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.
The year of highs and lows. But the lows are more fun to read about. 2009 was the year the phenomenal growth the games industry slowed markedly, Activision sharpened their horns and thousands of games developers spent the year searching for new jobs or making iPhone games.
Wolfenstein: Sequel to the beloved 2000 game proved to disappoint many who where nostalgic for the bygone era of 2000. A good, though flawed, singleplayer campaign wasn’t enough to overcome the terrible multiplayer. Every time someone tried to speak about the game, the answer would be “I heard it sucks.” It didn’t suck completely, only half sucked. Activision also charging the same for PC as the console versions was proof positive that douching five times a day is profitable.
Tom Clancy’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2- Take the most anticipated game of the year. It’s the sequel to a series that did very well as a WWII-based game, but did phenomonally well as a modern-era game with a grounding in current events. Ramp up the hyperbole 1 000 000%, dial down the realism, amp up the absurdity and you have a fun single player marred by a story that’s only told in skippable loading screens. The multiplayer is fantastic, if you can overlook the perk combos, killstreaks than ramp down the enjoyment for many players, plus IW’s inability to take your connection speed into account when searching for hosts. Playing online outside of the US is almost pointless 90% of the time since that’s roughly the amount of time you will be shunted into a game where the host is located under the Stars and Stripes even if you’re across the Pacific. PC is even more of a clusterfuck since it’s inability to handle any lag coupled with the stubborn determination that dedicated servers aren’t needed for the game to be good makes the Game of the year, in a word or two, utter bullshit.
ODST- I liked the single player of Halo 3 ODST. It took a short while for it to get going but the action was great. It was just waaayyy too short. The Multiplayer, mostly being recycled from Halo 3 and its DLC was great, but, if like me you already had the DLC, ODST’s multiplayer wasn’t much of a selling point. There was at least Firefight mode as well to lengthen proceedings. Really, it should have been a downloadable expansion, just as it was originally planned to be, not full priced.
Killzone 2- It didn’t save the PS3 nor did it really give it much of a shot in the arm (that would be the one-two punch of the PS3 Slim and Uncharted 2). It was pretty and played well enough, but its story was generic, characters forced and gameplay so by the numbers that you’re half expecting this logo to appear at boot-up.
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. A sleeper hit of a few years ago is a by the numbers, soulless exercise into pointless prequel. Charmless and boring.
Saboteur: looking a little rough around the gills (see also: LOTR: Conquest). Pandemic’s swansong tells a tale of Irishman with bad accents in a Paris with bad French accents occupied by Nazi’s by bad German accents.
Resident Evil 5: The Black Panthers aren’t around today. But if they were, they would be pissed off. Also, the control scheme that would be called rustic if it were in a real estate listing means only long time fans should apply.
Tony Hawk Ride: What can you say that hasn’t already be said. Activision may have made a lot of money with Tony Hawk over the years. 2009 is not one of those years.
Brutal Legend: So brilliant presentation and an umlaut cannot make up for lousy gameplay. Who knew? It is a pity it turned out that way since I’d love to play this, but I’d love to have had fun doing so.
Eat Led: The Return of Matt Hazard: Well, a joke is enough. The Snake on a Plane of the gaming world were people were willing this to be good. See also: Scribblenauts.
DJ Hero: In the scheme of things. Activision sold a lot of MW2. They didn’t sell a lotof DJ Hero, Tony Hawk Ride, GH5 or Band Hero. Payback’s a bitch
Bionic Commando: Well, even though there were two of these, neither was great. Because BC was never any good.
Ghostbusters: So the presentation was top notch, except the story wasn’t that good, it was a retread of the Ghostbusters movies, the cinematics looked like they were directed by someone who directed live TV drama in the 50′s and the gameplay just wasn’t all that good. I like rinse and repeat only when i’m in the shower. On the couch, it just gets messy.
Overall, it was a really good year, coming after a few years of really good years. Can 2010 top it? Time will tell.
What are your gaming disappointments for 2009?
With the explosion of Multiplayer gaming these days, sometimes the old hands forget what it is like to be the new guy. So if you’re new to the world of online gaming, or have been away for a while, here’s what you need to know.
1. You are a n00b. Whatever you do, you are a n00b, even if you’ve been playing the game for years, you are a n00b. You are a n00b if you die a lot, a n00b if you win and a n00b and if you do anything that results in beating another player with a higher ranking fairly and squarely, you are a n00b.
See also nub, newb, noob, just got the game, huh?
2. You use hax. If you play the game using elements placed there for use by the developers of the game, you hax. If you use last stand, you are hax. If you use a scope on an AK47, you are hax. If you use anything at all other than hip firing a bolt action rifle, you are hax. See also get some skill, grow a dick, etc
3. You are cheating. If you use a rocket launcher against another player, or a grenade launcher, you are cheating. Even if they just used the same tactic against you, YOU my friend, are the cheat, you cheater. Mr Cheater C Cheaterton III (really you’re the IV, but you’re such a cheater).
