Perseus Mandate is the second expansion to the original FEAR, and one that is considered to be the weakest part of that first part of the FEAR franchise. Let's get this out of the way - yes, Perseus Mandate isn't as good as either the base game, or Extraction Point, but I don't think its as bad as some people are inclined to think. Let's see what are the games strong and weak parts.
Starting with the good stuff, Perseus Mandate is an ok tie-in with both of its predecessors. Some stuff which happens is directly linked to those previous games, which gives a nice feel of a coherent timeline. The plot itself is so-so, its main shortcoming being the fact that it doesn't really explain much. After two games you would expect another expansion would shed some light on what is really going on, perhaps give some background to the paranormal side of things (I still don't know the origins of a certain type of enemy, for example, and it feels like it's high time they addressed that) or give the player some new knowledge. Technically, it does that, but only by reinforcing directly something that has been implied indirectly before - and as much as important, it's not a groundbreaking twist in the end.
The new weapons are somewhat cool. On the other hand, the new type of enemy, the Night Stalkers aren't really that different from the Replica Forces. Also, for some bizzare reason, the enemy AI has taken a noticeable plunge in Perseus Mandate. I was playing on easy, true, but I did the same with Extraction Point and in that latter game the enemy would still behave as ingenously as in the basic FEAR. Here I found that I often enemies would just casually walk into my line of fire, and I could basically fight most of them using melee attacks - something I wouldn't even try in previous games because I wouldn't want to lose the time which could be spent on covering fire. The enemies also kind of stand around until you start shooting or come REALLY close. At certain times I would almost walk past an enemy, not seeing him, with no reaction whatsoever from that character. Also, there's an old-school boss fight at the end of the game which doesn't fit into these games in the slightest.
There are some good scares, but they are scarce. They seem to have focused on the combat bit of the game more this time around. What is there is cool, and one particular scare is very impressive, but sadly it's being overused a lot, which makes it a bit lame by the end of the game. However, most of the scares seem to lack that coherence they had in the previous games. Here it seems like the designers just thought 'Well, he had his fighting section, throw in a creepy scene now.'. They seem forced, artificial in a way, a 'whatever works' kind of thing. Also, none of them really surpass what has already been done before, though I have to admit, some stuff comes pretty close.
On thing that has to be addressed is that both the main character and some enemies can use that bullet-time ability from the previous games. Understandable, since combat can still be pretty cutthroat and without that ability it could end badly very quickly. But I thought it was well established that the main character from the basic FEAR and Extraction Point had this ability for A GOOD REASON, and it doesn't really make any sense that this nameless operative would have it too. Oh, and by the way, after getting through all three of these games I'm pretty sure that a silent protagonist is not the best solution for a horror-like game. Some radio chatter goes unanswered by the protagonist and that is just weird. In some other situations it would really pay well to add some commentary from the character to make the player even more scared.
Like in Extraction Point, some locations seem very much reused, which is rather lame. It isn't as bad as in the basic game (which is the biggest offender out of the three in that regard), but still deserves mentioning. On an unrelated note, the game offers some special timed missions after you finish the campaign (which is around half way between the length of the basic game and Extraction Point, so pretty good), but those are just more fighting and seem ill fit and rather pointless.
Summing up, Perseus Mandate is definitely the weakest of the three games, and is a fare which should be considered only by people who enjoyed the first two games and feel like they'd like more of the firefights and a tad more of the horror. I bought this as a separate game while I got FEAR + Extraction Point in a single pack and so I feel a bit cheated on this side, as the latter has a much higher value than Perseus Mandate solo. But hey, that's how it works. I had my fun, for the money I spent on this I enjoyed myself rather well, so there. 6/10.
piątek, 11 marca 2011
wtorek, 8 marca 2011
Short Review #18 & #18.5: F.E.A.R. + Extraction Point
Not a very short review, but here we go...
As you probably know by now, since I had to mention it at some point, I am easily scared. I wasn’t able to finish Dead Space because of that. I was a bit scared of Doom 3 because of that, and that’s not a very scary game. I had to postpone playing The Devil Inside several years because of that, and from today’s perspective, that game is hardly scary at all! It was my decision to best this small problem of mine. To try and beat it into submission by experiencing scary games. Last summer I bought many different games at a very good price from one of the Polish electronics supermarkets, among them The Suffering, Condemned… and F.E.A.R., along with the Extraction Point expansion and the Perseus Mandate solo expansion (as two separate boxes). Having just finished the basic game and the first expansion, here are some of my thoughts.
Let me address that fear thing first, I mean, it’s in the title so I guess it should be the first order of business.Is FEAR scary? Well, yes, it is. Is it as scary as I thought it would be? No, not at all. See, the scary stuff is there, and sometimes shows itself in moments when you don’t expect it. But I thought it wasn’t nearly often enough for the game to be a true horror-themed shooter. Don’t get me wrong – I was happy that it wasn’t overdone, as I probably wouldn’t finish the game. But from different videos around the web, from how the game was regarded, I honestly thought I would have to play in small doses to make it bearable, while I didn’t have any trouble at all (well, ok, some, but nothing major) with getting through the game.
The atmosphere is built by using lightning – you’ll see many a long corridor with flickering lights and completely dark areas which only your flashlight will unveil. The sound design also adds to the creepiness, with ambient music and the fact that pretty much all you step on can roll or slide on the floor which makes the ‘silence’ even more unnerving. It’s more of the Doom 3 / Bioshock school of scary – stuff will jump out at you, you’ll get some sound cues which mark that something eerie is going to happen and all that… but it’s not ‘Dead Space scary’ (even though, as you probably know, Dead Space also uses those cheap scare tactics). The atmosphere in FEAR isn’t as smothering as in that game and this is actually one of its shortcomings.
See, in Dead Space or Bioshock, the eeriness and thick atmosphere go hand to hand with the fights. They are two sides of the same page, they compliment eachother. In FEAR it doesn’t feel like it. The two elements work together, but its not a match made in heaven. Something’s lacking, something’s not connecting exactly right…
The combat itself is terrific. Its very fast, very brutal and rich in environmental effects, such as explosions, smoke, and pieces of walls or furniture. You really feel these weapons do real damage, and shooting them is a lot of fun. You get to duck into and out of cover, use grenades, and try to defend yourself while the AI attempts to encircle you (all you’ve heard about the FEAR AI is true – they are crafty, sneaky bastards). You can use melee attacks of different types, though to be honest I haven’t done that much, preferring to use the game’s bullet-time… oh, right. That.
See, here’s the thing. This bullet-time mode (which the hero can use supposedly because he has very keen reflexes) is a feature of the game in a large extent. I dare anyone to get through this game without using the option once. I guess it could be doable, but VERY hard. Slowing down the action is about the only thing which gives you the edge over the enemies when you are outnumbered. If you don’t use it, you get shot down very fast. But I didn’t really think it really befitted the game. Here you have a SF/thriller/horror game, and the protagonist can do stuff straight from the Matrix? When Max Payne did it, it has sense in a way – it was a meta-mechanic, something that was there and wasn’t really explained, more a sort of a cosmetic solution than a plot one. Here, the explanation gives it sense, but theme-wise, it still doesn’t quite fit.
The theme in general is quite disjointed. Not as bad as in a certain game I played recently (ekhemhaloekhekh), but still. Get this – its obviously a modern setting, or if it’s the future, it’s not very distant. But you’ve got an army of clones telepatically commanded by a special individual… that’s the premise and by itself, it asks a hell of a lot of suspension of disbelief. But even when you accept that as a given, why are there robots in this game? And several types of them as well. And lasers. LASERS. I don’t know, it struck me as odd to match a modern setting with a SWAT-like special unit, add horror elements to it and say ‘You know what we need? Robots and lasers!’… I have the feeling that FEAR would work much better without those elements.
I have to mention something which is also a gripe many reviewers pointed out. The level design in FEAR is rather boring. You will spend the majority of the game going through very same-ish looking office spaces, unfinished buildings and warehouses. When the game throws you into a derelict building style location, it doesn’t keep you there long and the underground base you explore is pretty much a more high-tech rehash of the previous locations. If anything, this was a bit lazy – though it fits the story, and makes sense. At least this game doesn’t reuse the exact same locations as that * other * FPS did…
As for other stuff – the graphics have aged pretty well, though obviously stuff like Unreal Engine 3 blows this one out of the water, music is forgettable (some tunes are cool, but you can’t really recall them after you’ve finished playing), the sound design is good, but not ‘Company of Heroes good’ or even ‘Call of Duty good’… Voice acting was ok, some naughty swearwords added to the mature atmosphere of the game and fortunately weren’t overdone… it’s really refreshing to hear a solid ‘f**k’ in a game from time to time. There’s not a big choice of enemies, but the AI works wonders and keeps stuff interesting - while in other games fighting the same guys over and over again can become a chore, here it never becomes dull because of how ‘intelligent’ they are.
