Resident Evil is a long running series with many characters and plot threads. Basically A Corporation set up by a few scientists became a global pharmaceutical giant. This company manufactured many things, however this was a front. At its heart the Umbrella Corporation was a secret research program involved with genetic viral manipulations. These experiments had many aims, most importantly the improvement and evolution of man into biological weapons of mass destruction. Throughout the history of the games the T-virus which essentially creates zombies, monsters and super humans depending on whatever it infects has been one of the main focuses.
At the start of Resident Evil 5 we are re-introduced to Chris Redfield, a character seen in earlier games. He is in Africa doing work for the BSAA, an organisation setup to combat the threat of bio-weapon terrorism springing up in the wake of the disintegration of Umbrella.
Chris is given a new African partner to assist his integration into the culture he is investigating. This unfortunately throws up flashbacks to his previous female partner Jill Valentine, who vanished fighting Alfred Wesker a super human viral powered enemy.
Chris believes that Jill may still be alive and has reason to believe that the terrorists he is investigating here in Africa will have leads to her whereabouts.
Chris is sent to meet a man called Irving who is selling bio-weapons and he hopes to capture him in a sting operation. The BSAA team which is backing him up are spectacularly slaughtered by a new bio-weapon. Chris and Sheva chase Irving and his mysterious masked female bodyguard from the meet site across large swathes of Africa hoping to uncover who Irving's boss is and where he is getting the bio-weapons.
Chris and Sheva are likeable heroes, although their dialogue is a little stiff, and their love triangle hardly convincing. Enemies are of the cardboard cut out manically laughing bad guy variety, destroying the world because it's in the script rather than for any good reason. It seems churlish to pick on Resident evil's storyline, as it never really aims to be taken seriously. This is action movie fare and all involved know it.
The story progresses mainly in the cut scenes with only minor details being exposed in the actual levels themselves. The cut scenes are all well done and rendered using the in game engine. The action is suitably cinematic and a joy to watch.
Resident Evil is a fairly traditional third person shooter with no real cover system. This is stupid and or commendable post Gears of war, it does have a cover system, but it's very clunky and you rarely need it. The enemies tend to melee attack rather than shoot, don't get me wrong you do get shot at, just not really that often for the first two thirds of the game.
The major issue with the control system is the aiming system, as is fairly traditional in games for the past three or four years the left trigger is used to sight down your gun. The problem is that movement stops functioning when you do, Chris can't even shuffle slowly while aiming his gun. It feels very claustrophobic as zombies shuffle towards you and you try and gun them down without flinching, but it is a fairly glaring omission that could have been easily rectified.
Your inventory is the other rather old school system, copied from the early games it means you can carry very little. Ammo needs to be loaded into guns manually while in your inventory. You have a large array of weapons but can't carry very many of them and comfortably pick up health etc. during a level. For example picking up a bullet proof vest for Chris and Sheva sees two of your precious inventory slots being permanently used up. Thankfully the game pauses while you micro manage your stocks. As far as realism goes its fine, however, since when has realism played much part in games. Even supposedly realistic games ask us to believe that ammunition grows in crates.
In between missions you can place items in a store and sell collectables for in game cash. Each weapon can be upgraded to improve accuracy and effectiveness. One play through will usually allow you to upgrade two weapons out of the ten or so. This makes climbing the skill tree a fairly prolonged and unattainable goal as most people will not want to play through five or six times to get all the weapons powered up.
The focus on co-op play is evident from the start, Sheva is ever present and her assistance is needed at many Army of Two style moments as you open doors and both of you push obstacles together. At times you split up and work in separate areas towards the same goal. All of these things are novelties that add little. What is important is that she provides a constant companion who shoots at the enemies and attracts her fair share of the trouble for you. Give her good weapons and keep her well stocked in Ammo and she will be useful. Only occasionally does she get killed and halt the game for you. The real point however is the fairly seamless online co-op feature which allows you and a friend to play together. Which really does make the game that much more fun.
The levels are fairly simple, you start at point A and have to get to point B through all the zombies, dogs etc. in the way. Sometimes you have to survive in an area for a set time period to progress, at others there are bosses to kill or keys to find.
There are on rails sequences where you fire from an emplaced gun on a jeep. There is a little bit of QuickTime button pressing at times.
At one point in the game you come to an experimental sandbox area. There is a lake with lots of little villages around it. You basically have to collect four pieces of a key to open the door out of the area. What is novel is that instead of a corridor you can choose any of the four villages in any order to fight in and find the pieces of the key.
Each of the main chapters has little subtle variations in game play. For a short section of the game one of the partners must carry a lamp to light the way, which means that vision is very limited and that partner can't shoot. There is a sun temple which has magnified beams of light that toast you alive along with mirror angling type puzzles. There is also a place where stairs are moved in combinations to find your way to a goal. In a small section you have to be quiet and stealthy to avoid the attention of blind licker monsters. On a ship you have to use cranes to move cargo containers around to make progress.
Enemies are suitably varied; there are Magini types with chainsaws, chain guns, shotguns, and the larger executioner and mutated villager type Magini. Alongside the Magini are a cast of bat/insect hybrids, mutant dogs, alligators, lickers and the cockroach like reapers. At times you also find the enemies using emplaced guns.
The art direction is great, African shanties, labs, ships, all rendered well with a distinctive style. The monster design is of the animal insect mash up variety and done well.
Your reasons for being there and objectives are kept fairly clear at all times.
The character animation is done well, though there is some stiffness, I felt that everyone always seemed to be standing upright. There is no spinning head over feet when blown up, as if the characters were rooted to the ground.
Boss battles are a big part of Resident Evil, this game is no exception. There are roughly ten boss encounters and each one is varied. Black tentacle monsters, huge hybrid creatures, trolls and super humans all have a go at you.
Methods of dealing with them are as varied, basic shooting, luring them into traps and shooting certain targets in sequence. All have their patterns to learn and areas they fight in littered with help for those that explore. Unlike some bosses in other games, I felt these fair for the average gamer on normal, however my foray onto hard after completing the game found the troll monster at the jeep sequence darned irritating.
The Capcom MT framework engine is one of the best in gaming I feel and one that deserves to be licensed and used by all the developers who can't actually make their own. The frame rate and detail supported here are excellent. There is only really the Infinity Ward Engine and Guerilla's Killzone engine that are comparable.
Checkpoints were handled well with rarely any long retreads after you die.
The game took me around 20 hours on normal to complete. I played through half of it again on hard. Once you complete the game you have the ability to gain infinite ammo on weapons you have fully upgraded. This character building adds to the replay value and makes the harder difficulty levels easier to take.
I received 435 achievement points which I feel is fair enough.
Music and sounds effects are of a high standard. Not my taste really I have to say but adequate.
Multiplayer controversially has been added as a piece of downloadable content. Something that I won’t be buying as it does seem to be a blatant attempt to claw more money from fans of the game.
Capcom have made a good game here, taken as a shooter it performs well, those who want the survival horror of the early Resident Evil series will have to look elsewhere. Great graphics and mostly irritant free game play make a game that deserves your money. The inventory system could do with an overhaul, other than that this is a game that needs to be played.
Story 7
Gameplay 8
Graphics 9
Level Design 8
A.i. 7
Total 7.8
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Halo Wars Review
Halo wars is an attempt to broaden the Halo universe, taking out mostly everything that the previous three games comprise of and leaving only the universe itself. The game is set in a time period earlier than Halo combat evolved. There are Spartans involved in the game, however, Master Chief does not make an appearance. The story is told in a series of cinematic and outstandingly well rendered cut scenes. The game begins with the humans starting to lose the war against the Covenant.
