally at the PS2 launch price), released the Slim and released Uncharted and Infamous. It still takes way too long to download and install a patch and most people still spend more on Blu Ray than they do on PS3 games, and PS3 ports are still often slightly lagging behind 360 in terms of graphics but it’s basically where it should have been three years ago. Just in time for God of War III

Most Potential for 2010: Microsoft. Really, they sold the 360 well but didn’t release that many 1st party games so you’d think game over, but then you see they have Crackdown 2, Halo Reach and Alan Wake. And then there’s Natal.

Least Potential for 2010: Wii
So we have a vitality sensor as the big piece of hardware? Really? Few games still support Motion Plus. Few gamers care and the signs are than grandma doesn’t either.

Game of the Year: Uncharted 2. Are you at all surprised? Naughty Dog redeem themselves after the disasters that were the Jak and Daxter sequels. This is the only game this year that a non-gamer will sit and watch as if it were a movie and enjoy it.
Runner Up: Modern Warfare 2.

It was a pretty good year overall. The only disappointing part of the year was the end. While we had some cracking titles such as Uncharted 2, ODST, Left 3 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed II, MW2 and Super Mario Wii it still felt like something was missing.Oh that’s right about 2 or 3 more must-haves in the lead up to Christmas that we wouldn’t get to play till 2010 anyway. Having them all come out in the first quarter of 2010 seems to have upset the natural balance.

REVIEW: BATTLEFIELD 1943

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)

Controller1.com Rating: 3/3

PS- I suck at this game but I love it nonetheless

NOW PLAYING: Battlefield 1943′s Me

So after months of playing CoD WaW as my main multiplayer game at home (Killzone 2, Gears 2, Left 4 Dead or Resistance 2 didn’t really light my fire), a new game that I know will entertain me for a while has been released. I have purchased it for 1200 Microsoft Points and I have enjoyed the sweeping vistas of the tutorial level. Here are my impressions of the game so far.

Battlefield 1943- according to press releases and previews is a Download-only product shipping with three maps with the promise of more to come. Using the same engine as Battlefield Bad Company, it looks very pretty and sounds amazing.

You are greeted with the above image when you boot up the game and then asked to make an EA.com account if you don’t already have one. I must have about three lying about the place but made another just for the purposes of playing this game. You are given a few options- Jump into a quick match, play with friends, play the tutorial level or tweak your options. I elected to Jump into a quick game.

I have to say, I was blown away by the graphics on the what I saw next. My jaw dropped to the floor, so astonished at the sight that greeted me. It was amazing. Words cannot adequately describe this game. You have to experience it for yourself. But here’s a spoiler:

So it seems every man and his dog is playing Battlefield 1943 and EA’s trusty 286 server can’t hold up to the strain. EA is promising to remedy the situation and has ducked out to Best Buy to see if they can get another NIC. Until then, its best to think of the game in this way- At least PC gamers can’t play it yet.

USELESS THING OF THE DAY: L4D2 Petition

The recent E3 show revealed the existence of several games to be released later in 2009. One of these was the sequel to 2008′s smash hit PC/ Xbox 360 shooter, Left 4 Dead.
Rather than fans of the original jumping for joy at the prospect of a full-blown sequel (these are Valve fans- they’re used to a more deliberate timeline for releases), the many fans of L4D are in fact running a petition to focus their anger on what they see is Valve’s ditching of L4D1 so soon after release.
There are two ways you can look at this…
The first way is how the fans are seeing this. LFD is not even cold in its undead grave, with only a few minor DLC releases and here’s Valve trotting a full (priced) sequel in a year. It means they’re either pulling an EA/Activision and moving to yearly updates to franchises- which rarely has an upside to quality whilst at the same time inducing gamer fatigue faster- and going from the altruistic company that many PC gamers imagine Valve to be into another money hungry company.
It took 10 years to go from Team Fortress to TF2. In 2009, we are still waiting for HL2: Episode 3 (more than 18 months after episode 2). TF2 is still getting updates (free ones) two years after release). Hell, even Day of Defeat is still getting updates alongside TF2. So people feel Valve will abandon the free stuff and long term support of their titles.
The other beef is the splitting of the community between those playing L4D and LFD2. One thing online games need in order to thrive is a lot of people. Its what makes TF2 memes more recognisable than Quake Wars: Enemy Territory. Well, if you split the L4D community between those playing the sequel and those playing the original- they will have less people to play with. The problem with that argument is L4D is not a game that requires a lot of people to play, and in a smaller, more dedicated gaming community, you’re more likely to find people more serious gamers, better games, etc. Did TF2 players start a petition of the original L4D pilfering their player base?
The other way you can look at this is : COOL! More LFD! Yippee!
If it were an Activision title, I would be worried about the quality. I still have enough trust in Valve that L4D2 will be worth the price.

Read C1.com’s review of Left 4 Dead
Focus Test for L4D

Controller1.com Focus Test: UFC vs Fight Night 4

We Focus Test UFC 2009 and Fight Night Round 4. Clint tells us why these games about sweaty men touching other isn’t suspicious,  how the fact they spend most of the game in the same positions as Bruno and Eminem isn’t remotely odd and which of these games is the shiz. And then he explains what a  shiz is.

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