4. You are gay. Even if you’re married with six kids and had more tail than everyone else in the game (which wouldn’t need to be all that much), you are gay. See also: gh3y, WoW
5. You are of colour, Mr Albino from Sweden
6. You are lagging. Even though you’re not. See glitching
7. You are glitching. Despite the fact that network communication iver the internet is quite a complicated and marvelous thing, you are the reason the connection is poor and that they are losing. See also lagging
8. You are camping. This means you have found a quiet spot to fire off a sniper rifle and that your opponents are too lazy to come around behind you to take you out.
9. Bullshit. Whenever someone thinks they are better than you and you kill them, it is obviously bullshit. See also: hax, n00b, lagging, glitching
10. You should develop an interest in the thoughts of 12 year old children. Otherwise you will fail to appreciate the rich social commentary that is only possible from players of this age. Children say the darnest things such as “fuck you, you black jew fag hax nub lagger.” It’s so cute. They think they’re people.
11. If the child in question is headset enabled, you are in for a treat. Not only will you get an aural Live Journal update, but you may also experience the joy that is the favourite music of this child either through an MP3 playing while the child plays, or if you’re really lucky, a live rendition of said child’s favourite song or songs (though it’s usually just the same song over and over again. Actually it’s usually only the first verse over and over).
12. Fuck IWNet. See also Fuck Kotick, Fuck Activision, Fuck Infinity Ward and Fuck Bowling up his Fat Pipe.
So there you have it. The reasons why I never plugged in my headset to my consoles or PC, the reasons to keep out of team chat and the reasons why single player games will never die.
The controller1.com focus test returns with a look at Killzone 2. This goes to some unusual places so be warned
Reviewed on PS3. Developed by Guerrilla Games. Published by Sony
Killzone 2 has come. Let there be rejoicing in the streets. It is far better than the PS2 original. But it is not perfect. What the hell?
Ever since the notorious “target renders” of E3 2005, Killzone has had as many people waiting for it to fail as they have been willing its success. KZ2 falls somewhere in the middles, not because of its graphics, which are gorgeous, but for its gameplay, which is very good, but not great. For all the shading tricks and spectacular lighting, there’s a solid, if pedestrian game underneath. If only the design could match up to the presentation, we’d be onto a winner.
So now that the legion of PS3 fans with no sense of humour have gone off to post on NeoGaf, we can talk turkey. If the intro paragraph makes out I didn’t enjoy Killzone 2, its because my last experience of the game was rage-quitting whilst trying to beat the game’s final encounter. Overall, I’ve liked the game a lot but its not the be all and end all that many, including Sony, were hoping for. It ranks along CoD 4 and WaW as the best shooters on PS3 but it doesn’t eclipse them in my view (as a CoD fan, so make of that what you will).
So let’s talk about how it plays. Its a first person shooter where your character, Sev is a sergeant in the Space Marines plays alongside an AI NPC, even though there’s no co-op. Rico- loud mouth black guy; Natko, sarcastic Marcus Fenix- the teenage years and Garza, a guy with a cap. You run, you have melee, can jump (slowly), zoom in and have one rifle and one pistol. It plays like a slightly slower version of Call of Duty, which is the standard of how to do FPS control on consoles if you don’t have a lead character whose name rhymes with Pasterchief.
For the most part you can summarise the gameplay as mainly consisting of either:
1- Kill all the enemies in a locked area .
or
2- Keep moving forward in order to reach thresholds that stop enemies from spawning ad infinitum.
What Killzone does well, it does very well. It just doesn’t throw you many surprises. And most of those are in cutscenes. But when you’re in control of the game, you can almost feel deja vu as there’s nothing in this game that feels unique to Killzone. That’s a shame. Its doen well, just not particularly innovative or original. I don’t say those as a criticism, just as an observation after playing this game. Its a short game (My stats said about 7 hours, but I doubt that tracks the bits I had to replay so let’s say 8-9 hours).
Moving from the single player campaign to multiplayer and things look up. While there’s nothing original in multi either, its just about perfect in its implementation. You can pick a server and jump in. And it works great. In the rounds I’ve played, I noticed no lag (I’m assuming servers are hosting the game rather than peer to peer- god please Activision host servers for the next CoD game) and the gameplay was fun for anyone to be able to jump in and enjoy the game. Most of the servers available to me featured a constantly evolving playlist within each map. You might have capture and hold, the 5 minutes of assassination, 5 minutes of search and destroy and then Team Deathmatch until the timer runs out.