On a planet called Harvest the humans have won back the planet after a long fight. The Covenant remains stubbornly dug in around a structure buried in ice and seem intent on keeping the humans away. The structure turns out to be forerunner in origin. It leads to another planet where the Covenant also make life hell. The plot unfolds to show that forerunner technology could also create Dyson spheres as well as Halos. The Covenant wants hidden forerunner super-weapons and it's up to the humans to stop them.
The characters and art design of the Halo universe are already well established, the Covenant with their religious zeal and the differing alien races that comprise them. The soldiers of the UNSC are also drawn with the same broad brush strokes. Flippant ship a.i. seems to be the norm, gruff commanders and gung ho soldiers.
Forge is a fairly cookie cutter main hero, although no harm to him he does his job. Anders comes through as showing a bit of character as the feisty female scientist trying to decipher all the Forerunner shenanigans.
The story excels in its cinematic action sequences. In particular the ship near miss entering the Dyson sphere is as good a sequence as any sci-fi movie of the last ten years. The obligatory scene where we see the Spartans in action will have hardcore Halo fans wiping away a tear.
This being a real time strategy game rather than an fps means that the cut scenes feel more distanced from the actual game action. It feels like you are watching a movie where you only get to see the next scene by completing a task. I know a lot of games are like this, it's just that there seems to be a bigger divorce between the story and the game than usual. That is not to say that the missions are unrelated to the story, they all follow the story perfectly. It's just a feeling I came away with due to the real time strategy genre being far from cinematic.
The story is interesting, I found myself eager to see the next scene. I felt nothing for the characters but the story itself I enjoyed. Grand space opera on a massive scale, clearly and simply told.
Halo Wars is a real time strategy game (RTS). They have taken the tried and tested RTS formula created by Westwood in Dune and Command and Conquer and simply applied it to Halo with no real attempt to do anything other than just that. This isn't an RTS that is trying to break any moulds or innovate in any way. The brief seems to have been to make a Command and Conquer clone with a Halo theme. If any innovation exists it's the fact that the whole thing is story driven.
If we work on that theory that all that was wanted was a solid RTS with a Halo skin then how did Ensemble studios do? Rather well actually, the game seems to tick all the genre stalwarts. Small square maps, tick. Fog of war that obscures your view until a unit is there to scout, tick. Clicking on a unit, moving the cursor to where you want to go or what you want to attack and pressing go, tick. This game would have been so much better if they had just let you plug in a mouse, I have posted rants about this before, so won’t go on too much here. How hard can it be to write a mouse driver? As it is the controls work, though the entire time you are playing the mantra "better with a mouse" is playing in your mind. The controls are designed to make it easier to fight against the pad, why bother though when mouse would have been easier? You can select all units on the screen easily and also all available units with one button press.
The units available to you progress throughout the game, starting basic and progressing as you learn the game. All units have basic and special attacks. These special attacks are triggered by pressing Y on an enemy rather than X to attack, once used they have a recharge time before being able to be used again.
Soldiers come in many types, from lowly grunts to Spartans. Each has their own upgrades and special attacks. Spartans in particular are one unit wrecking machines, able to capture and drive enemy vehicles and use powerful weapons. There are the signature Halo Warthogs which drive around recklessly like they do in other Halo games. Tanks and special units include Elephants, Rhinos etc. There are air vehicles including fighters and bombers, also airlifting equipment in the form of Pelicans. Special units like the Gremlin which release EMP burst wrecking themselves in the process. The Covenant has their own armoury of creatures and hardware, all familiar as adversaries from the Halo series.
Fights tend to become less than strategic. Lack of precision fast control means that you tend to select all available units and throw them at the enemy, selecting what you want attacked in order and clicking on the next as the first target is destroyed. There is scope for splitting up teams of units and using pincer attacks etc. Though in practice it's far too fiddly and the results tend to be the same anyway.
It's possible that the brief included making the RTS genre less complex and it certainly needs to be as a pad isn't suited to making complex control easy.
Base building and resource management is the real mainstay of an RTS. There is no real disappointment here. You start with a Fortress and attached to it are little plots that you can fill with other buildings of your choice. At the four corners of the base are turrets that can be upgraded with various types of weapon. These turrets take care of most base defence, freeing your units from having to guard it.
Cash to buy new buildings is in the form of supply pads. You need landing pads to bring down resources from your base ship in orbit. The more supply pads the more money builds up. Upgrading the supply pads also makes the cash count grow faster. Reactors supply power and also when upgraded increase your base tech level which allows more complex units to be manufactured. Other structures include barracks and field armouries which allow for better weapons to be created and added to your soldiers and hardware.
There is a unit cap for each single player mission which increases as the game progresses. You will find yourself butting against this level cap frequently. It really is trying to tell you that you have enough units to win. I tend to build huge armies in RTS games and then steamroll the opposition finding I only needed a third of what I have built to win.
At certain points in the game you come across units under different control than your own. These either do their own thing or become available to you to control. When you destroy a Covenant base the site become available to you to build a second base. There are environmental features in the landscape, rivers and mountains are impassable. Force field bridges can be turned on and off, hopefully off when the enemy are crossing them. You can also use your mother-ship to lance targets from orbit, there is of course a slow recharge time on this weapon.
Halo has its own Borg type enemy in the flood, the hive mind which takes over dead corpses of both sides and reanimates them for its own ends. The flood has its own structures and units.
Inventive mission design is evident in small doses, mostly the design is traditional RTS fare. The mission where you fight flood forces on the outside of the mother-ship as it flies into a solar system sized forerunner Dyson sphere has to go into the top ten of RTS mission designs.
The objectives in the missions are story based and varied, mustering scattered forces, retaking bases, storming bases, escaping from locations overrun by Covenant/flood and destroying various locations and pieces of hardware. I played on normal difficulty, only the occasional time limit and the final mission gave me any real trouble.
I played for roughly 10-15 hours and got 285 achievement points. I felt this was a little mean, the remainder of the achievements being given for playing on the harder difficulties and for the multiplayer component of the game.
The game allows you to save progress at any time which is welcome, A word of warning though to consider when you save. I saved once and found myself having to restart the level after finding I hadn’t left enough time to complete the against the clock objective, my own fault, however, a point to consider when playing yourself.
The multiplayer is fairly solid as seems to be expected in Halo games. They might be known more for their multiplayer than the single player. This is no exception; if you are into RTS multiplayer then I am sure you could find a lot here to occupy your time. There are many maps available. You can play as either side, Covenant or human, choosing from a range of commanders who have different super weapon abilities. You can play online or offline skirmishes against human or a.i. opponents. This lengthens the game considerably if you really love your RTS gaming.
RTS games can be graphically punishing, though I question the need. I tend to play with the zoom feature out at maximum, never zooming in close at all. I tend to keep the view facing north unless I need to move it to see units. What I am trying the get at is Command and conquer got by well with 2d sprites on bitmap landscapes, and personally I feel that nothing has been improved by the switch to 3D engines in RTS games.
Comparing this to other RTS on the Xbox360 like Command and Conquer and Supreme Commander this comes of as adequate and certainly has nothing to be ashamed off.
Music is excellent throughout the game, the Halo musical theme was good to start with, a mixture of Gothic synth chants and rock guitar on a truly cinematic scale. The music comes with familiarity due to being remixed from the other Halo games and as such is already in your head and suitably stirring. Weapon sounds are also familiar from the FPS games.
Being an RTS there are no real boss battles. The level design is adequate, cities, landscapes of the snow jungle and grassland variety. Animation of the units is fairly good for an RTS, though comparing it to animations in an FPS for example would be unfair.