So yeah, FEAR is a solid shooter, but somehow it ends up being less than the sum of its parts. The scary sections are creepy and scary, if not outright terrifying (not much of them here, but they’re there), the atmosphere is great… and the shooting, action and combat are great as well, but the two don’t work that well together. I think it’s a matter of pacing – most of the game is fighting and after you’ve become somewhat tired of the Replica chatter, you get a scene or two to keep you on your toes, followed by more shooting. Those long action sections in the uninspired locations can become somewhat dull. However, the story is interesting and well told, and generally speaking the game holds up very well. This is a solid 7/10, a shooter all FPS fans should check out, though I’m not sure if it’s a good suggestion for people who are not fans of the genre, even if they like the horror atmosphere. Maybe it would be better if those people sat beside the FPS fans while they play this. This way, both parties can leave satisfied (as long as the horror fan goes to the kitchen to get a coffee or sandwich during the longer shoot-out sections).
What about Extraction Point? Most of the stuff I already said about the basic game applies, obviously, but some things are different. Most noticeably, the atmosphere. It is more scary and actually threatening than in the basic game, but it is different, more in your face, and less focused. There’s stuff happening which has you more interested in the plot, and some crazy stuff does happen – like when you can see a person basically being smashed around the room by an unseen force and then apparently devoured by some strange creatures. Extraction Point mixes stuff up, but unfortunately it’s not very good in telling its story. Some stuff isn’t resolved, though everything suggests that it should, and more questions are asked than answered. The story simply doesn’t add up in the end – you get a terrific, moving and autentically riveting final scene with Alma (seriously, I don’t remember being that moved by a video game for some time now), but when you try to track why that thing actually happened, you can’t – there’s no real sense to it, it just sort of happens. There’s also a certain type of enemy which is there for some reason, but you don’t really know why – it doesn’t seem to have any alliegance, but is blatantly supernatural, so * somebody * has to control it…
You get more types of locations here, so it's not only offices and warehouses, thought there is a good number of locations 'borrowed' from the base game. The scares here are better constructed than in the base game. They are also shown to you more often – not very much more often, but somewhat. If the basic game had this level and intensity of creepy stuff going on, it would be that little bit better. There’s still some strange discrepancy in the theme (you get to you a minigun and a laser rifle and fight against new types of robot enemies), but some stuff works very well. That Alma scene I talked about above is complimented by a great music background which makes it really cool. Some other tracks, however, are not that atmospheric and as far as they set the pace for the skirmish, they don’t really work for a wannabe-horror game. The game is also pretty short, at only around 5 hours. I guess that’s good enough for an expansion if you get it in a single edition with the basic game, but if I bought it solo I would probably be a little disappointed.
Anyway, Extraction Point deserves a 7/10 as well. It improves on some stuff which wasn’t quite as good in the base game, has an interesting story which actually has you invested in why certain things happen – even if it fails to deliver an answer in that respect, it’s still very enjoyable to watch its journey there. And the new scares are really spot on.
I actually didn’t enjoy FEAR that much when I started playing it, but once you get into the right mindset, it becomes a really good experience. Which is why I’ll attempt to get through Perseus Mandate over this week as well, just to get the first FEAR out of the picture. I’ll probably save Project Origin (FEAR 2) for another time – no point in forcing myself to play something if I can do it pretty much anytime. Still, I can’t say I’m particularly invested in the franchise – I know FEAR 3 is coming out, but I don’t think I’ll buy it before it gets really cheap.
As you probably know by now, since I had to mention it at some point, I am easily scared. I wasn’t able to finish Dead Space because of that. I was a bit scared of Doom 3 because of that, and that’s not a very scary game. I had to postpone playing The Devil Inside several years because of that, and from today’s perspective, that game is hardly scary at all! It was my decision to best this small problem of mine. To try and beat it into submission by experiencing scary games. Last summer I bought many different games at a very good price from one of the Polish electronics supermarkets, among them The Suffering, Condemned… and F.E.A.R., along with the Extraction Point expansion and the Perseus Mandate solo expansion (as two separate boxes). Having just finished the basic game and the first expansion, here are some of my thoughts.
Let me address that fear thing first, I mean, it’s in the title so I guess it should be the first order of business.Is FEAR scary? Well, yes, it is. Is it as scary as I thought it would be? No, not at all. See, the scary stuff is there, and sometimes shows itself in moments when you don’t expect it. But I thought it wasn’t nearly often enough for the game to be a true horror-themed shooter. Don’t get me wrong – I was happy that it wasn’t overdone, as I probably wouldn’t finish the game. But from different videos around the web, from how the game was regarded, I honestly thought I would have to play in small doses to make it bearable, while I didn’t have any trouble at all (well, ok, some, but nothing major) with getting through the game.
The atmosphere is built by using lightning – you’ll see many a long corridor with flickering lights and completely dark areas which only your flashlight will unveil. The sound design also adds to the creepiness, with ambient music and the fact that pretty much all you step on can roll or slide on the floor which makes the ‘silence’ even more unnerving. It’s more of the Doom 3 / Bioshock school of scary – stuff will jump out at you, you’ll get some sound cues which mark that something eerie is going to happen and all that… but it’s not ‘Dead Space scary’ (even though, as you probably know, Dead Space also uses those cheap scare tactics). The atmosphere in FEAR isn’t as smothering as in that game and this is actually one of its shortcomings.
See, in Dead Space or Bioshock, the eeriness and thick atmosphere go hand to hand with the fights. They are two sides of the same page, they compliment eachother. In FEAR it doesn’t feel like it. The two elements work together, but its not a match made in heaven. Something’s lacking, something’s not connecting exactly right…
The combat itself is terrific. Its very fast, very brutal and rich in environmental effects, such as explosions, smoke, and pieces of walls or furniture. You really feel these weapons do real damage, and shooting them is a lot of fun. You get to duck into and out of cover, use grenades, and try to defend yourself while the AI attempts to encircle you (all you’ve heard about the FEAR AI is true – they are crafty, sneaky bastards). You can use melee attacks of different types, though to be honest I haven’t done that much, preferring to use the game’s bullet-time… oh, right. That.
See, here’s the thing. This bullet-time mode (which the hero can use supposedly because he has very keen reflexes) is a feature of the game in a large extent. I dare anyone to get through this game without using the option once. I guess it could be doable, but VERY hard. Slowing down the action is about the only thing which gives you the edge over the enemies when you are outnumbered. If you don’t use it, you get shot down very fast. But I didn’t really think it really befitted the game. Here you have a SF/thriller/horror game, and the protagonist can do stuff straight from the Matrix? When Max Payne did it, it has sense in a way – it was a meta-mechanic, something that was there and wasn’t really explained, more a sort of a cosmetic solution than a plot one. Here, the explanation gives it sense, but theme-wise, it still doesn’t quite fit.
The theme in general is quite disjointed. Not as bad as in a certain game I played recently (ekhemhaloekhekh), but still. Get this – its obviously a modern setting, or if it’s the future, it’s not very distant. But you’ve got an army of clones telepatically commanded by a special individual… that’s the premise and by itself, it asks a hell of a lot of suspension of disbelief. But even when you accept that as a given, why are there robots in this game? And several types of them as well. And lasers. LASERS. I don’t know, it struck me as odd to match a modern setting with a SWAT-like special unit, add horror elements to it and say ‘You know what we need? Robots and lasers!’… I have the feeling that FEAR would work much better without those elements.
I have to mention something which is also a gripe many reviewers pointed out. The level design in FEAR is rather boring. You will spend the majority of the game going through very same-ish looking office spaces, unfinished buildings and warehouses. When the game throws you into a derelict building style location, it doesn’t keep you there long and the underground base you explore is pretty much a more high-tech rehash of the previous locations. If anything, this was a bit lazy – though it fits the story, and makes sense. At least this game doesn’t reuse the exact same locations as that * other * FPS did…
As for other stuff – the graphics have aged pretty well, though obviously stuff like Unreal Engine 3 blows this one out of the water, music is forgettable (some tunes are cool, but you can’t really recall them after you’ve finished playing), the sound design is good, but not ‘Company of Heroes good’ or even ‘Call of Duty good’… Voice acting was ok, some naughty swearwords added to the mature atmosphere of the game and fortunately weren’t overdone… it’s really refreshing to hear a solid ‘f**k’ in a game from time to time. There’s not a big choice of enemies, but the AI works wonders and keeps stuff interesting - while in other games fighting the same guys over and over again can become a chore, here it never becomes dull because of how ‘intelligent’ they are.
