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The Podcats: Shooter Shootout Pt 1

Homefront and Bulletstorm dissected

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Review: Medal of Honor

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PC. Developed by Danger Close (single player, DICE (multiplayer. Published by EA.

After Saving Private Ryan was released in 1997, Steven Spielberg hadn’t yet gotten WWII out of his system. A gamer as well as adirector, he helped found Dreamworks Interactive to make games like Medal of Honor for the original Playstation. FPS’s had never really taken off on the PSX but the first MoH showed you could make a pretty good shooter on the hardware, even if the Germans looks more like Autons than Teutons. Both MoH and it’s first sequel, MoH: Underground were well received at the time and it is these games that laid the foundations for a franchise. Unfortunately for EA, that franchise just happened to be Call of Duty…

Several things happened. MoH was a hit so EA absorbed Dreamworks Interactive, then gave Medal of Honor to 2015 for them to make a PC game and the result was MoH: Allied Assault, which is still recognised as the series’ peak. After AA, several of the team left to found Infinity Ward making the original Call of Duty and the rest is history (and we know history repeats like a bad taco). Medal of Honor, as a franchise, floundered (as did 2015 who made a poorly received shooter Men of Valor and promptly disappeared like Amelia Earhart) through an ill-advised and badly executed foray into the Pacific Theatre; then slowly attempted to rebuild with various console titles such as European Assault and Airborne, all of which tried to alter the classic formula with promises of less scripted levels and open worlds;  before we arrived back at Medal of Honor, now set in the present and so thoroughly copying Modern Warfare that it makes Dante’s Inferno look like an outstandingly original piece of art with no basis in God of War.

Ok, so you know how to play CoD right? Well close your eyes at the loading screens and pretend it is. It’s not hard and that’s obviously what EA were going for. The result is a CoD game that is locked at 30 frames per second on consoles (unlike the acyual CoD games) and using Unreal Engine 3 for single player and DICE’s own Frostbite engine for multiplayer though you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. So apart from temporal resolution, it still looks and plays like CoD.

You play as various soldiers in Afghanistan. Like Black Ops, you generally have someone with you for most of the game telling you what to do at each and every turn. Listen to his advice and be glad it’s not Sam Worthington. While the controls and missions are much like CoD, one thing is missing from most of the game and that’s the hyperbole and hysteria that the action in single-player CoD is now all about. Less bro, more schmo. MoH has its intense firefights but they really don’t get to the level of the latest from Activision (though they try). But while this lack of constant intensity is a nice change, it also means the game doesn’t have a tension that other slower shooters like older Ghost Recon games had. It’s like playing CoD on mute. It’s just missing that spark.

I did have fun with the single player as a sharp relief to the over the top wall of enemies I experienced in Black Ops but it seems for all of EA’s hype before the game’s release (a game they seem to be publicly disowning now), things like enemies facing the wrong way and other rough edges with presentation lead you to conclude it’s missing some of CoD‘s spit and polish as well a the charm. It has beards but so do the Taliban Opposing Force combatants so in some missions it’s often hard to know who you actually are shooting.  To mix things up there are some turret levels, helicopter gunners and the like and occasionally you get to site weapons for air support, but this doesn’t give you much of a thrill since it’s doled out fairly regularly.

As I received my copy the day after Black Ops was released (I’m not using Zavvi again for anything I’m busting to play), multiplayer was a ghost town of 30 fps CoD-lite. It’s been described as being part way through DICE’s own Battlefield games and CoD. No, it’s CoD. It was good but with no one to play against it was a bit sad since the multiplayer was probably the strongest part of the package from what I could see. I played a decent game with the three others and I think they must be desperate for people to play against (I received friend requests from all three afterwards). Listen guys, never talk about marriage on the first date!

The graphics are mostly good and the sound is great but at the end of the day this is one of EA’s most egregious examples of “Hey let’s make a competitor to the market leader and just copy them exactly without offering anything new ourselves.” It’s an opportunity squandered as the talent was there but I get the feeling the pressure from above was just to remove anything that would scare off CoD fans.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with MoH. Multiplayer is a bust not because it’s bad but because it’s got less life in it that King Tut’s cat. The single-player (which is not all that long) may entertain you but you’d want to be getting this game supremely cheaply (ie when it comes down to Brutal Legend levels)

Controller1.com rating 1/3

Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

Reviewed on PC. Also on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii Developed by Treyarch. Published by Activision

A year after Modern Warfare 2, which was either the worst game ever or the besterest, depending on to whom you are talking, their age and the pitch of their voice; we have another Treyarch CoD game. But a funny thing happened on the way to the web forum. BLOPS isn’t all that much more than World at War, yet the internal combustion at Infinity Ward has guaranteed BLOPS would be released without being in someone else’s shadow.