Halo wars suffers from being a reasonably good concept on paper, or as a PC game. In practice the game is supposed to appeal to RTS fans, however, they will find it too simplified to tear them away from Starcraft, Command and Conquer and all the other huge PC RTS franchises. Where does that leave us, with Halo fans, caricatured as screaming 12 years olds who love to frag you and shout obscenities, will these fans buy Halo wars and enjoy it? I doubt it, which is a shame as this is a good game hampered by design choices firmly based on it being a console game. I think people who have dabbled with RTS games in the past and found them overcomplicated and intimidating would find this a good game to introduce them to RTS games in general.
Having just soundly rubbished the whole existence of the game I have to confess to enjoying Halo wars. The story is good fun and stylish, the replay-ability is there for those who want to spend time with the games multiplayer.
Microsoft obviously wanted to broaden the Halo franchise, I can’t help thinking that a Mass effect style RPG or Arbiter skinned God of War would be more in keeping with the roots than an RTS.
Story 8
Gameplay 7
Graphics 7
Level Design 7
A.i. 7
Total 7.2
On a planet called Harvest the humans have won back the planet after a long fight. The Covenant remains stubbornly dug in around a structure buried in ice and seem intent on keeping the humans away. The structure turns out to be forerunner in origin. It leads to another planet where the Covenant also make life hell. The plot unfolds to show that forerunner technology could also create Dyson spheres as well as Halos. The Covenant wants hidden forerunner super-weapons and it's up to the humans to stop them.
The characters and art design of the Halo universe are already well established, the Covenant with their religious zeal and the differing alien races that comprise them. The soldiers of the UNSC are also drawn with the same broad brush strokes. Flippant ship a.i. seems to be the norm, gruff commanders and gung ho soldiers.
Forge is a fairly cookie cutter main hero, although no harm to him he does his job. Anders comes through as showing a bit of character as the feisty female scientist trying to decipher all the Forerunner shenanigans.
The story excels in its cinematic action sequences. In particular the ship near miss entering the Dyson sphere is as good a sequence as any sci-fi movie of the last ten years. The obligatory scene where we see the Spartans in action will have hardcore Halo fans wiping away a tear.
This being a real time strategy game rather than an fps means that the cut scenes feel more distanced from the actual game action. It feels like you are watching a movie where you only get to see the next scene by completing a task. I know a lot of games are like this, it's just that there seems to be a bigger divorce between the story and the game than usual. That is not to say that the missions are unrelated to the story, they all follow the story perfectly. It's just a feeling I came away with due to the real time strategy genre being far from cinematic.
The story is interesting, I found myself eager to see the next scene. I felt nothing for the characters but the story itself I enjoyed. Grand space opera on a massive scale, clearly and simply told.
Halo Wars is a real time strategy game (RTS). They have taken the tried and tested RTS formula created by Westwood in Dune and Command and Conquer and simply applied it to Halo with no real attempt to do anything other than just that. This isn't an RTS that is trying to break any moulds or innovate in any way. The brief seems to have been to make a Command and Conquer clone with a Halo theme. If any innovation exists it's the fact that the whole thing is story driven.
If we work on that theory that all that was wanted was a solid RTS with a Halo skin then how did Ensemble studios do? Rather well actually, the game seems to tick all the genre stalwarts. Small square maps, tick. Fog of war that obscures your view until a unit is there to scout, tick. Clicking on a unit, moving the cursor to where you want to go or what you want to attack and pressing go, tick. This game would have been so much better if they had just let you plug in a mouse, I have posted rants about this before, so won’t go on too much here. How hard can it be to write a mouse driver? As it is the controls work, though the entire time you are playing the mantra "better with a mouse" is playing in your mind. The controls are designed to make it easier to fight against the pad, why bother though when mouse would have been easier? You can select all units on the screen easily and also all available units with one button press.
The units available to you progress throughout the game, starting basic and progressing as you learn the game. All units have basic and special attacks. These special attacks are triggered by pressing Y on an enemy rather than X to attack, once used they have a recharge time before being able to be used again.
Soldiers come in many types, from lowly grunts to Spartans. Each has their own upgrades and special attacks. Spartans in particular are one unit wrecking machines, able to capture and drive enemy vehicles and use powerful weapons. There are the signature Halo Warthogs which drive around recklessly like they do in other Halo games. Tanks and special units include Elephants, Rhinos etc. There are air vehicles including fighters and bombers, also airlifting equipment in the form of Pelicans. Special units like the Gremlin which release EMP burst wrecking themselves in the process. The Covenant has their own armoury of creatures and hardware, all familiar as adversaries from the Halo series.
Fights tend to become less than strategic. Lack of precision fast control means that you tend to select all available units and throw them at the enemy, selecting what you want attacked in order and clicking on the next as the first target is destroyed. There is scope for splitting up teams of units and using pincer attacks etc. Though in practice it's far too fiddly and the results tend to be the same anyway.
It's possible that the brief included making the RTS genre less complex and it certainly needs to be as a pad isn't suited to making complex control easy.
Base building and resource management is the real mainstay of an RTS. There is no real disappointment here. You start with a Fortress and attached to it are little plots that you can fill with other buildings of your choice. At the four corners of the base are turrets that can be upgraded with various types of weapon. These turrets take care of most base defence, freeing your units from having to guard it.
Cash to buy new buildings is in the form of supply pads. You need landing pads to bring down resources from your base ship in orbit. The more supply pads the more money builds up. Upgrading the supply pads also makes the cash count grow faster. Reactors supply power and also when upgraded increase your base tech level which allows more complex units to be manufactured. Other structures include barracks and field armouries which allow for better weapons to be created and added to your soldiers and hardware.
There is a unit cap for each single player mission which increases as the game progresses. You will find yourself butting against this level cap frequently. It really is trying to tell you that you have enough units to win. I tend to build huge armies in RTS games and then steamroll the opposition finding I only needed a third of what I have built to win.
At certain points in the game you come across units under different control than your own. These either do their own thing or become available to you to control. When you destroy a Covenant base the site become available to you to build a second base. There are environmental features in the landscape, rivers and mountains are impassable. Force field bridges can be turned on and off, hopefully off when the enemy are crossing them. You can also use your mother-ship to lance targets from orbit, there is of course a slow recharge time on this weapon.
Halo has its own Borg type enemy in the flood, the hive mind which takes over dead corpses of both sides and reanimates them for its own ends. The flood has its own structures and units.
Inventive mission design is evident in small doses, mostly the design is traditional RTS fare. The mission where you fight flood forces on the outside of the mother-ship as it flies into a solar system sized forerunner Dyson sphere has to go into the top ten of RTS mission designs.
The objectives in the missions are story based and varied, mustering scattered forces, retaking bases, storming bases, escaping from locations overrun by Covenant/flood and destroying various locations and pieces of hardware. I played on normal difficulty, only the occasional time limit and the final mission gave me any real trouble.
I played for roughly 10-15 hours and got 285 achievement points. I felt this was a little mean, the remainder of the achievements being given for playing on the harder difficulties and for the multiplayer component of the game.
The game allows you to save progress at any time which is welcome, A word of warning though to consider when you save. I saved once and found myself having to restart the level after finding I hadn’t left enough time to complete the against the clock objective, my own fault, however, a point to consider when playing yourself.
The multiplayer is fairly solid as seems to be expected in Halo games. They might be known more for their multiplayer than the single player. This is no exception; if you are into RTS multiplayer then I am sure you could find a lot here to occupy your time. There are many maps available. You can play as either side, Covenant or human, choosing from a range of commanders who have different super weapon abilities. You can play online or offline skirmishes against human or a.i. opponents. This lengthens the game considerably if you really love your RTS gaming.