So yeah, FEAR is a solid shooter, but somehow it ends up being less than the sum of its parts. The scary sections are creepy and scary, if not outright terrifying (not much of them here, but they’re there), the atmosphere is great… and the shooting, action and combat are great as well, but the two don’t work that well together. I think it’s a matter of pacing – most of the game is fighting and after you’ve become somewhat tired of the Replica chatter, you get a scene or two to keep you on your toes, followed by more shooting. Those long action sections in the uninspired locations can become somewhat dull. However, the story is interesting and well told, and generally speaking the game holds up very well. This is a solid 7/10, a shooter all FPS fans should check out, though I’m not sure if it’s a good suggestion for people who are not fans of the genre, even if they like the horror atmosphere. Maybe it would be better if those people sat beside the FPS fans while they play this. This way, both parties can leave satisfied (as long as the horror fan goes to the kitchen to get a coffee or sandwich during the longer shoot-out sections).
What about Extraction Point? Most of the stuff I already said about the basic game applies, obviously, but some things are different. Most noticeably, the atmosphere. It is more scary and actually threatening than in the basic game, but it is different, more in your face, and less focused. There’s stuff happening which has you more interested in the plot, and some crazy stuff does happen – like when you can see a person basically being smashed around the room by an unseen force and then apparently devoured by some strange creatures. Extraction Point mixes stuff up, but unfortunately it’s not very good in telling its story. Some stuff isn’t resolved, though everything suggests that it should, and more questions are asked than answered. The story simply doesn’t add up in the end – you get a terrific, moving and autentically riveting final scene with Alma (seriously, I don’t remember being that moved by a video game for some time now), but when you try to track why that thing actually happened, you can’t – there’s no real sense to it, it just sort of happens. There’s also a certain type of enemy which is there for some reason, but you don’t really know why – it doesn’t seem to have any alliegance, but is blatantly supernatural, so * somebody * has to control it…
You get more types of locations here, so it's not only offices and warehouses, thought there is a good number of locations 'borrowed' from the base game. The scares here are better constructed than in the base game. They are also shown to you more often – not very much more often, but somewhat. If the basic game had this level and intensity of creepy stuff going on, it would be that little bit better. There’s still some strange discrepancy in the theme (you get to you a minigun and a laser rifle and fight against new types of robot enemies), but some stuff works very well. That Alma scene I talked about above is complimented by a great music background which makes it really cool. Some other tracks, however, are not that atmospheric and as far as they set the pace for the skirmish, they don’t really work for a wannabe-horror game. The game is also pretty short, at only around 5 hours. I guess that’s good enough for an expansion if you get it in a single edition with the basic game, but if I bought it solo I would probably be a little disappointed.
Anyway, Extraction Point deserves a 7/10 as well. It improves on some stuff which wasn’t quite as good in the base game, has an interesting story which actually has you invested in why certain things happen – even if it fails to deliver an answer in that respect, it’s still very enjoyable to watch its journey there. And the new scares are really spot on.
I actually didn’t enjoy FEAR that much when I started playing it, but once you get into the right mindset, it becomes a really good experience. Which is why I’ll attempt to get through Perseus Mandate over this week as well, just to get the first FEAR out of the picture. I’ll probably save Project Origin (FEAR 2) for another time – no point in forcing myself to play something if I can do it pretty much anytime. Still, I can’t say I’m particularly invested in the franchise – I know FEAR 3 is coming out, but I don’t think I’ll buy it before it gets really cheap.
niedziela, 6 marca 2011
Short Review #17: Grand Theft Auto - Vice City
After playing GTA3 I was somewhat disappointed with how many problems the game had. It was fun and all, but my enjoyment of it was hindered time and again by overly difficult missions, chance screw ups and, in the end, the general blandness. I was very hopeful toward GTA: Vice City, if only because of the terrific theme, taken straight from the cult TV series Miami Vice. This time around, I wasn’t disappointed.
The theme is Vice City’s biggest asset. Everything from the colour palette (a lot of pastel colours mixed with terrific light effects), through the character models, clothes, and cars, to architecture simply works. The great licensed soundtrack is also a very strong feature of the game. In GTA3 I found it hard not to listen to the MP3 Player instead of the radio stations, because out of the nine stations, three were unlistenable (drum&bass / trance / jungle music at its worst and bad hip-hop), four were ok but nothing special, one was a chat radio which was fun to listen but got old fast and the only one I actually enjoyed was the one playing classical music… but neither of these was actually enjoyable to listen to, which warranted a switch to my personal choice of MP3’s rather quickly. In Vice City I haven’t used this option once. Why should I, with such a great choice of listenable stations? Most of them are really great to have playing while you cruise around the city, if only because they compliment the 80’s theme so well. The choice of music is terrific. Even genres which I don’t usually enjoy, like hip-hop and pop, are so well represented, you just don’t mind it even if it’s not necesarrily your thing! Big kudos go to the rock / metal and the RnB stations. Listening to “And the Beat Goes On” by the Whispers while riding next to the beach toward the sunset? Awesome stuff. This game serves as a great guide to what 80’s music was all about, with a very good variety of music styles.
The humour in the game is also top-notch. Almost every dialogue line is funny in some way, even if it’s dark humour, the chats and commercials on the radio stations are both hilarious and, more often than not, ridicule a certain type of people or aspect of 80’s life in a very biting way. This makes the whole game a very tongue-in-cheek experience, which is good, because a ‘serious’ game about killing people and establishing a criminal empire would likely be a rather tough thing to swallow.
Gameplay wise things are also a lot better than in GTA3. There’s more stuff to do (even maybe too much to my taste, but then again I didn’t have to do all of it), and what you have to do to progress is much easier and manageable than in the previous game, which makes Vice City much more enjoyable. As you may recall, I haven’t finished GTA3 because the end-game missions are just ridiculously unfair. In Vice City they were somewhat challenging, but absolutely doable. My only gripe with Vice City on the gameplay side is that it took me ages to actually trigger the end-game, because as you get to a more open part of the game, you’re not really told what to do next. I spent time buying businesses and doing the side missions, but I then learned that I would have been better off saving that for later, and focusing on getting enough money to buy out the one location which actually matters. That, and there were some missions where a quicksave-in-mission would not go amiss, but since that’s outside GTA’s design philosophy, I can’t really hold it against the game that much (even though I still think that no quicksave or accessible saving in a 2003 game is just the designers being assholes). And yes, they didn’t exactly get rid of missions obviously based on luck (whether you get hit by a car or not, missions which are not really that dependable on your skills), but fortunately I could either get around them in some way or just don’t do them in most cases. Still, not cool, not in any way sensible.
Some stuff was carried over from GTA3 though, and one of them are the ridiculous physics. I have to admit, they have been improved from that game, but you can still spin out of control when slightly nudging another car, or end up on the car’s roof after a collision. Not to mention how you can apparently break through metal and concrete (lamps and streetlights) but not through wood (telephone line posts have you stop dead on them). The motorboats were not improved at all – they are as hard to steer as they were in the few on-water missions of GTA3 (and the protagonist STILL can’t swim). Some new additions include motorbikes, planes and helicopters. The former are fun to ride, but as little as a very slight hit on anything (and I do mean anything, maybe apart from the pedestrians, though that’s not a rule) has you ejected from the vehicle and into the air. The two latter have terrible controls which make them very hard to fly around, and take some of the real enjoyment you get from watching the city from above.
All the criticism aside, Vice City is a game very much superior to GTA3, in every way. A great setting, cast of actors, a lot of humour, terrific music and enjoyable gameplay make this game something everyone should play, even if the graphics haven’t aged that well (though they are still nice to look at). I’m not sure about San Andreas, as I haven’t played it yet, but from what I’ve seen (mostly gameplay videos), it’s theme is waaaaaay to serious to enjoy. Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t find afro-american gang wars very appealing or funny in any way. I’m going to guess that out of the three – GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas – Vice City is going to be the one I will enjoy the most. That remains to be seen. In the meantime, Vice City is a solid 8/10 and I heartily recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played it yet. Nowadays you can find a used copy in stores quite often, or Steam has it, and it’s often on sale. The few euro / pounds / dollars you’ll spend on it will give you more than 20 hours of gameplay for sure, and if you’re the completionist type, much more than that, I would assume.