Unlike R2, where it was a game Insomniac concentrated on co-op and multiplayer at the cost of a mediocre single player experience , Killzone 2 pushes the single player into the spotlight yet manages to offer a fully featured and polished multiplayer component. KZ2 multiplayer is obviously going to be the game to beat on PS3 multiplayer for a while. Its likely to be where you find all your friends on PSN at the moment.
So we all know the graphics are fantastic but the game’s sound is fantastic. The effects are top notch with DSP effects that make this the best sounding PS3 game at the moment. Metal Gear was good, Uncharted was better but KZ2 raises the bar higher still. The music score is suitably epic with the cinematics utilising a full orchestra (though not during ingame for some reason). The voice acting is good but the script is on a level of Gears of War 2 silliness. So if you found “10 shitloads” to be laughable, then you might find KZ2′s cheese to be of a similar bouquet.
So you see, this is a video game for the Playstation 3. So if it doesn’t walk on water, sell 19 million copies in a week or shift 3 million consoles, it doesn’t make the game any less enjoyable.
Controller1.com rating 3/3 (its not perfect but its a very good game you need to play if you own a PS3. Give the Dark Knight Blu Ray a break)
Well, its the saviour of the PS3 and very pretty but how is it as a game? Very good. Before I started this, I had the last level and a half of Mirror’s Edge to complete since my backflip. That done, it was time for some Killzone. Being sceptical of the lacklustre original, I was very pleasantly surprised (I knew the positive critical reaction wasn’t down to people being blind fans of the original but the first one didn’t leave me with much hope the sequel would play well).
So in essence:
The Good: Looks great. It does lighting and particle effects very well, even if the textures aren’t always that crisp (apart from when they want to show off something in extreme closeup in a cutscene. It makes the flat-looking mess that Resistance 2 look like a PS2 game. Oh wait, Insomniac already did that. Sound is phenomenal. Online is very smooth.
The OK: The gameplay is very, er “tried and true.” That means its not only familiar, but a little too familiar and unadventurous. Large parts of the game consist of two standbys-
STANDBY 1: Kill X number of enemies (sometimes its X number within a timeframe) to progress
STANDBY 2: Infinitely respawning enemies until you reach a certain point on the map
We will give grief to a licensed game for using the rinse-and-repeat level design cliches so its appropriate to mention it here. The game is still fun, you just realise that it doesn’t change very much while you play. Its not full of gimmicky tech like the god awful mess that is Resistance 2 (Yes, I went there).
Multiplayer was very good apart from one gripe. The gameplay mode would constantly change from simple Team Deathmatch to Control points to Assassination, etc, making it hard to get a rhythm on one mode before it changed again. I’d rather have shorter rounds.
The Bad:
Control is not particularly tight. It is rather loose and hard to target (If R2 and Battlefield can do it on PS3- why not this?). The field of view is rather narrow, meaning enemies are right on top of you before you know it. Story is barely there and makes the criticism of Gears 2′s story and dialogue seem as bad. The dialogue is just as macho cheesy. One character looks familiar though…
His name is Farcus Menix.
One thing KZ2 did was make me wish I was playing CoD WaW. So after going about halfway through the single player campaign and a few rounds of MP, I popped this into the 360, patched it, DLed a free map and hopped online. Yes, I still get stuck on servers where everyobne else is in North America, which kinda kills my ping, but it didn’t seem as bad as it used to be. I hope to play a bit more of this before I put it away. I think the world has to live with the fact that I seem to respond to CoD multiplayer more than anything else, console or PC.
Before KZ2 was begun, I finished Mirror’s Edge (PS3 version). I had to add parts to my original review since I felt the break from it made me want to finish it so much. Game has problems to be sure but it was a worthwhile experience.
Lastly I bought Peggle for $3. Popgame games website, coupon code blitz1. That is all.
Well, Resistance 2 came and went without causing too much gaming happiness. In this post-Fallout 3 gaming environment, it was an incredibly disappointing game. The other two left over games on my pile have been getting a work out. First up Nuts and Bolts can be occasionally good and fun but often ends up being not fun and more frustrating than an email that says “Scarlet Johannson Nude” that ends up being a virus that destroys your PC.
Nuts and Bolts is a game that I find I can play only in small sessions of about 10 minutes. Then I get to a bit that frustrates me and I rage quit. Then the next day, I turn it on again and play happily for 10 minutes before… blood pressure rising… rage building, etc. One initial source of frustration- the interminable loading times- is dramatically reduced by installing to the HDD. Unfortunately the vehicle-based gameplay can’t be reduced. The only solution Rare has (and this shows up as a text tip during some loading screens) is to buy the original Banjo Kazooie on XBLA. I will persevere a little longer.