RTS games can be graphically punishing, though I question the need. I tend to play with the zoom feature out at maximum, never zooming in close at all. I tend to keep the view facing north unless I need to move it to see units. What I am trying the get at is Command and conquer got by well with 2d sprites on bitmap landscapes, and personally I feel that nothing has been improved by the switch to 3D engines in RTS games.
Comparing this to other RTS on the Xbox360 like Command and Conquer and Supreme Commander this comes of as adequate and certainly has nothing to be ashamed off.
Music is excellent throughout the game, the Halo musical theme was good to start with, a mixture of Gothic synth chants and rock guitar on a truly cinematic scale. The music comes with familiarity due to being remixed from the other Halo games and as such is already in your head and suitably stirring. Weapon sounds are also familiar from the FPS games.
Being an RTS there are no real boss battles. The level design is adequate, cities, landscapes of the snow jungle and grassland variety. Animation of the units is fairly good for an RTS, though comparing it to animations in an FPS for example would be unfair.
Halo wars suffers from being a reasonably good concept on paper, or as a PC game. In practice the game is supposed to appeal to RTS fans, however, they will find it too simplified to tear them away from Starcraft, Command and Conquer and all the other huge PC RTS franchises. Where does that leave us, with Halo fans, caricatured as screaming 12 years olds who love to frag you and shout obscenities, will these fans buy Halo wars and enjoy it? I doubt it, which is a shame as this is a good game hampered by design choices firmly based on it being a console game. I think people who have dabbled with RTS games in the past and found them overcomplicated and intimidating would find this a good game to introduce them to RTS games in general.
Having just soundly rubbished the whole existence of the game I have to confess to enjoying Halo wars. The story is good fun and stylish, the replay-ability is there for those who want to spend time with the games multiplayer.
Microsoft obviously wanted to broaden the Halo franchise, I can’t help thinking that a Mass effect style RPG or Arbiter skinned God of War would be more in keeping with the roots than an RTS.
Story 8
Gameplay 7
Graphics 7
Level Design 7
A.i. 7
Total 7.2
Gears of War 2 Review
The story picks up a short period after the first game, after the light mass bomb ended Gears 1. The locust have been regrouping from their severe bloody nose. Jacinto is the last city safe for humanity due to is foundation on bedrock. Dom is searching for his Missing wife Maria and delta squad are garrisoned in Jacinto. Imulsion sickness is on the rise as a new plague which can’t come at a more inopportune time.
Rather than cower and wait for the locust war machine to get back to full strength and attack Jacinto. The human leadership has decided to take the fight to the locust again and launches the landown assault on the locust breeding grounds. Using huge rigs with drills that send two man grind lifts down into the underground, every last soldier is sent underground to take on the locust horde.
Underground things don’t go exactly as planned and Delta squad find a new locust super weapon that can destroy a city. Marcus takes on the task to destroy the weapon. Also introduced is a backstory about secret government experiments, which raise a lot of questions as to the origin of the locust. Marcus and the rest of Delta squads journey takes them into the heart of the locust territory and an encounter with the queen herself, who is nothing like you will expect. There is also the revelation that all is not well within the locust ranks and they may be as factional as humanity. Dom’s personal quest to be reunited with his wife has an inevitability that will bring a lump to your throat, and possibly a tear to your eye.
The finale sees a desperate plan that will hurt humanity almost as much as it will the locust and leaves the events to come in the last game anyone’s guess. There are also plenty of unanswered questions about the locust and the experiments. Marcus’ father it seems will also play a role.
The characters have been given greater depth, Dom’s quest to find Maria may seem tacked on, but it does provide strong emotion. You understand that though these men might seem like stupid adrenaline junkies that love to fight, they are also people with hearts that can be broken and they are all on the edge of extinction. Cole is as brain dead as before, I found myself actually warming to Baird, who this time seems to play a mothering role to the rest of the squad and is constantly tired of them breaking equipment and doing stupid things.
Gears 1 had a fairly confused story, there was a great premise, but some confusing game type make work plot elements made for a muddled pointless plot arc. The characters were big muscled and dim witted and mostly unlikeable apart from Marcus. That didn’t matter though, because as a game it really shone, and the story was adequate. Epic had two options here, leave things as they were and probably not have any dent in sales whatsoever, or takes the story and the characters and work on them. Everything has been pumped up this time around. The characters have all been given bigger biographies and story arcs. The locust have been beefed up from being generic cannon fodder evil bad guys to a species with a hidden history and their own factions and internal struggles. The possibility of their origin being alien is also hinted at, as is the possibility that they may be a human creation or humans have been poking them in the past with the experimental secret government lab stick.
The worms and underground food chain have been introduced, there is also a broadening of the Cog government and the introduction of the President as a character.
In short when Cliff Blezinski said that it was going to be bigger and more badass, he was also talking about the story, not just the bangs and the flashes. For me this was the biggest surprise of all. I never expected to have a teary eye whilst playing Gears of War.
Gears uses a third person view which combines with a cover system. I am not going to go into detail about the controls, as most people will have played Gears 1 and know what to expect. If you haven’t by the way you really should, it is a great game.
Many new elements have been added to the game play. If I was to criticize Gears one I would say that it was a series of set piece fights in box like areas carrying on until all the enemies were killed and the door to the next area opened. Though any game can be boiled down into a few words like that to make it sound bad that is essentially what Gears 1 was. Epic has addressed that criticism mostly by breaking from the formula for short periods and opening up the areas in the game to make the square footage of real estate bigger. This means that the player can be more mobile, rather than being penned in a small area of cover for large parts of the time.
There are many large and small additions to the gameplay, little additions that seem obvious but were missing in Gears 1 like climbing ladders, your chainsaw opening light barricades and exploding barrels have been added.
The amount of enemies on screen has been given a huge boost. While you don’t actually fight hundreds of locust at once you do find yourself in the middle of battles that include lots more of each side. There are also helicopters and Reavers buzzing around to add to the chaos. The first game felt like four men alone against large odds, and although that does happen this time around, there is much more sense that you aren’t the only ones fighting this war.
The Reavers are flying locust horse analogues ridden by two grubs, these were mainly cannon fodder for emplaced gun sections in the first game, this time around they fly around freely and can land and stomp you to death if their guns don’t shoot you first.
The locust now have the ability to revive injured soldiers, shoot and wound a grub and he will crawl along the ground and eventually die from blood loss, however if one of his squad get to him they can revive him back to full fighting strength again. This system was employed in the first game for your own squad, but not for the locust. There is also an enemy type later on in the game called a Kantus Guard and they can revive downed soldiers without actually going near them. This means that taking out the Kantus becomes a priority or you just fight the same soliders in an infinite loop.
The first novelty game mechanic comes in the form of your ride on the rig. Basically an on rails section where you fight through various set pieces from the deck of the rig. The rig gun is powerful and only limited by overheating, which can be aided by cooling the gun using the right bumper. Boarders with grappling hooks and the huge Brumaks only seen in cut scene in the first game are targets for your gun here. The only enemy from the last game not to get much screen time is the spider like corpsers. They do put in an appearance here, in the distance jumping around like the spiders from eight legged freaks.
The one enemy that I did want removed from the first game was the exploding lambent wretches. These were so annoying, simple enemies that run at you and explode in large numbers. They are thankfully gone, although the normal wretches are still present. Tickers are their replacement as annoying exploding enemies, though these seem a little easier to dispose off.
As with the first game you spilt the squad at a few points in the game and go off in different directions, most often you can see the other team mates in the distance and end up helping them by providing covering fire or flanking enemy positions for them.