The theme is Vice City’s biggest asset. Everything from the colour palette (a lot of pastel colours mixed with terrific light effects), through the character models, clothes, and cars, to architecture simply works. The great licensed soundtrack is also a very strong feature of the game. In GTA3 I found it hard not to listen to the MP3 Player instead of the radio stations, because out of the nine stations, three were unlistenable (drum&bass / trance / jungle music at its worst and bad hip-hop), four were ok but nothing special, one was a chat radio which was fun to listen but got old fast and the only one I actually enjoyed was the one playing classical music… but neither of these was actually enjoyable to listen to, which warranted a switch to my personal choice of MP3’s rather quickly. In Vice City I haven’t used this option once. Why should I, with such a great choice of listenable stations? Most of them are really great to have playing while you cruise around the city, if only because they compliment the 80’s theme so well. The choice of music is terrific. Even genres which I don’t usually enjoy, like hip-hop and pop, are so well represented, you just don’t mind it even if it’s not necesarrily your thing! Big kudos go to the rock / metal and the RnB stations. Listening to “And the Beat Goes On” by the Whispers while riding next to the beach toward the sunset? Awesome stuff. This game serves as a great guide to what 80’s music was all about, with a very good variety of music styles.
The humour in the game is also top-notch. Almost every dialogue line is funny in some way, even if it’s dark humour, the chats and commercials on the radio stations are both hilarious and, more often than not, ridicule a certain type of people or aspect of 80’s life in a very biting way. This makes the whole game a very tongue-in-cheek experience, which is good, because a ‘serious’ game about killing people and establishing a criminal empire would likely be a rather tough thing to swallow.
Gameplay wise things are also a lot better than in GTA3. There’s more stuff to do (even maybe too much to my taste, but then again I didn’t have to do all of it), and what you have to do to progress is much easier and manageable than in the previous game, which makes Vice City much more enjoyable. As you may recall, I haven’t finished GTA3 because the end-game missions are just ridiculously unfair. In Vice City they were somewhat challenging, but absolutely doable. My only gripe with Vice City on the gameplay side is that it took me ages to actually trigger the end-game, because as you get to a more open part of the game, you’re not really told what to do next. I spent time buying businesses and doing the side missions, but I then learned that I would have been better off saving that for later, and focusing on getting enough money to buy out the one location which actually matters. That, and there were some missions where a quicksave-in-mission would not go amiss, but since that’s outside GTA’s design philosophy, I can’t really hold it against the game that much (even though I still think that no quicksave or accessible saving in a 2003 game is just the designers being assholes). And yes, they didn’t exactly get rid of missions obviously based on luck (whether you get hit by a car or not, missions which are not really that dependable on your skills), but fortunately I could either get around them in some way or just don’t do them in most cases. Still, not cool, not in any way sensible.
Some stuff was carried over from GTA3 though, and one of them are the ridiculous physics. I have to admit, they have been improved from that game, but you can still spin out of control when slightly nudging another car, or end up on the car’s roof after a collision. Not to mention how you can apparently break through metal and concrete (lamps and streetlights) but not through wood (telephone line posts have you stop dead on them). The motorboats were not improved at all – they are as hard to steer as they were in the few on-water missions of GTA3 (and the protagonist STILL can’t swim). Some new additions include motorbikes, planes and helicopters. The former are fun to ride, but as little as a very slight hit on anything (and I do mean anything, maybe apart from the pedestrians, though that’s not a rule) has you ejected from the vehicle and into the air. The two latter have terrible controls which make them very hard to fly around, and take some of the real enjoyment you get from watching the city from above.
All the criticism aside, Vice City is a game very much superior to GTA3, in every way. A great setting, cast of actors, a lot of humour, terrific music and enjoyable gameplay make this game something everyone should play, even if the graphics haven’t aged that well (though they are still nice to look at). I’m not sure about San Andreas, as I haven’t played it yet, but from what I’ve seen (mostly gameplay videos), it’s theme is waaaaaay to serious to enjoy. Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t find afro-american gang wars very appealing or funny in any way. I’m going to guess that out of the three – GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas – Vice City is going to be the one I will enjoy the most. That remains to be seen. In the meantime, Vice City is a solid 8/10 and I heartily recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played it yet. Nowadays you can find a used copy in stores quite often, or Steam has it, and it’s often on sale. The few euro / pounds / dollars you’ll spend on it will give you more than 20 hours of gameplay for sure, and if you’re the completionist type, much more than that, I would assume.
piątek, 18 lutego 2011
Short Review #16: Halo - Combat Evolved
Halo. The shooter that is thought to have 'made' the Xbox platform. An ongoing series, extremely popular all around the world. A multiplayer phenomenon, a game which introduced new solutions to the FPS genre. Also, it's fun for around two or three hours, and then again for another hour, after which it becomes obvious it's utterly and completely rubbish. A piece of crap game, full of very bad design choices and mediocre gameplay. Also, I have heard several people state that this is the best game of the series...
Ok, so without getting into the plot or whatever, I'll point out what I actually liked about the game. The first few hours were a fun, although not a very riveting shooter. The music is good or very good throughout. The graphics are nice to look at, though obviously they aren't anything special today, but I can see how good they could have been considered when the game came out. The enemy AI is quite good, they dodge your bullets and grenades, run around to evade you. And of course, kudos for introducing the regenerating life thing, and grenades into FPS games, though Call of Duty 2 has done both waaay better. But Halo was first, I can dig that. Good for them. Oh, and the Flood 'spiders' were a really nice touch... for the first 10 minutes. They kind of loose their appeal after you've been killing them for several hours.
Now the bad stuff... this is going to take a while.
1) Lazy level design. I have never been so bored by a game's level design in my life. Halo reuses levels more than any other game I ever played. You traverse the same (well, not exactly the same, but pretty much) corridor and room several times IN A ROW, and then you go through them AGAIN AND AGAIN for three or four times over the course of the game. The same goes for several other locations. It's not that obvious in the first few hours of the game when you've got some good variation. But once you reach around the middle of the game, it's just copy+paste pretty much until the end (or at least for the several hours I actually played the game).
This is especially noticeable in the Library location, where you traverse pretty much the same level over and over again for around an hour of gameplay, all the time fighting off wave after wave of the exact same enemies. NO VARIATION WHATSOEVER except for some backup later on.
2) Retarded combat features. To this point: a completely useless 'basic' weapon, the assault rifle. You start several levels with it, and the pistol, you also have ample opportunity to pick it up later on. The weapon which spends its ammo very quickly, has almost NONE accuracy, and deals shit damage. Congratulations. Especially given the fact that all the other weapons (except the Needler) are pretty much all good, just dependant on the situation. Retarded combat feature
#2: enemies which insta-kill you. This includes guys with melee weapons which kill you the moment they reach you, and it doesn't matter how much shields or health you have. They are sometimes cloaked, and at other times they run at you from around a corner, so if you're not looking that way, you'll get backstabbed and won't even know what hit you.
Also, Missile Launchers. There are levels with several enemies close to eachother who have that weapon. One shot from it, and more often than not, you're dead. That's actually what made me quit the game.
3) It's a console game, so of course NO SAVING YOUR GAME EXCEPT FOR CHECKPOINTS. At the beginning, there was quite a lot of checkpoints, so this wasn't much of an issue. After that, this has become a true and utter frustration. That rage quit I mentioned above? Yeah, a guy insta-killed me RIGHT BEFORE A CHECKPOINT, after a good 10 minutes of a hard firefight. Doesn't that just make you want to play a game more?
4) Schizophrenia. This game doesn't know what it wants to be. It starts off as a run-of-the-mill SF story with humourous element to it (the basic enemies speak gibberish english, stuff like 'run away!' in squeeky comedic voices). It then, briefly, becomes a SF survival horror when you fight off the Flood (an alien life form which assimilates and mutates other life forms), although that part of the game has absolutely TERRIBLE pacing, which makes the whole thing (which could have been a nice refreshing of the gameplay) a dreary and tedious experience. Half-way through that Survival Horror bit you meet a character who acts as if he was a comic relief. Let me say that again - you fight with a terrifying enemy which sets you on edge, and then there's that guy hovering over you, cracking jokes and humming songs under his nose... uuuummm theme breaker, anyone? And finally, it assumes a very serious tone in the 'save the world' kind, of course without actually getting rid of the horror-like enemies, or of the comedic-relief enemies.