So after a “happy 10-minutes followed by a 30 minute cuss-fest” I popped in the new PoP game. WoW. I’m not sure If I love it but i seem to be happy with these new style platformers more than the traditional type. Time will tell. The graphics are gorgeous but god damn those voices are lame. I absolutely loved Sands of Time, particularly the voices of the Prince and Farrah. Here the Prince sounds like Nate Drake from Uncharted and Elika sounds like generic American heroine #4. The auotmated control system seems a little too automated with it almost predicting what you want to do next, even if you don’t, making for a frustrating tutorial.
I haven’t picked up Killzone2 but will do that in the next few days. It’s being spoken of very highly by my PS3 owning colleagues so I might even get some my MP fix with it (still currently being served by DoD Source on PC after work). Resistance being a colossal disappointment for me may work in Killzone 2′s favour. Or the fact that nothing is good after Fallout 3 may make me into one of those guys who writes about games but doesn’t necessarily play them, for the next few months at least.
UPDATE: Playing Prince of Persia again this morning made me think “hey I like these types of platformers,” and actually made me pop the half finished Mirror’s Edge back in the PS3. I’m fucking nuts.
Killzone 2 comes out this week. I hated Killzone 1. It was so try hard yet failed to make any positive impression upon me, its gameplay wasn’t anything special and its level design merely adequate when it didn’t suck. There were no highs and no particular lows but it was middling in every way. So I’m going to buy Killzone 2 when it comes out later this week.
I’m not a heavily invested in PS3 fanboy so there’s no particular reason why I cling to KZ2 as the PS3 saviour and poo poo any contrary opinions with such anger that counsellors will have a field day. The first game was just a fairly ordinary game so I don’t hold out hope that Killzone will be game of the year since, graphics aside, there’s no indication that Guerilla have done anything majorly different this time around. Time will tell.
So why am I buying this? Its a shooter, a genre which I obviously enjoy (if you’re reading this, then you’d have a fair inkling of this fact) and there isn’t much competition from shooters in the first half of this year. And its a well received one. Yes, there are lots of platitudes being spouted about this game, but I’m guessing they can’t be completely wrong. 80% plus on review sites is a decent indicator. And truth be told, its the comments about this game not being innovative, just doing the FPS very well that actually intrigue me. We have Left 4 Dead, Gears 2 and Call of Duty World at War late last year- all very good shooters. Even though Resistance 2 was not great, it is certainly playable. But there’s a bit of drought of these games in the early part of the year. We are promised Halo 3: ODSTDSTDTSTD and MAG later in the year, and probably a new Infinity Ward shooter. But who will fill the gap till then?
Or will we just go back to playing CoD4?
Two system exclusive demoes were released onto their respective systems late last week. One was for the first big 360 only game of 2009, Halo Wars and the other was for Sony’s Great White Hope, Killzone 2. Halo Wars demo we will Focus Test soon, but since I plan to buy the full KZ2 game, we aren’t go FT the demo. Here are some impressions of the Killzone 2 demo. Let’s preface this by saying I played 2/3 of the original game was unimpressed to say the least which is why I’ve not boarded the hype machine for the sequel. Good looking doesn’t mean great games, especially when the developers, Guerrilla Games, have yet to prove they can make something fun.
The demo starts off with you attacking a beach held by Helgast troops, then you move inside. Then some slo mo opera happens and you see a video trumpeting the high review scores the game has received so far (the game’s been in the can for a while, possibly held back so to avoid cannibalising sales from Resistance 2). See the picture below for a taster
More about the actual demo, though.
The good: Its pretty. Its got some very nice lighting effects. The score is magnificent and the sounds mostly great (if a little muted).
The bad: People laughed at Gears 2′s “10 shitloads” dialogue and it looks like KZ2 is trying to go down the same path. It’s just generic .
Gameplay: the demo doesn’t do anything you have seen a bazillion times before but I think it does it ok. It’s just not very responsive to control though.I’m actually less enthusiastic about the game since playing the demo but I hear its mostly good and I think I need a shooter. Fallout 3 is kinda shooter but not quite.
Fallout 3 got a good going over this past weekend (up to level 11 and around the 22 hour mark- not counting many many restarts. I had a few issues where I would find a new area, went exploring and then found i wasted two hours on an area where I have to trigger a mission elsewhere first. So after a while I decided I would just map the thing. I literally spent about 3 hours walking around the map so that I can now fast travel anywhere and get to a location with a minute or two. I really want to go onto another game but F3 just does everything that Mass Effect didn’t.
One thing still bothers me about Fallout 3. There are many places where people make homes in various places that are still habitable. But no one has cleaned up. The war was years earlier yes people have lost many things: love ones, their homes and it seems their brooms.
The target bake that was displayed at E3 2005 has nothing on the final product. The most delicious PS3 only game of 2009 will soon be with us. It goes down nicely with red wine and you can eat it either with a knife and fork or just be brave and use your hands. Careful, its hot!