Weapons in games are never my strong point, I am not a weapon geek, I can’t be bothered with technical details of weapons. The most prominent of the new weapons is the mortar, which you fire, and set a distance then watch as the world explodes where you fired. Like most powerful weapons it’s rationed fairly heavily. The flamethrower puts in an appearance and is ok as weapons go but not really a stand out weapon. The Hammer of Dawn puts in a cameo late in the game. There are some small additions and changes to the other guns, however the lancer remains a staple weapon throughout.
Moveable cover is introduced in several ways. There are small rock centipedes that are great to crouch behind and are almost indestructible. Shooting their food supply from cave roof onto the ground can herd the centipedes around. This makes them shuffle over to the food and eat, while all the time a firefight blazes around them. In the Locust city there are walls that raise and lower at the press of a lever. This makes for fun and games as the enemy try and lower your cover leaving you exposed.
Finally you can pick a shield dropped by enemies and also hold downed enemies in front of you as a shield.
The locust horde has been added to since the first game, Grubs can ride blood mounts into battle which are monstrous creatures which bring the enemy close fast and can also attack you themselves once the rider has been killed with a swish of their tail. The boomer type enemy has been given different weapons and a new look to make the grinder chain gunner and mace and shield wielding varieties
Similar to the rigs are the prison barges, huge locust creatures with a structure akin to a sailing ship on their backs. There are several fights in and around these impressive creatures.
Top of the list for gross bodily intimacy is the section of the game where you run around Fantastic Voyage style inside a huge creature. You must avoid being crushed by peristalsis, being digested in the stomach in pools of acid, and don’t get me started on the choking gas in the bowels. You also make your way into the beast’s circulatory system and have to avoid drowning in blood.
Someone does needs to let the designers know that nature does not make bowels with dead ends; it would be fatal to have dead ends filling up with feces with nowhere for it to go.
Small additions in the secret lab area include the carrying of a box between two team members, which limits them to pistols while they carry it. There are laser tripped security guns to deal with also. Razorhail is introduced here as incredibly dangerous rain, which means getting out from under a roof sees you being chopped to pieces, it reminds me of the Kryl sections in the first game.
Driving is present and again much more has been made of it. Much bigger environments and a vehicle with proper weight and inertia make it look much less shoehorned in than Gears 1. You drive up into the mountains and have various skirmishes with Locust and some fun navigating cracking frozen lakes. Mention must be made of the Scooby Doo moment in the dark. If you have watched Scooby Doo at all, you will know what I am talking about.
There are many sections of the game where traditional fight box game play is missing in action. You encounter an underground river system and there are fights on and around gunboats. Tethered fish like creatures at either side powers these boats. This section ends with the boat plunging down a waterfall and being attacked by a huge leviathan sea monster.
There is the section where you fly on the back of a Reaver and the game becomes something akin to Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon. There is a section where you get control of a Brumak and ride it into locust territory. At one point you have to hack into a locust computers system.
While this is all good and well sometimes novelty game mechanics can overstay their welcome, this is not the case here with each change having it's time in the spotlight and not being repeated.
The game takes place above ground in the ruined landscapes of Sera and as defined in the first game there is a grey broken vision of a once beautiful city. The architecture is grand and striking in a kind of fascist way. The underground caves are done as well as underground caves can look, there has been some attempt to vary and add to the cave scenes, however a cave is a dark hole in the ground. The city of the locusts is well done with a busy Goudy inspired look.
The character detail is again amazing with all of Delta Squad and the Locust being eye catching.
The game engine is obviously cranked up several notches from the first game with an awful lot more happening at once and little slowdown or glitching noticeable.
There are many fights with monsters dotted around the game, Reavers, Brumaks, Corpsers etc. Two battles stand out as being traditional boss battles rather than just another monster you have to fight to get past. There is a long complicated showdown with a sea monster and a fight with a super locust named Skorge, the queen’s personal guard.
The final showdown at the end of the game is, well, far too easy. Maybe this is in response to criticism of the first game, where the final boss was annoying. I didn't really feel any disappointment at this easy end scene, it was actually a little bit of a relief after all the effort of getting to the end not to have a boss battle that takes me hours and hours to learn patterns of and learn the skills needed to defeat it. I can see why some might not like that though and they do have a point I have to grudgingly admit.
There were no problems with checkpoints. I can’t remember a time when I was placed further back than I would have liked by death. This is really quite refreshing for an action game.
Multiplayer was an interesting experience for me. I enjoy multiplayer games, which have modes like Rainbow Six Vegas where teams of human players take on the a.i. Horde mode promised to be exactly that. It was and it was great fun, I was enjoying it very much. I play multiplayer games online mostly with a group of friends. They were all enjoying long sessions of horde mode for the first few days of release, indeed I was finding it hard to get to the single player game for constant invites to horde mode games. Then it all stopped, I don't know what happened. Were people burned out with horde mode, were there other problems with the online that I was not seeing. I don't know, my friends stopped playing online and went back to Gears 1 and Modern Warfare. I was happy because I could get around to the single player; I have never gone back to the online component. I know you might feel disappointed reading this but I am not an online gamer really. I play only with friends for the social aspects. I can't really be counted as being qualified for reviewing online components of games. For what it's worth then I enjoyed horde mode and had no problems getting into a game with my friends. Any other aspects of the multiplayer I can't talk about.
I did my first play through on hardcore difficulty and got 365 achievement points for my trouble, I hope to go back soon and try some co-op and the insane difficulty level.
Scoring
Graphics 9
Gameplay 9
Story 9
Level Design 9
A.i. 7
Total 8.6
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Review
Nathan Drake is a supposed descendant of Sir Francis Drake. He and a television journalist named Elena are working together to find the coffin of Sir Francis Drake. Elena's t.v. company is funding the expeditions and Nathan the hired hand/jack of all trades. Nathan knows when they find the coffin that it is going to be empty and he is right, inside is Drakes journal. Elena wants to know what's in it and is upset that Nathan tells her he was only using her for the funding and has no intention of letting her share in the secrets of the journal which he knew was there all along.
The pair are attacked by pirates and survive thanks to the Intervention of Sully, a friend and father figure for Nathan. Sully urges Nathan to ditch Elena and go after the gold of Eldorado which the journal shows the way to. With Elena firmly ditched the two head into the jungles and find that the spanish took the gold a long time ago.
Thinking the trail has gone cold a despondent Sully confesses to huge debts and very nasty men after him to reclaim them. On the way back the unexpected fInding a Uboat in the jungle prompts an investigation and the trail gets warm again. Sullys debtors turn up and seemingly kill him, whilst running from them Nathan runs into Elena who has followed the pair. Nathan and Elena make a truce and set off after the treasure together. They travel by plane to a seemingly uninhabited Island where they are shot down and spiral into the adventure of several lifetimes.
Nathan is an interesting hero, likable and funny. Elena his reluctant at first love interest. The enemies also are given fairly good characterization, Roman is a huge cliche and reminiscent of the bad guy in Die Hard 1. Navarro is a good nemesis although is fairly underused. Eddie is a great bad guy, seemingly incompetent but funny and even likable at times.
The heart of the story concerns the theme of treasure hunting, or greed basically. The characters go to huge lengths to recover gold. The bill for cars, boats and helicopters and ammunition probably comes close to the money the idol will be worth. Well maybe not, though my point is that an awful lot of money is spent on the pursuit of more money. The twist in the tail about the Golden Idol of El Dorado is interesting, however not fully explained. It may be a theme for the next game, and I hope it is, not the idol turning up again, but whatever supernatural power it possesses and what is behind that power.
Now come the inevitable problems with the plot. There is little actually wrong with the story itself, it's a workable Indiana Jones script that never got made. The problems come with integrating it into the game and the mistakes made were so easily rectifiable.