5) Repetition. #1: The enemies. There's only a handful of them, and you are actually fighting one type of them (the Covenant) for several hours, then you fight the Flood EXCLUSIVELY for another SEVERAL hours (and they have even less enemy types than the covenant), and then, for the remainder of the game, you get a mix of the two. What the hell?
#2: The weapons. You get introduced to most of them early on in the game, and use them for the whole experience. Around 10 weapons is usually enough for FPS games, but in Halo it just becomes boring very fast.
#3: Everything else. Seriously, the game is so god damn repetitive from around the half further, that it was a chore and I had to FORCE myself to play through it. Even the music has only a handful of tracks! They're good, as I mentioned at the beginning, but how long can you listen to the same stuff?
6) Vehicle physics. Ok, Halo had vehicles in. Great, congrats. Too bad they're shit to drive / fly around. Compared to the others, this is just a small gripe, as you don't even use vehicles that often.
And see, if Halo wasn't as long as it is, if they cut out around 30-50% of the game in favour of a shorter, more intense and varied campaign, it wouldn't be as bad. Sure, all the bad stuff would still be visible, but at least you wouldn't be able to say they screwed up the level design as much as they did. If it was like Call of Duty - short but sweet, it would be a decent game. As it is, it's tedious, boring, tiresome and bland for the most part. Once you enter the same location for the fifteenth time, fought the same enemies for several hours, you can't really care about the plot any more. These pacing issues, which are intimately connected to the bad design choices, had to be visible even 10 years ago... why then, god dammit, was the game regarded so good despite having pitfalls which most older titles never had? Remember Unreal, Quake 2, Soldier of Fortune, Serious Sam? Each of these games was different, but NONE of them had such pacing problems and crappy level design.
Halo is a 5/10 game. It may have been a 9/10 back in the day, though how it's problems weren't pointed out, I have no idea. I'd rate it a 4/10, but I have to give it credit for innovating the genre, and paving the way for truly great games like Call of Duty 2 (which had many of Halo's elements - regenerating health, grenades, rifle-butting enemies etc). As it is, this game is an utter waste of time. If you feel you should play it to 'know the classics', well, do it. But don't pay for this game. Rent it, borrow it, see it at a friend's place. Save your money. I had a chance to get this game for 5 pounds. I ended up getting it for 1 pound. I can't tell you how HAPPY I am that I only paid that much for it. I have to say, I had moderate fun with it for a few hours, but after that I was just forcing myself to advance.
Seriously, in the light of my Shogo review, I can see how crappy this game really is. Even Shogo, even though obviously not a very well designed game, was A LOT better than Halo, and a lot more fun to play through. If Shogo was 10 hours long, I'd probably hate it, but it was four of five hours long, which was just enough to keep it interesting and fun to play. If Halo was 5 hours long, I'd probably rate it at around 6, or maybe even 7/10. But what are initially minor grievances, grow up to be major problems once you start encountering them over and over again.
To sum up, AVOID this game. Don't believe your friends that this is worth playing. When they tell you that, ask them when they played this game the last time. If the answer is anything more than a two or three years, they are living off nostalgia, or clearly haven't played much FPS games. This is probably the worst shooter I ever played, and certainly the worst 'supposed to be good' game I ever played. Seriously, I got more fun out of Age of Empires 2, and that says something...
Ok, so without getting into the plot or whatever, I'll point out what I actually liked about the game. The first few hours were a fun, although not a very riveting shooter. The music is good or very good throughout. The graphics are nice to look at, though obviously they aren't anything special today, but I can see how good they could have been considered when the game came out. The enemy AI is quite good, they dodge your bullets and grenades, run around to evade you. And of course, kudos for introducing the regenerating life thing, and grenades into FPS games, though Call of Duty 2 has done both waaay better. But Halo was first, I can dig that. Good for them. Oh, and the Flood 'spiders' were a really nice touch... for the first 10 minutes. They kind of loose their appeal after you've been killing them for several hours.
Now the bad stuff... this is going to take a while.
1) Lazy level design. I have never been so bored by a game's level design in my life. Halo reuses levels more than any other game I ever played. You traverse the same (well, not exactly the same, but pretty much) corridor and room several times IN A ROW, and then you go through them AGAIN AND AGAIN for three or four times over the course of the game. The same goes for several other locations. It's not that obvious in the first few hours of the game when you've got some good variation. But once you reach around the middle of the game, it's just copy+paste pretty much until the end (or at least for the several hours I actually played the game).
This is especially noticeable in the Library location, where you traverse pretty much the same level over and over again for around an hour of gameplay, all the time fighting off wave after wave of the exact same enemies. NO VARIATION WHATSOEVER except for some backup later on.
2) Retarded combat features. To this point: a completely useless 'basic' weapon, the assault rifle. You start several levels with it, and the pistol, you also have ample opportunity to pick it up later on. The weapon which spends its ammo very quickly, has almost NONE accuracy, and deals shit damage. Congratulations. Especially given the fact that all the other weapons (except the Needler) are pretty much all good, just dependant on the situation. Retarded combat feature
#2: enemies which insta-kill you. This includes guys with melee weapons which kill you the moment they reach you, and it doesn't matter how much shields or health you have. They are sometimes cloaked, and at other times they run at you from around a corner, so if you're not looking that way, you'll get backstabbed and won't even know what hit you.
Also, Missile Launchers. There are levels with several enemies close to eachother who have that weapon. One shot from it, and more often than not, you're dead. That's actually what made me quit the game.
3) It's a console game, so of course NO SAVING YOUR GAME EXCEPT FOR CHECKPOINTS. At the beginning, there was quite a lot of checkpoints, so this wasn't much of an issue. After that, this has become a true and utter frustration. That rage quit I mentioned above? Yeah, a guy insta-killed me RIGHT BEFORE A CHECKPOINT, after a good 10 minutes of a hard firefight. Doesn't that just make you want to play a game more?
4) Schizophrenia. This game doesn't know what it wants to be. It starts off as a run-of-the-mill SF story with humourous element to it (the basic enemies speak gibberish english, stuff like 'run away!' in squeeky comedic voices). It then, briefly, becomes a SF survival horror when you fight off the Flood (an alien life form which assimilates and mutates other life forms), although that part of the game has absolutely TERRIBLE pacing, which makes the whole thing (which could have been a nice refreshing of the gameplay) a dreary and tedious experience. Half-way through that Survival Horror bit you meet a character who acts as if he was a comic relief. Let me say that again - you fight with a terrifying enemy which sets you on edge, and then there's that guy hovering over you, cracking jokes and humming songs under his nose... uuuummm theme breaker, anyone? And finally, it assumes a very serious tone in the 'save the world' kind, of course without actually getting rid of the horror-like enemies, or of the comedic-relief enemies.
5) Repetition. #1: The enemies. There's only a handful of them, and you are actually fighting one type of them (the Covenant) for several hours, then you fight the Flood EXCLUSIVELY for another SEVERAL hours (and they have even less enemy types than the covenant), and then, for the remainder of the game, you get a mix of the two. What the hell?
#2: The weapons. You get introduced to most of them early on in the game, and use them for the whole experience. Around 10 weapons is usually enough for FPS games, but in Halo it just becomes boring very fast.
#3: Everything else. Seriously, the game is so god damn repetitive from around the half further, that it was a chore and I had to FORCE myself to play through it. Even the music has only a handful of tracks! They're good, as I mentioned at the beginning, but how long can you listen to the same stuff?
6) Vehicle physics. Ok, Halo had vehicles in. Great, congrats. Too bad they're shit to drive / fly around. Compared to the others, this is just a small gripe, as you don't even use vehicles that often.
And see, if Halo wasn't as long as it is, if they cut out around 30-50% of the game in favour of a shorter, more intense and varied campaign, it wouldn't be as bad. Sure, all the bad stuff would still be visible, but at least you wouldn't be able to say they screwed up the level design as much as they did. If it was like Call of Duty - short but sweet, it would be a decent game. As it is, it's tedious, boring, tiresome and bland for the most part. Once you enter the same location for the fifteenth time, fought the same enemies for several hours, you can't really care about the plot any more. These pacing issues, which are intimately connected to the bad design choices, had to be visible even 10 years ago... why then, god dammit, was the game regarded so good despite having pitfalls which most older titles never had? Remember Unreal, Quake 2, Soldier of Fortune, Serious Sam? Each of these games was different, but NONE of them had such pacing problems and crappy level design.