The Single player campaign starts off in the early Sixties’s during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. You play (mainly) as Alex Mason, a bland Australian actor posing as a CIA agent (which is ironic since that also describes Mason’s voice over artist Sam Worthington) as he recounts, seemingly under duress, a number of his recent missions (it’s right there on the menus when you boot up so it’s not really a spoiler). With action splintered across several locations such as Cuba, Vietnam, some icy place in the USSR, some shanty town in somewhere or other; it follows the hyperkinetic story-telling techniques as used in MW2, but without the most important story info imparted to you in boring-as-plain-cardboard loading screens. The game never lets up on the excitement. It’s quite a contrast to the rather muted and serious MoH reboot.

There’s nothing particularly new in terms of movement or combat (you can swim now and then, but only when the game wants you to) but this is a formula adhered to by every clone game (Medal of Honor) so why shouldn’t Activision? The use of flashbacks and disorienting graphics perfectly complement the all-over-the-place story (i.e. it covers the silliness with a veneer of credulity like dressing a clown in a tuxedo). Does it make any sense? No. It’s no worse or better than MW2 it seems, but it is a pretty cool roller coaster ride if you don’t think about it too much. Even if every mission has someone to tell you what to do every step of the way.  Even though the action is scripted you have giant HUD elements pointing you in the right direction and NPC’s reiterating your current objective as nauseum. Even more action and even more jam on the lens!

But because it doesn’t mess with success, it plays really well and Treyarch have managed to produce a great set of levels with less of the overt me-too rehashes of IW’s more successful missions. One new element pushed to the fore here are the missions where you control a vehicle such as a chopper or gunboat. They control as well as the rest of the game (something too many FPS’s don’t get right when they add a new element for one mission-think of Alan Wake‘s awful driving) although the controls don’t let you get into too much trouble. Yyou can’t crash your chopper, for instance. Thing aren’t as finessed as the vehicles in Halo:Reach for example). I rather enjoyed these almost fail-free missions a lot more than the skidoo/ seadoo levels of previous CoD games.

WaW’s standout contribution to CoD was always the Zombie mode that is unlocked once you’ve completed the single player campaign. It makes another appearance here and although I won’t spoil it for you, I will say it is definitely worth playing through the game to get to it. The character you play as nearly made me soil my pants from laughing so hard.

Of course, being a CoD title, there is a large proportion of the game’s playerbase who don’t care and just want Multiplayer. It’s probably the most balanced MP of any Call of Duty game to date with only a few Killstreak rewards ruining the game for the rest of us (those damn attack helicopters turning a close game into insta-lose!). I’ve had quite a bit of fun with MP though I can’t say I’ve had the burn I’ve had where I’ve NEEDED to play it a lot (ie several times over the course of a day, every day). I still anticipate playing it for a few more weeks at least (though I am tempted by the Vietnam expansion for Bad Company 2), but then I can’t see much else in the short term that’s going to compete with it. One nice thing- PC gamers get dedicated servers back (albeit heavily controlled) and gosh wouldn’t it be great if more devs took Epic and EA’s lead to introduce dedicated servers on more console games. CoD on consoles always had one thing going against it and that’s IW’s peer to peer networking code/ matchmaking is awful compared to Bungie’s. Bungie doesn’t have radio controller explosive cars, though. I love me some RCXD.

The presentation looks as good as previous CoD games (or as decent as my gaming rig can handle. Word on the streets is that the 360 version is slightly prettier than the PS3 (probably in such a small increment that it hardly matters) and the PC, if it’s beefy enough, would probably outshine the console versions, particularly the Wii (at least Treyarch caters for Wii owners). CoD sound has always been great. Stirring music and sound design is only let down slightly by a lead actor who hangs on to his accent with such a tenuous grip that you feel like giving him some supaglu. Enunciate, Sam.

So overall, it’s a good to great game (though not quite excellent). You will not lose sleep if you don’t play it, but if you have any interest in shooters, BLOPS has much to recommend it. If you think the score is low, get a life. It’s a very good game just not a must-play.