On several occasions you are instructed to do certain things, like go up to a tower to do something, sometimes this order is given without the motivation first being established. I spent some of my play time wondering why I was actually going somewhere. For example at the government house you arrive and Elena waits at a certain point with no explanation. She tells you that the zip line from a nearby tower will do the trick. What trick? I go to the zip line after much fighting and puzzling and use it. To find that we were wanting to go through the door Elena is standing in the general area of. The game just never actually pointed out that the door was where we wanted to go, and we could get inside the building an alternative way by using the zip line.
My next major gripe with the storytelling was a problem again with the integration of game and story. On several occasions you crack fairly complex combination puzzles with the aid of the Drake's journal. You go into these unexplored areas which have never seen human occupation for hundreds of years expecting to find treasures. What you find mostly are mercenaries? How did the enemies get here before you? I thought you had the super secret journal? Now I know why they did this. It's a game, you have to have enemies in a game. All could so easily have been sorted with just making these secret areas smaller and have you coming back out into public areas before meeting the bad guys, or as actually does happen once near the end you see the enemies blowing their way into the secret catacombs rather than work through the puzzles. It is a nit pick, however every time it happened I groaned and was taken out of the story.
I enjoyed the story and look forward to Nathan's next adventures, my advice and why I gave this an 8 for story rather than a 9 is to wrap up loose ends unless they are being kept for the next game, and if so signpost that. Keep the motivation before the action and keep the thugs out of the secret tombs only you are supposed to be able to get into.
Uncharted is a game split into two distinct and separate halves, well that's not strictly true, there are actually three gameplay styles. These have a rough 50, 30 and 20 percent weighting to them. There is the shooting sequences which take the form of a third person shooter, the puzzling elements which take the form of a tomb raider style 3D platform puzzler an there is significant sections of the game where you ride on a jet ski or drive a jeep.
The 3D platform puzzling section borrows heavily from Tomb raider. However it takes Lara as its template and throws out the annoying parts of Tomb Raider and keeps only the fun. You explore areas at times with other a.i. characters which allows for story to flow as conversation, rather than the slightly mad talking to herself that Lara does. You encounter various puzzles in the form of environmental obstacles and also traps and locks left behind by the long dead.
There are also long sections where you clamber around the ruins like an acrobat jumping from ledge to ledge hanging on by your fingertips to crumbling masonry, swinging on vines. The animation of Drake outclasses Lara's smoother moves in that he feels heavier, more human and less like a machine. He stumbles and scrambles, looks like it hurts and that he's going to fall.
In Tomb Raider you are presented with huge puzzles and sometimes it all feels wearisome. Here they realized that and the platform puzzling is shorter for the most part and thanks to more obvious handholds and use of a fixed camera in places makes it much easier to negotiate these sections. The result is you get all the great fun gameplay of a Tomb raider game without any real frustration. It take the difficulty out of the game but since this is roughly fifty percent a third person shooter then the ease of the 3D platform puzzling section of the game isn't a problem it's a novelty fun game mechanic that breaks up the shooting and allows for some story telling outside of the cut scenes.
There is a later section of the game which throws out all I have said above and brings you firmly into Lara territory, however it can be forgiven as it's near the end of the game and a break from the norm rather than the rule. There is also a few unintuitive bits in the platforming, for example at one point I kept dying on a crumbling rock jump, until I realized that you had to wait for the rock to actually crumble and fall a bit before jumping, which was a solitary experience, and thus unprepared for as jumping quickly seemed to be the solution on all the other crumbling rock sections.
On the puzzles, which are varied, you are given help in the form of consulting Drake's journal which gives clues or solutions to the puzzles. Sully and Elena also pipe up with useful information as well.
The shooting sections of the game are it's mainstay, View is third person, with aiming using R1 to aim and L1 to shoot. You can get yourself into cover where popping out to shoot is fairly essential to survival, running and gunning is not really a viable option if you want to live long. Some cover collapses after a certain amount of pounding and the enemies will work their way to flanking you unless you suppress them with fire. They also like to use grenades to get you out of cover. Ammunition and new guns are found on the bodies of the dead enemies.
The shooting takes place in the same maps as the 3D platform puzzling however you stay firmly on the ground during the firefights and enemies are cleared before moving on the the platforming.
There are a variety of enemies, mostly mercenaries, pirates and swat team type enemies. They use all of the available weapons, including rocket launchers, shotguns etc. They use emplaced guns which you can liberate and use as well.
There are a few environmental obstacles to negotiate here as well, shooting padlocks from locked doors, balancing on logs using the sixaxxis, sliding on zip lines. There are also primitive spring loaded traps to avoid. There are also treasures to be found for trophies.
My main criticism of the game is the way bullets interact with your enemies. It seemed to me that you could spray a mercenary with a machine gun in the chest and it would take an awful lot of bullets to kill him. If you carefully shot them three or four times in the chest then they went down like a sack of potatoes. I played around with this and found that there seems to an "I'm hit" animation that is triggered when you shoot someone. Whilst this short staggering around screaming animation is playing they don't seem to take any more damage, so bullets fired into them when they are in the animation cycle seem wasted. If you wait and plug them after each animation then they go down a lot quicker and you save a hell of a lot of bullets that are in short supply anyway. Once I realized this I got on an awful lot better in the game, it's a shame as it takes you out of the game and reminds you that this is a game when you have to do something so obviously game like to get ahead.
Like most third person shooters of the last few years the game is broken up into what I call "fight room" like sections. Basically you enter an area, enemies enter in groups from various points and you shoot at each other until you eventually conquer all the enemies, an exit then becomes available and you can progress. I criticize these games for their box like fight rooms, however, Uncharted whilst strictly adhering to this formula does it in a way that the fight rooms feel natural and less obviously cubes with cover scattered around.
There is variety in the weapons with all the usual bases covered, pistols, shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles, rockets and grenades of various types.
In three distinct sections of the game you ride around on a jet ski. The physics for the waves and surf are excellent here, rivaling Wave-race. As you drive around a river system avoiding exploding barrels in the water and enemies from the shore who take pot shots at you. There is some puzzling here as well with gates to unlock.The pacing of the longest jet ski section is made slow by the need to take it easy and shoot all the enemies and barrels. Charging like a lunatic, driving full speed is suicide as the barrels are everywhere and hitting them with the jet ski makes them explode. I can't help feeling that this section would have been a lot more fun if they had just let you drive like a crazy man and enjoy bouncing around on the water.
There is also a section where you ride on a jeep using its mounted gun as Elena drives. You take out a whole fleet of vehicles during this long car chase section which is enormous fun.
The A.i. is above average, tending not to do anything obviously stupid. They take cover, move when grenades get lobbed into that cover and generally try and get close enough to flank you if you don't shoot directly at them to suppress them. One thing that I haven't seen a.i. do previously, though I am sure it's not entirely new is hide and lay in wait for you. At certain points enemies seem to be hiding and only attack when you get close enough to melee or give you a shotgun blast in the face. This tactic is shocking and entertaining at first, however once you know where the enemies are hiding it becomes easy to blast them as they lurk.
Later in the game you encounter a different type of enemy and the cover tactics go out the window for panic stricken run and gunning with the shotgun.
Mention must be made of the good helper a.i. which tends to only hang around when there is not much going on, but occasionally is present in firefights.
There is only really one traditional boss fight which comes at the end of the game and is a mixture of quicktime events and shooting.
The environments are all wonderfully detailed, the jungles lush, the ruins crumbly and everything has that real world feel to it that suggests many man hours of hard work and care. The game has it's own particular look with what I can only describe as a skinny look to the characters, which makes a welcome contrast with the bulky space marine that seems so common in other games. Nathan isn't built like a tank, he is more of a Bruce Lee.