Halo is a 5/10 game. It may have been a 9/10 back in the day, though how it's problems weren't pointed out, I have no idea. I'd rate it a 4/10, but I have to give it credit for innovating the genre, and paving the way for truly great games like Call of Duty 2 (which had many of Halo's elements - regenerating health, grenades, rifle-butting enemies etc). As it is, this game is an utter waste of time. If you feel you should play it to 'know the classics', well, do it. But don't pay for this game. Rent it, borrow it, see it at a friend's place. Save your money. I had a chance to get this game for 5 pounds. I ended up getting it for 1 pound. I can't tell you how HAPPY I am that I only paid that much for it. I have to say, I had moderate fun with it for a few hours, but after that I was just forcing myself to advance.
Seriously, in the light of my Shogo review, I can see how crappy this game really is. Even Shogo, even though obviously not a very well designed game, was A LOT better than Halo, and a lot more fun to play through. If Shogo was 10 hours long, I'd probably hate it, but it was four of five hours long, which was just enough to keep it interesting and fun to play. If Halo was 5 hours long, I'd probably rate it at around 6, or maybe even 7/10. But what are initially minor grievances, grow up to be major problems once you start encountering them over and over again.
To sum up, AVOID this game. Don't believe your friends that this is worth playing. When they tell you that, ask them when they played this game the last time. If the answer is anything more than a two or three years, they are living off nostalgia, or clearly haven't played much FPS games. This is probably the worst shooter I ever played, and certainly the worst 'supposed to be good' game I ever played. Seriously, I got more fun out of Age of Empires 2, and that says something...
wtorek, 15 lutego 2011
Short Review #15: Shogo
Where I currently live (though not for much longer), Charity Shops and Second-Hand bookshops are quite common, so there's a lot of second-hand games to find here. I went down to a big used books place's cellar in search for something interesting, and there it was – an original, boxed copy of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. I've completed it in a few days, and here's what I thought.
Shogo is a FPP from Monolith, released in 1998. Its main inspiration is anime, or more specifically, the type of SF anime which includes mechs duking it out. The plot is... there, but to be honest, it's too sketchy and not very well explained or presented. There's something about a corporation, a government, a terrorist group, then some aliens are thrown into the mix... But yeah, it's an older game, so stories weren't exactly that strong back then. There's more intrigue and plot than in most games of that time, however.
You have two types of gameplay in Shogo. You fight on-foot, and from inside a big mech. The two modes do not really differ, which is quite a change from some other, more simulation-heavy mech games. While a mech, you can transform into a vehicle (not very useful) and double-jump, and that's about it. Everything else, from powerups through weapons and movement works exactly the same, so it's very arcade-like. You get four mechs to choose from, but to be honest I see little sense in picking any other than the most heavily armoured but slowest one – it's still pretty fast, and the added armour proves very useful. The other choices suggest that Shogo can be played in different ways depending on your play style, but the truth is that the game is way too simple to leave any place for anything more than run-and-gun tactics.
The same argument can be made about the weapons. There's really no reason to use any weapon other than the assault rifle. Well, the grenade launchers can be useful some time, but the shotgun is pretty useless (because enemies tend to shoot at you the second you don't fire on them, the reload on the weapon gives them a chance to do that), the machine gun is only good until you get the rifle, and the pistols are only good until you find the machine gun (which is quite early). The same can be said about the mech weapons, although you use a bigger variety of them here, if only because you sometimes want to trade damage output for accuracy or damage for shooting speed.
The missions themselves feel pretty disjointed. There's a screen stating your objectives, and you get dropped right into the action, sometimes with an intro, sometimes not. The levels end abruptly, as you reach a door or a certain point on the map. Also, some of the levels are very short, lasting only around a minute or so. So those are some of the reasons why the story feels vague, as it's delivered in chunks, instead of a flowing narrative. Also, there are some bizarre things which feel like they don't really fit. You defeat a single character three times, but it is never explained who she is and why she wants you dead. One mission has you retrieving a cat from an old building full of homeless people, but before you are able to do it you have to find its squeaky toy. It was probably supposed to be a joke, but the hilarity was kind of lost on me. There are people you can talk to, and they deliver a single or two lines of dialogue, but they are not used to further the plot or anything, it's just a kind of a bonus feature. The good thing is that you can choose from two alternative ending sequences which differ completely, leading to pretty much the same ending, but through different events.
The combat is the strangest thing about this game. On one hand it's criminally unfair. Despite the Health and Armor meters going up to 300, it only takes a few shots from enemies to die. Sometimes the enemy will score a Critical Hit on you, as you can on them. This will, most of the time, kill you outright. Some weapons will do that no matter what. Enemies will often shoot you the second you enter a corridor or room, and its rather hard to tell where they shot you from, so it's all down to quick saving often and trial and error. On the other hand, the enemy AI is shameful. 9 times out of 10 they just stand there without noticing you until you start shooting or move closer. You can shoot at enemies from a distance and they will not react. While you are shooting at them, they cannot retaliate. There's no such thing as tactics, and the enemies almost universally do not pursue you after you shoot them. Add a very low number of enemy types to the mix, and you get combat which is both repetitive and bloody hard at the same time.
The graphics in the game are quite nice to look at. The interiors, mech design and weapon design are all good and quite true to the theme. The models, however, are horrific. The faces are something between a badly drawn anime character and a very creepy doll, while their bodies are unnaturally twisted or posed. The character portraits are very clearly drawn by different artists, which makes them look unprofessional and shoddy. The music is cool, but nothing too special, and the sounds are fine as well. The voice acting is ok, but the dialogues are pretty bad, taken straight from a B-class action movie.
Despite all of its shortcomings, Shogo is quite fun to play through. It's pretty short, at only around 4-5 hours (or so I guess), but if you're interested in the theme or you simply have no other FPS to play, this is a nice way to spend your time. It's not a good game, being too disjointed and following some pretty weird design choices (the laughable AI non-withstanding), but for some reason it is still good enough to be enjoyable. Maybe it's the weapons, the quick and brutal action and the original theme? At any rate, Shogo gets a 6/10 from me. Don't go out of your way to find this, but if you do and you think this may be your thing, go for it if it's cheap.
You can get this as a downloadable copy from GoG.com. I'm not sure if it's worth its price, you have to be the judge of that yourselves.
Shogo is a FPP from Monolith, released in 1998. Its main inspiration is anime, or more specifically, the type of SF anime which includes mechs duking it out. The plot is... there, but to be honest, it's too sketchy and not very well explained or presented. There's something about a corporation, a government, a terrorist group, then some aliens are thrown into the mix... But yeah, it's an older game, so stories weren't exactly that strong back then. There's more intrigue and plot than in most games of that time, however.
You have two types of gameplay in Shogo. You fight on-foot, and from inside a big mech. The two modes do not really differ, which is quite a change from some other, more simulation-heavy mech games. While a mech, you can transform into a vehicle (not very useful) and double-jump, and that's about it. Everything else, from powerups through weapons and movement works exactly the same, so it's very arcade-like. You get four mechs to choose from, but to be honest I see little sense in picking any other than the most heavily armoured but slowest one – it's still pretty fast, and the added armour proves very useful. The other choices suggest that Shogo can be played in different ways depending on your play style, but the truth is that the game is way too simple to leave any place for anything more than run-and-gun tactics.
The same argument can be made about the weapons. There's really no reason to use any weapon other than the assault rifle. Well, the grenade launchers can be useful some time, but the shotgun is pretty useless (because enemies tend to shoot at you the second you don't fire on them, the reload on the weapon gives them a chance to do that), the machine gun is only good until you get the rifle, and the pistols are only good until you find the machine gun (which is quite early). The same can be said about the mech weapons, although you use a bigger variety of them here, if only because you sometimes want to trade damage output for accuracy or damage for shooting speed.
The missions themselves feel pretty disjointed. There's a screen stating your objectives, and you get dropped right into the action, sometimes with an intro, sometimes not. The levels end abruptly, as you reach a door or a certain point on the map. Also, some of the levels are very short, lasting only around a minute or so. So those are some of the reasons why the story feels vague, as it's delivered in chunks, instead of a flowing narrative. Also, there are some bizarre things which feel like they don't really fit. You defeat a single character three times, but it is never explained who she is and why she wants you dead. One mission has you retrieving a cat from an old building full of homeless people, but before you are able to do it you have to find its squeaky toy. It was probably supposed to be a joke, but the hilarity was kind of lost on me. There are people you can talk to, and they deliver a single or two lines of dialogue, but they are not used to further the plot or anything, it's just a kind of a bonus feature. The good thing is that you can choose from two alternative ending sequences which differ completely, leading to pretty much the same ending, but through different events.