Controller1.com recommendation 2/3

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.

Online Gaming Survival Guide

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.

Review: Modern Warfare 2

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.

Controller1.com rating 3/3 on console (2/3 on PC)

REVIEW: KILLZONE 2

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)

iDoD

I don’t usually have much of an up-to-date PC gaming machine. Over the last few years, I’ve only really had a work PC that was semi recent. My latest work PC is a screamer with a 1GB videocard, that also thankfully restarts itself when some new games get busy and has firewalls blocking everything but WoW, CoD4 and Steam. So I’ve been playing Day of Defeat Source, which is a remake of the original DoD. I hear there’s another graphical revamp of DoD (though I’m not sure if its official or unofficial) in the works.

REVIEW- RESISTANCE 2

Reviewed on PS3. Developed by Insomniac. Published by Sony

Not being a pro site, C1 doesn’t have to try and rush reviews of games in time for the day of release. Although this review goes up just in time for the release of another big PS3 FPS it must be said that Resistance 2 was lost in the late 2008 Holiday release rush and for good reason. It offers absolutely nothing compelling over Gears of War 2, Little Big Planet, Fallout 3 or Call of Duty World at War. The sequel to the PS3′s first million-seller, R2 improves on the rather ordinary original in very slight ways, concentrating on online multiplayer modes and delivering an adequate gameplay experience. Merely adequate.

The game follows the protagonist of the first game, Nathan Hale, who has now found a voice in a n adventure with actual cinematics rather than a concept art montage. In this alternate history where the Earth was invaded during WWII, we have ridiculously anachronistic technology (the “cobbled together from the alien tech” argument makes absolutely no sense) such as Xbox1 vintage headsets, advanced projectile weaponry and vehicle design straight out of Starship Troopers. In the few levels set in smalltown America of the era, there’s less atmosphere than Fallout 3.

As far as the game itself, R2 continues with the rather ‘gamey’ and gimmick-laden weapons of the original. The controls are ok and none of the usual criticisms of the DS3 controller and FPS game really hinder your progress. But the level design, cheating AI and general difficulty (played on normal) made it a very frustratiing experience overall. I can sometimes swear occasionally during gameplay but the number of times I involuntarily utter the words “Fuck Off” after yet another cheap death might make anyone watching me through a hidden webcam think I have Tourette’s syndrome. It takes me back to Jak II (another developer). I made it halfway through the single player campaign before rage-ejecting the disc from PS3 (the boss battle against the Swarm if you must know).When the AI isn’t raping you, the level design instills a feeling of deja vu. You feel as though you’ve been here before. It’s like visiting a McDonald’s in a different city. It looks and feels exactly the same even though you’ve never been there before.

The game is not pretty to look at. Not ugly but not particularly impressive for a first party effort. Compared to the Ratchet and Clank, MGS or Uncharted games on PS3, this game looks nearly as ordinary as some third party movie lisence games. The visuals seem very flat, with really ordinary lighting in most levels. It does look slightly like a Wii game with higher poly models. The visual style is bland to say the least and derivative of so many better games. The sound is not up to the usual standard of a developer of Insomniac’s standing with nothing sounding crisp. I found the radio effect on voice particularly annoying. A guy who’s standing in front of you and not wearing a headset speaks to you as if you’ve picked him up by accident on HAM radio. What’s worse (and somewhat illogical), this radio voice is 3D and moves when you pan the camera. …. the fuck?

OK, so the clinical singleplayer and merely adequate presentation must mean that the multiplayer is fantastic. Well, no. It’s OK, but suffers from a lack of real direction as to what you’re meant to do and where your enemies are in relation to you. I jumped into a game and found it relatively easy to start killing foes so kudos to the online system, but after a while it was apparent that the maps were so big (R2 is one of those games that shows that more people per server, whilst a nice technical achievement, doesn’t make for a better game). I ended up in the last 5 minutes of the round wandering around with minimal health looking for someone to either shoot or put me out of my misery. There’s apparently a coop campaign that’s supposedly completely different from the normal singleplayer but I will never ever find out if its any good.

Insomniac have usually made games I have found very accessible and loved, but there’s something about the Resistance games that just doesn’t gel with me.

Controller1.com rating 1/3

Going to buy the sequel to a game I hated…

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?