The graphics in this game are great, everything moves at a steady frame rate. The water effects are particularly noteworthy. Many small touches have been added to the animation of the characters to make them feel more real. If I was to nitpick about the graphics I would suggest that the frame rate is being kept up by a motion blur disguised reduction in texture detail as you pan the camera faster than a certain speed. Which is very noticeable. Hardly a problem but something that shows the smoke and mirrors that cover the limitations of the engine.
The music is adequate and sound effects excellent.
Checkpoint distribution was fair and intuitive at all times, I can't recall ever being put back further than I would have liked.
I received 42% of the trophies for one play through on the hard difficulty. The in game clock says that I played for 11 hours, though I have to say I would have guessed at 15 hours if there wasn't an in game clock. TIme flies when you are having fun I suppose
There is no multiplayer in the game.
I really did enjoy playing this game, reading back the review I sound quite negative, but this game is a really good roller coaster ride and I had fun from start to finish. I wanted to play when I was away from it and will come back to it again and try on the harder difficulty setting which I unlocked by completing it when I get the time. This game is definitely worth a full purchase, especially as it's now available on the platinum range of half price games.
Scoring
Graphics 9
Gameplay 9
Story 8
Level Design 9
A.i. 8
Total 8.6
Quantum of Solace Review
The story presented here is that of Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale. Both stories are told with the major portions of Casino Royale being shown as a flashback while bond explains his history to his latest bond girl. The game takes the action set pieces of the movies and turns them in game levels. Story is limited to voice over and slick graphics which are meant to represent MI6 computers. As it stands the story seems disjointed, with flow and motivation unclear. I have seen Casino Royale, but to date haven’t seen Quantum of Solace. The story of Casino Royale I could follow, the other movie I am lost with. In short if you have seen the movies you will probably know the story here anyway, so it feels like they haven’t really tried that hard to convey the story well, just the bare bones. Which is fair enough, this is a movie game, it expects you to be a fan of the movie and therefore already know where things are going and any major surprises and twists are known long before they occur.
I suppose this is the curse of the movie game, you have to include the story, but the story has no real effect or impact. You have to simply go through the motions with token gestures. Movie game cut scenes are probably the most skipped in any game genre.
How do I review a game like this from a story point of view then? I didn’t like the way it was presented, I felt lost at times and there was no real connection with any of the characters. I have to give it a bad mark for story, but I also have to give it some leeway due to the aforementioned problems. Why spend hundreds of man hours making perfectly rendered recreations of the movie when you could simply use portions of the movie. There is the solution right there, if an officially licensed movie game can’t include the dull info dump portions of the movie, then what can?
The game is primarily a first person shooter, however it borrows from Rainbow six Vegas in it’s first to third person cover mechanic. This is implemented well with the ability to dash to cover. Getting in and out of cover is fairly easy once you have a little practice. When running around you have the usual sighting down your gun for increased accuracy by holding the left trigger.
The game is a corridor shooter with a penchant for large rectangular areas with plenty of cover. A finite amount of enemies populate the environments which allows for a paced battle. No need here for a Call of Duty like urge to press on recklessly for fear of repeatedly shooting the same enemies forever.
Variety is found in the form of small mini games, there is balancing along narrow pipes and beams, with the controller being used to balance, I can imagine the wii and PS3 version using motion control, and without motion control these mechanics are more irksome than fun on the Xbox 360. I would question their inclusion even on a system with motion control, since it just seems to be a tacked on mechanic to include motion control for the sake of it.
There are quicktime events included here as well, my least favourite game mechanic, why they think that I would want to press random buttons rather than just enjoy the cut scenes I don’t know. Quicktime is used as a lazy excuse for boss battles in this game. Several times you are expected to watch the button presses rather than the interesting cut scene that plays alongside them.
Security locks are also opened by the use of quick button pressing, this time using the d-pad.
There are mobile phones scattered around the levels, these provide the collectibles and also some tips as to locations of hidden weapons etc.
In some levels stealth is rewarded with less enemies to deal with. The old staple of having security cameras with a set movement pattern shown by a beam of light is employed. You also have to shoot patrolling enemies with a silencer or sneak up behind them and melee them. Some security cameras can be hacked to give a view of upcoming areas as reconnaissance.
There are a few other small mechanics included to break from the norm and add variety, including some scenes where you use emplaced guns or when you edge along ledges avoiding people or searchlight beams.
Highlights for me were the parkour chase through the building site which was reminiscent of mirrors edge. The Venice scene where the building is sinking was done well and the poisoning scene where you rush to your car to defibrillate yourself.
The levels are all based on locations from the movie and as such are fairly good recreations of real world areas. Mansion houses, sewer tunnels, rooftops, opera house, caves, Venice, building sites, shanty towns, science centres, airports, trains, casinos, boats and hotels.
The game is said to use the Infinity Ward engine from Call of Duty 4. The frame rate is fairly solid even in the larger open areas. The graphics are not quite up to Call of Duty 4 standards but that is more a lack of imagination and effort than a fault of the engine. Put simply the effort put into the detail of the levels isn’t as great as the engine allows. Possibly that is the fault of the time given to the team to turn the game around.
The graphics are excellent, it’s just a shame that the game is coming out in the same time period as Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War, as both make it look inferior. Given a January release this game would have probably been much better received. That said examples of the state of the Xbox 360 art can’t be held above every game as a yardstick and there is little to complain about with Quantum of Solace’s efforts.
There are a few boss battles. Mostly of the quick time variety. The remaining one are straight fights with enemies. The last few include the shooting of certain environment triggers to cause explosions which end the fights.
Music is excellent, as should be expected in a movie franchise like 007 the movie soundtrack is utilised well.
Checkpoints are well placed and each level is fairly short with a few exceptions. I am finding it hard to remember any times where the checkpoints were unfair which is a plus point for the game.
Achievements are fairly well handled with points for completing every second level or so and each level having a set task in it to gain points from. Simple things like killing certain people with one shot or shooting satellite dishes on the rooftops. There are the usual collectible and multiplayer achievements.
I completed the game on Agent level which is one below the 007 ultra hard setting. I got 360 points. Not the most generous but the remaining achievements should be within reach of another play through which I would not be adverse too. I will probably come back to this game and play some areas on easy for achievements and play it again on hardest setting for the achievements.
Scoring
Graphics 8
Gameplay 8
Story 6
Level Design 8
A.i. 7
Total 7.4
Dead Space Review
Dead space is a new intellectual property, however Electronic Arts have done a lot to make it broader than the game itself. There have been comic books to download, a full length animated prequel movie, and various website features. Which if the player was interested, make this game into a movie sequel or game of a comic book rather than just a brand new bare-naked game thrust out into the world.
The story is set in a future where man has colonised the stars. The setting is the Aegis system far from Earth. A mining ship called the Ishimura has lost communication and your character is part of a team sent out to investigate and help with repairs. On board the USG Kellion are Captain Hammond, a scientist/engineer called Kendra, your character an engineer named Isaac Clarke and two red-shirts ready to die at the first sign of trouble.
The Ishimura, which is a huge ship designed for ripping huge continent sized chunks out from the surface of planets, is blacked out when the heroes arrive. The landing goes very badly seeing the Kellion crash land into the docking bay. The ship is at first deserted, however it does not take long for monsters to crawl from the air ducts and start ripping the red-shirts to shreds. The story unfolds over 12 chapters or levels.
The core of the story revolves around an artefact called the marker, which was found on the planet and brought up to the Ishimura. The crew then exhibited signs of increasing insanity and eventually the dead began coming back to life in mutilated forms and killing the rest of the crew. As the playing field stands at the start of the game it’s three living humans against a thousand mutilated corpse-killing machines. The ship is being filled with organic material, with occasional screaming mutilated corpses hanging from the walls. The atmosphere is being changed for an unknown purpose. Hell in space is the setting for this game.