The combat is the strangest thing about this game. On one hand it's criminally unfair. Despite the Health and Armor meters going up to 300, it only takes a few shots from enemies to die. Sometimes the enemy will score a Critical Hit on you, as you can on them. This will, most of the time, kill you outright. Some weapons will do that no matter what. Enemies will often shoot you the second you enter a corridor or room, and its rather hard to tell where they shot you from, so it's all down to quick saving often and trial and error. On the other hand, the enemy AI is shameful. 9 times out of 10 they just stand there without noticing you until you start shooting or move closer. You can shoot at enemies from a distance and they will not react. While you are shooting at them, they cannot retaliate. There's no such thing as tactics, and the enemies almost universally do not pursue you after you shoot them. Add a very low number of enemy types to the mix, and you get combat which is both repetitive and bloody hard at the same time.
The graphics in the game are quite nice to look at. The interiors, mech design and weapon design are all good and quite true to the theme. The models, however, are horrific. The faces are something between a badly drawn anime character and a very creepy doll, while their bodies are unnaturally twisted or posed. The character portraits are very clearly drawn by different artists, which makes them look unprofessional and shoddy. The music is cool, but nothing too special, and the sounds are fine as well. The voice acting is ok, but the dialogues are pretty bad, taken straight from a B-class action movie.
Despite all of its shortcomings, Shogo is quite fun to play through. It's pretty short, at only around 4-5 hours (or so I guess), but if you're interested in the theme or you simply have no other FPS to play, this is a nice way to spend your time. It's not a good game, being too disjointed and following some pretty weird design choices (the laughable AI non-withstanding), but for some reason it is still good enough to be enjoyable. Maybe it's the weapons, the quick and brutal action and the original theme? At any rate, Shogo gets a 6/10 from me. Don't go out of your way to find this, but if you do and you think this may be your thing, go for it if it's cheap.
You can get this as a downloadable copy from GoG.com. I'm not sure if it's worth its price, you have to be the judge of that yourselves.
sobota, 29 stycznia 2011
Short Review #14: Mechwarrior 3
When I got a 'new', Pentium 2, computer around 1999/2000 I was re-introduced to video games. Before I only had an IBM 486 and, as you probably imagine, it wasn't able to run any new games of the period. Upon getting that new PC, I got three games. One was already on the hard drive (a left-over from the previous user), Quake 2 (a classic I still love to revisit from time to time and I'm currently eyeing the expansions for it), Colin McRae Rally and Mechwarrior 3. That, more than 10 years ago, was my first contact with that particular game and with the franchise. And I remember that I loved the game, but didn't get far into it, perhaps because of the control scheme, or perhaps, being a 12 year old, my attention span wasn't actually enough to finish a game once I started it.
I haven't played any Mechwarrior games until last year, when I bought Mechwarrior 4 and gave it a go. I did have a passing experience of Mechcommander 2, and I knew more about the Battletech setting than I did when I first played Mech3, so I knew it was something up my alley. I enjoyed the game and had some fun with it as you may have read in my first Short Review. I was instantly reminded of Mech3, and it was my no.1 lookout title in charity shops, entertainment exchanges etc. I finally got it this month via Amazon. The copy I bought didn't have a box, unfortunately, but I did get two booklets: the instruction manual and a 'Technical Reference' with 'Mech info.
First of all, it was bloody hard to get the game to work. Even when I did, it seemed to take pleasure is freezing and crashing on me in random moments during missions. Mech3 is one of the games where there's no such thing as a Save system, so that had me playing through some missions several times to finish them. So a word of advice for any of you who'd like to revisit or play it for the first time - it's kind of a bitch to run on modern PC's. However, as long as each session lasted, it was fun.
The Mechwarrior series assume you know your Battletech lore. There's no in-game encyclopedia, and the intro doesn't really explain much, rather it sets the scene for those of the players who know something about the setting. Well, I don't, to be honest, I have a very limited knowledge of it (mostly from the video games), so the plot here, however well executed, wasn't exactly clear to me at points. But the main gist of it is this: an operation to destroy Clan Smoke Jaguar has been planned, to punish them for some kind of offensive they took part in and to provide a warning to other Clans if they are tempted to do the same. The opening of the operation is disastrous though, with a large loss of personnel on part of the invaders. But you survived the drop, along with your Mobile Field Base, and you are hell-bent on completing as much of the objectives as possible.
This general vagueness of the setting in the game translates directly to the vagueness of some of the game's mechanisms. For example, you can equip items such as CASE, MASC, Artemis IV, ECM Suite... the list goes on. However, there's no explanation of ANY type in-game on what these items actually do. Luckily, I got the manual, so I could read into what each of them is used for. Woe to the players who don't have that option but still wish to play the game! Most of these are not things that are essential to getting through a mission, but a lot of them are quite helpful. The whole game has this underlying theme of complexity going on, which was, I think, somewhat dumbed down in Mech4 (or at least they had descriptions of the items in-game). Mech3 can be played as an Action Game, using a limited number of commands and controls, and this is how I played it. However there's no doubt in my mind that it's best when played as it was intended to be played - as a simulation game. Some games are flight simulators. This one is a 'Mech simulator. Basically the whole keyboard is used, and from what I know the game really benefits from having a joystick to play it with. I don't own one, though I'd like to get one just for Mechwarrior games (and a few space sims I'm hoping to pick up or play in the future).
Remapping the keys gives you an approachable control scheme, but it's not very satisfying, as you pretty much know that there's a large chunk of functionality you're just not using. On the Easy difficulty setting, the campaign doesn't present too many challenges with this scheme, but it's still interesting and rather gripping when the action comes in. Each 'Mech power-up detected' alert has you look at the radar searching for a new target, firefights are quite tense and sniping enemies from away with long-range lasers is very, very fun.
The graphics have, obviously, aged - but I think they aged pretty well. Sure, everything is blocky and there's no really shiny effects, but that gives the game a rough, bleak look which fits the setting perfectly. I could totally see, and play, an MMO game based on an engine similar to this one, and would not say one bad thing about the graphics. Looking at enemies from the cockpit gives a sense of immersion, while viewing your 'Mech from an angle with a cinematic camera just looks plain awesome. One gripe I have about the graphics is their poor variety in a way. During the course of the campaign you get through many missions divided into four chapters (Operations), but three of them look exactly the same: bleak, grey landscapes with clouded skies, some black and grey buildings and a tree here and there. I heard that many people said that Mechwarrior 4 was too colourful, but it's not the colour scheme that I found lacking. I think this totally fitted the game's themes and setting, but when it introduced snowy plains into the mix, stuff got interesting! Hell, even before, when the clouds parted to show a reddish sky and you heard thunder in the background, that was a nice mix of things! So it can be done, and I wish it was done more often with this game.
The sound in Mech3 is great, you can feel the stomping of the machines, and each explosion is quite satisfying, as are all weapon sounds. The music is also pretty good, but there's only a handful of tracks played at the beginning of missions, and when they finish, there's only silence to accompany you. Mind you, each missions doesn't take too long to finish. I think the longest I spent with a single mission was around 25 minutes, and that's only because I took my time with the advance. Usually, one firefight quickly brings you to another as you complete your objectives, so most missions take around 15-20 minutes. And there's only around 20 of them, so it's safe to say that the whole Mechwarrior 3 game can be completed in under 8 hours, provided you don't spend too much time agonising over different Mech configurations. To be honest, now that I think of it, it's not too bad, actually, but I could've sworn I've only been playing this game for a few hours before completing it... Well, at any rate, I had the feeling that the missions ended very quickly, and I was sorry each time I had to press Ctrl+Q to exit a mission once it was completed. Then again, without saving points, this is for the better I suppose.
In my opinion Mech3 is a game worthy of revisiting, especially if you're a simulator fan or if you found Mech4 to be too 'arcade'y'. I'm still hyping myself up for the upcoming Mechwarrior 5, since it looks great and the whole idea is still there. I'm kind of sorry that the multiplayer for Mech3 is non-existant, as it would be a lot of fun to fight a 3v3 or 4v4 match from time to time... Anyway, this is a solid 8/10, not taking into account the performance issues (because that may be only my laptop, who knows, and it is a 10 year old game after all). Play it if you like what Mechwarrior is, or if you enjoy combat simulators. And, of course, if you can run it at all.
I haven't played any Mechwarrior games until last year, when I bought Mechwarrior 4 and gave it a go. I did have a passing experience of Mechcommander 2, and I knew more about the Battletech setting than I did when I first played Mech3, so I knew it was something up my alley. I enjoyed the game and had some fun with it as you may have read in my first Short Review. I was instantly reminded of Mech3, and it was my no.1 lookout title in charity shops, entertainment exchanges etc. I finally got it this month via Amazon. The copy I bought didn't have a box, unfortunately, but I did get two booklets: the instruction manual and a 'Technical Reference' with 'Mech info.
First of all, it was bloody hard to get the game to work. Even when I did, it seemed to take pleasure is freezing and crashing on me in random moments during missions. Mech3 is one of the games where there's no such thing as a Save system, so that had me playing through some missions several times to finish them. So a word of advice for any of you who'd like to revisit or play it for the first time - it's kind of a bitch to run on modern PC's. However, as long as each session lasted, it was fun.
The Mechwarrior series assume you know your Battletech lore. There's no in-game encyclopedia, and the intro doesn't really explain much, rather it sets the scene for those of the players who know something about the setting. Well, I don't, to be honest, I have a very limited knowledge of it (mostly from the video games), so the plot here, however well executed, wasn't exactly clear to me at points. But the main gist of it is this: an operation to destroy Clan Smoke Jaguar has been planned, to punish them for some kind of offensive they took part in and to provide a warning to other Clans if they are tempted to do the same. The opening of the operation is disastrous though, with a large loss of personnel on part of the invaders. But you survived the drop, along with your Mobile Field Base, and you are hell-bent on completing as much of the objectives as possible.
This general vagueness of the setting in the game translates directly to the vagueness of some of the game's mechanisms. For example, you can equip items such as CASE, MASC, Artemis IV, ECM Suite... the list goes on. However, there's no explanation of ANY type in-game on what these items actually do. Luckily, I got the manual, so I could read into what each of them is used for. Woe to the players who don't have that option but still wish to play the game! Most of these are not things that are essential to getting through a mission, but a lot of them are quite helpful. The whole game has this underlying theme of complexity going on, which was, I think, somewhat dumbed down in Mech4 (or at least they had descriptions of the items in-game). Mech3 can be played as an Action Game, using a limited number of commands and controls, and this is how I played it. However there's no doubt in my mind that it's best when played as it was intended to be played - as a simulation game. Some games are flight simulators. This one is a 'Mech simulator. Basically the whole keyboard is used, and from what I know the game really benefits from having a joystick to play it with. I don't own one, though I'd like to get one just for Mechwarrior games (and a few space sims I'm hoping to pick up or play in the future).
Remapping the keys gives you an approachable control scheme, but it's not very satisfying, as you pretty much know that there's a large chunk of functionality you're just not using. On the Easy difficulty setting, the campaign doesn't present too many challenges with this scheme, but it's still interesting and rather gripping when the action comes in. Each 'Mech power-up detected' alert has you look at the radar searching for a new target, firefights are quite tense and sniping enemies from away with long-range lasers is very, very fun.
The graphics have, obviously, aged - but I think they aged pretty well. Sure, everything is blocky and there's no really shiny effects, but that gives the game a rough, bleak look which fits the setting perfectly. I could totally see, and play, an MMO game based on an engine similar to this one, and would not say one bad thing about the graphics. Looking at enemies from the cockpit gives a sense of immersion, while viewing your 'Mech from an angle with a cinematic camera just looks plain awesome. One gripe I have about the graphics is their poor variety in a way. During the course of the campaign you get through many missions divided into four chapters (Operations), but three of them look exactly the same: bleak, grey landscapes with clouded skies, some black and grey buildings and a tree here and there. I heard that many people said that Mechwarrior 4 was too colourful, but it's not the colour scheme that I found lacking. I think this totally fitted the game's themes and setting, but when it introduced snowy plains into the mix, stuff got interesting! Hell, even before, when the clouds parted to show a reddish sky and you heard thunder in the background, that was a nice mix of things! So it can be done, and I wish it was done more often with this game.
The sound in Mech3 is great, you can feel the stomping of the machines, and each explosion is quite satisfying, as are all weapon sounds. The music is also pretty good, but there's only a handful of tracks played at the beginning of missions, and when they finish, there's only silence to accompany you. Mind you, each missions doesn't take too long to finish. I think the longest I spent with a single mission was around 25 minutes, and that's only because I took my time with the advance. Usually, one firefight quickly brings you to another as you complete your objectives, so most missions take around 15-20 minutes. And there's only around 20 of them, so it's safe to say that the whole Mechwarrior 3 game can be completed in under 8 hours, provided you don't spend too much time agonising over different Mech configurations. To be honest, now that I think of it, it's not too bad, actually, but I could've sworn I've only been playing this game for a few hours before completing it... Well, at any rate, I had the feeling that the missions ended very quickly, and I was sorry each time I had to press Ctrl+Q to exit a mission once it was completed. Then again, without saving points, this is for the better I suppose.
In my opinion Mech3 is a game worthy of revisiting, especially if you're a simulator fan or if you found Mech4 to be too 'arcade'y'. I'm still hyping myself up for the upcoming Mechwarrior 5, since it looks great and the whole idea is still there. I'm kind of sorry that the multiplayer for Mech3 is non-existant, as it would be a lot of fun to fight a 3v3 or 4v4 match from time to time... Anyway, this is a solid 8/10, not taking into account the performance issues (because that may be only my laptop, who knows, and it is a 10 year old game after all). Play it if you like what Mechwarrior is, or if you enjoy combat simulators. And, of course, if you can run it at all.
wtorek, 25 stycznia 2011
Games to play this year, encore
This is a list of premieres that I'm waiting for, from the most anticipated one, to the one I'm just mildly interested in. Next to each title is a percentage of how likely I am to buy the game this year. Otherwise I'll do my best to play it at somebody's place or borrow it from a friend who got it.
1. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (100% - I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition)
2. Batman: Arkham City (95% - I'll do my best to pick it up the moment it's out, a slight chance for a Collector's Edition if it's good)
3. Total War: Shogun 2 (80% - not sure if I'll buy it soon after the premiere, but a good chance I'll pick it up until the end of the year, for example from a Steam special offer)
4. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (80% - was thinking about pre-ordering the Collector's Edition, but might as well pick it up later in the year, or just get the regular edition. Much depends on the reviews.)
5. Mechwarrior 5 (65% - provided it comes out this year, I'm willing to buy a regular edition unless the Collector's Edition [if there's going to be one at all] kicks ass)
6. Portal 2 (50% - not a very important buy this year, this can definitely wait until I can get it cheap)
7. King Arthur 2 (50% - much depends on the price and a bit on the reviews. The first part only recently had its price lowered.)
8. Space Marine (40% - not a big chance I'll try to get it this year, there's no rush, but I'm definitely interested in seeing it being played and trying it out)
9. Star Wars: The Old Republic (30% - being an MMO, I'm unlikely to try it right away unless it's going to be free to play which it almost certainly won't)
Also, I'm aware that I had to dust this blog before I wrote this entry. Sorry for that, I'll try to do better, though I can't promise much because... surprise, surprise, I may actually start working in the industry come March! But I won't spoil it by talking about it, anyway there's a good chance that the moment I get the job, I'll close down the blog or put it in 'hibernation' mode. We'll see.
Any games you're waiting for this year?
1. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (100% - I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition)
2. Batman: Arkham City (95% - I'll do my best to pick it up the moment it's out, a slight chance for a Collector's Edition if it's good)
3. Total War: Shogun 2 (80% - not sure if I'll buy it soon after the premiere, but a good chance I'll pick it up until the end of the year, for example from a Steam special offer)
4. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (80% - was thinking about pre-ordering the Collector's Edition, but might as well pick it up later in the year, or just get the regular edition. Much depends on the reviews.)
5. Mechwarrior 5 (65% - provided it comes out this year, I'm willing to buy a regular edition unless the Collector's Edition [if there's going to be one at all] kicks ass)
6. Portal 2 (50% - not a very important buy this year, this can definitely wait until I can get it cheap)
7. King Arthur 2 (50% - much depends on the price and a bit on the reviews. The first part only recently had its price lowered.)
8. Space Marine (40% - not a big chance I'll try to get it this year, there's no rush, but I'm definitely interested in seeing it being played and trying it out)
9. Star Wars: The Old Republic (30% - being an MMO, I'm unlikely to try it right away unless it's going to be free to play which it almost certainly won't)
Also, I'm aware that I had to dust this blog before I wrote this entry. Sorry for that, I'll try to do better, though I can't promise much because... surprise, surprise, I may actually start working in the industry come March! But I won't spoil it by talking about it, anyway there's a good chance that the moment I get the job, I'll close down the blog or put it in 'hibernation' mode. We'll see.
Any games you're waiting for this year?
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