The heroes primarily want to escape the nightmare death trap, however along the way they are forced into learning more and more about what is going on. What force powers the marker, is it alien, why are the dead rising, using organic matter like clay to form new horrific perversions. The game portrays various sides in the run up to the disaster, govenrment / military tensions with a religion called unitology which seems to have a strong following amonst the Ishimura’s crew. Unitology is a cult centred around an indiviual called Altman who believes that an alien artefact was found on Earth and covered up by the government. The Unitologists believe that the marker is a sign from God and that they will have to die to ascend. This leads to some disturbing finds for the player during the game.
The story wears a lot of its influences on its sleeve, Event Horizon, The Thing etc. It also has it’s own identity. The plot would probably make a reasonably successful movie, and for a game that is quite an achievement.
I felt a little confused by the plot at the end, some of the mysteries are not explained and the player is left to wonder on certain aspects of the marker and the necromorphs. Possibly this is due to the already announced sequel, so letting us know the full nature of the marker might not be prudent. It did leave me scratching my head about Nicole’s motivation in helping Isaac. I have my own theories as to what happened but clarity is missing, again I have to concede that this might be intentional.
The view is third person, with the usual analogue sticks for movement and camera. Issac will hold up his weapon and aim by holding the left trigger and laser sights are used on most weapons. Running is with the left bumper and use is A. Pressing Y brings up an inventory map and objectives screen, which does not pause the game. This can be annoying when you are trying to refuel certain pieces of equipment whilst under attack. Most items reload automatically, however stasis which can be of great use in a crisis needs inventory intervention. Health thankfully has a button dedicated to use it from your inventory.
The map is a 3D affair and can be quite hard to read. Thankfully, and probably for this reason pressing down on the right thumb stick will make Issac consult a form of ship gps which paints a laser line for a second on the floor to point you towards your next objective.
Combat with the necromorphs is mostly weapons based, though Isaac does have a mean stomp and right hook. There are around 8 weapons, from the standard plasma cutter pistol to flame-throwers and rapid fire machine guns. Each has a secondary fire. The plasma cutter is the default weapon and it’s possible to go through the game using it exclusively. This is due to the weapons upgrade system that sees each weapon being fairly under powered to start with and deadly to the necromorphs when powered up. The snag is that you will need to play through the game around three times to power up the weapons. The power ups come in forms of power nodes, which are scattered in lockers around the ship. Therefore there is no easy way to gain the power nodes without playing through the whole game. This is made easier by the fact that you can restart with the character from a previous play through and at least have the advantage of your armour and abilities all being fully ranked up.
Upgrades for all equipment consist of putting power nodes into spaces on a grid to link to new abilities. This is done at special upgrade sites dotted around the ship.
Isaac has his armour suit which can be powered up with bigger capacity air tanks and stronger armour. He has kinesis and stasis abililities. Kinesis allows you to pick up free moving objects in the environment and move or hurl them around. Stasis is fired like a weapon and will slow time for objects and monsters hit with the blast for a short period of time. Upgrades to both abilities will allow for longer duration or greater strength of effect.
There is a large variety of enemies, although for the most part the humanoid slasher type will be main foe. There are baby type enemies which come from the clone vats of the ship, tentacles that come from holes in the wall and try and pull you in or crush you. Bat type monsters which transfrom the dead human bodies into necromorph soldiers. Wall mounted tentacled monstrosities that need many tentacles severed to take them down. Scorpion like amalgamations of flesh tend to attack in zero gravitiy environments. Once the military ship enters the story the necromoprhs created from the dead soldiers are harder to kill and faster due to the cybernetic implants that the soldiers possessed.
There are sections of the ship where gravity is either missing or can be turned on and off at will. In other areas damage to the artificial gravity sees areas where sections of floor can smash you into the ceiling if stepped upon. This can be used to lure and kill unsuspecting necromorphs as well as get yourself killed.
In the zero gravity sections you can push off the floor and jump to almost any part of the walls or ceiling. This leads to some disorientating puzzling and fighting.
Puzzles involve the use of stasis to slow fast moving things and kinesis to move objects around. Some of these objects are very large pieces of machinery. For the most part the puzzles are fairly easy to solve and won’t give anyone a headache. There is one puzzle that I found to be totally unintuitive, where you are asked to swap our broken antenna in a huge communications array. The order of the pieces in the puzzle was hinted at, and the combinations many. I ended up looking at a walkthrough to save me half an hour of swapping pieces of the puzzle.
In addition to the gravity problems there are some areas where the ship has been damaged and opened to space. In these areas Isaac’s air supply runs down quickly. There is also an area of the ship open to space and frozen solid which gives a change of look to the corriodors.
The premise of the game lends itself to a repetitive level design with hundreds of corridors and block like rooms. After all this is a working space ship, space is at a premium and nothing is designed with aesthetics in mind. That said the designers have took a boring template and made something, which not actually beautiful to look at like say Prince of Persia is far from dull and repetitive.
The corridors and rooms are plentiful, however, there is also the large glass walled bridge, the hydroponics bay, engine room and medical bay.
The mission objectives serve the story well, and while you may feel that some actions could be make work for game length sake, for the most part everything feels logical. You find yourself, fixing trams and asteroid defence systems, finding the captains codes to access the ship computer, blowing up barricades, refuelling engines, sending and S.O.S. etc.
A particularly good moment sees you enter an area of the ship where another smaller ship has crashed into the side of the Ishimura, here weapons from the small ship have spilled out into the bay. You must clear the radioactive weapons before the smaller ship will let you inside due to the radiation alarm. You have to open the bay to space by breaking the airlock and then get all the weapons outside before your air runs out or the necromorphs get you.
Supplies and ammo are a constant worry, ammo never seems to be enough and you scour the environment for more. Objects are hidden in crates and wall lockers, enemies drop items when they die. You can also sell useless items in the shop and buy ammo or weapons.
Saving is accomplished by the use of wall mounted save points. At first I found this annoying as I sometimes seemed to accomplish a lot only to have it all taken away when I died, I soon learned that although there aren’t that many save points they are usually situated in fairly central areas of the level. This makes it possible to make a quick trip to them before opening a new door or attempting something risky. With this mentality you quickly become a paranoid saver and the problem disappears. While I would prefer to be able to save at any time, this system is adequate once you learn it.
There is some small sections where gameplay changes radically, for example there is a shooting range and a section where you man a gun to shoot incoming asteroids. These are diversions and nothing more, and I am glad they are, too much of a mini game can sour the fun. Here only the asteroid shooting is pertinent to progress.
There are five boss enemies to destroy, each one has it’s weak spots and patterns like most traditional boss battles. The Leviathan midway through the game is a good boss battle and a fairly impressive design as well. The final boss, may be much more traditional, but it does not suffer from that and is great fun and aesthetically pleasing. The remaining bosses leave less of an impression and are of the shoot the weak spot and run away variety. I don’t usually have much love for boss battles and while I was cursing the leviathan until I defeated it I was enjoying myself.
I received 595 achievement points playing on the hard difficulty, which took 16 hours. I was disappointed that the newly unlocked harder difficulty mode sent you back to a basic character. What would have made much more sense was to have your powered up character start a new game on the harder difficulty.
This is what I feel is missing in the games industry, writing which would stand for a fairly decent sci-fi movie. A big effort in the backstory department and solid gameplay, no frills, nothing that innovative, just a well made game that isn’t a sequel or feature a celebrity. Not something trying to be new and innovative, just a solid game.
Graphics 8
Gameplay 8
Story 9
Level design 9
A.I. 7
Total 8.2
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