Given my current employment situation, I have to chose between comptuer games and regular square meals. Mind you, I do have 15% body fat, 5% of which I could stand to lose, so computer games it is.
I've played a couple of hours of Overlord 2, so far it's like the first one only tighter, prettier and much funnier. I haven't come across as many amusing moral choices and it's slightly harder to kill innocent people this time round but none the less, it's damn good fun.
Friday, 26 June 2009
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Mass Effect has pissed me off
So I’ve been playing through Mass Effect again. Why, you ask. Well I don’t have the internets and I haven’t done for two weeks. You’d be surprised at how much you need the internets if you’re unemployed.
Anyhoo, I’ve been struggling through. The combat is balls but some of the bits are fairly entertaining – mainly the fun character bits. Having said that, I’ve just given up on it. Why? Because I couldn’t get a girl to shag me.
Part of the hype behind Mass Effect was you could cultivate relationships between characters and this is probably the best bit of the game. The problem arises when you don’t go down the beaten track. The first time round, I had my eye on someone, I forget who but because I was playing a girl and I didn’t tell Kaiden to fuck off at any point, the game decided I clearly wanted to ride him like a bitch from hell. This annoyed me and I had to start again, making the person I wanted to fuck extremely clear from the outset.
I should point out, by the way, that I am not in the least interested in seeing the grainy CGI sex scene. It’s just that the character arc is incomplete for the NPC’s if the relationship I’ve been cultivating for most of the game doesn’t go anywhere. It’s really annoying when films, for example, drop an unresolved character half way through and never bring them back. I was struggling with that sort of frustration.
So anyway, this time I was playing as a girl and I wanted to shag Ashley Wiliams. Why? Well because fucking the Asari is far too easy – the woman comes on so hard it’s like having sex with a stalker. I got Kaiden killed because he’s just a little bit too boring. Garrus, Tali and Wrex are out for species reasons.
It was with great surprise that I discovered – during the scene where my two characters usually meet and confess their love for each other – nothing. Not a sausage. Poor choice of words there. The game just skipped straight on to the next bit of story – which is landing on Ilos if anyone cares.
This *really* annoys me. The entire fucking game is about cultivating relationships and it doesn’t even let you do that properly. I forgave its rubbish combat, dodgy plot, lack of any interesting sub plots and so on because the character development system was brilliant. It seems that I had been playing the exact way Bioware wanted me to and as soon as I wanted to do something SLIGHTLY UNUSUAL, that was it.
Reh.
The second one had better be an improvement.
Anyhoo, I’ve been struggling through. The combat is balls but some of the bits are fairly entertaining – mainly the fun character bits. Having said that, I’ve just given up on it. Why? Because I couldn’t get a girl to shag me.
Part of the hype behind Mass Effect was you could cultivate relationships between characters and this is probably the best bit of the game. The problem arises when you don’t go down the beaten track. The first time round, I had my eye on someone, I forget who but because I was playing a girl and I didn’t tell Kaiden to fuck off at any point, the game decided I clearly wanted to ride him like a bitch from hell. This annoyed me and I had to start again, making the person I wanted to fuck extremely clear from the outset.
I should point out, by the way, that I am not in the least interested in seeing the grainy CGI sex scene. It’s just that the character arc is incomplete for the NPC’s if the relationship I’ve been cultivating for most of the game doesn’t go anywhere. It’s really annoying when films, for example, drop an unresolved character half way through and never bring them back. I was struggling with that sort of frustration.
So anyway, this time I was playing as a girl and I wanted to shag Ashley Wiliams. Why? Well because fucking the Asari is far too easy – the woman comes on so hard it’s like having sex with a stalker. I got Kaiden killed because he’s just a little bit too boring. Garrus, Tali and Wrex are out for species reasons.
It was with great surprise that I discovered – during the scene where my two characters usually meet and confess their love for each other – nothing. Not a sausage. Poor choice of words there. The game just skipped straight on to the next bit of story – which is landing on Ilos if anyone cares.
This *really* annoys me. The entire fucking game is about cultivating relationships and it doesn’t even let you do that properly. I forgave its rubbish combat, dodgy plot, lack of any interesting sub plots and so on because the character development system was brilliant. It seems that I had been playing the exact way Bioware wanted me to and as soon as I wanted to do something SLIGHTLY UNUSUAL, that was it.
Reh.
The second one had better be an improvement.
Terminator Salvation
Everyone has a moment from Star Wars Episode 1 where they realised that they were watching a cartoon, not a film. For me, this was in the big droid battle where Jar Jar Binks gets a blaster stuck to his foot and manages to execute four droids by waving his foot at them. There have been many truly awful moments of cinema that have come close to rivalling this moment. In Die Hard 4, for instance, when the car is driven into the helicopter. Or how about in Indiana Jones 4, where Shia LaBouf swings on those vines ala Tarzan... I’m pleased to report that T4 has beaten both of these moments and by quite a long way.
So two of our heroes are escaping the terminators when they are ambushed by a fifty foot tall giant terminator with a laser gun. At this point I actually thought some idiot had switched a reel with one from Transformers but apparently not. The characters perform some fairly entertaining escape manoeuvres and get away from the giant transformer. The giant transformer then opens two hatches on its’ legs and reveals two terminators on motor bikes.
It gets worse.
One of these terminators is taken down by liberal use of an oil slick, which is okay. The other is taken down by a wrecking ball on the back of a truck. Then a Hunter Killer – the flying terminators we know so well from the first three films – appears. It takes out a bridge ahead of the truck, which pulls a handbrake turn to stop. The chain, still dragging the terminator bike, whips round and slams into the Hunter Killer, blowing it up.
I haven’t seen anything quite that ridiculous since I last watched the Power Puff Girls. And that has a certain amount of self referential humour to it.
T4 is awful, really awful. The action scenes are nothing but extremely over the top cartoon sequences, like the ones I just described. The characterisation ranges from standard to hilarious. I lost count of the number of times someone yelled “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Several times it happened as the characters held their hands to the sky.
The script is... Well half of it is quite interesting – the stuff we saw in the trailer with the Terminator who thinks he’s human. That’s fairly entertaining but then there’s a load of utter rubbish involving John Conner and a secret plan to destroy the terminator base. It’s one of those plots where a lot gets said and discussed and yet nothing actually happens.
T4 has so many problems – even ignoring the characters, the acting and the action. The score is terrible (it’s a Danny Elfman one, which gives you quite a nice idea of how bad it is) the plot doesn’t really make much sense, there are too many loose ends, the terminators are nowhere near as dangerous as they should be and they appear to have made John Connor into a total dick.
It’s not as bad as Star Trek and Indiana Jones 4 – there are a couple of characters that I liked – but it’s really, really bad. Save yourself the time and money.
So two of our heroes are escaping the terminators when they are ambushed by a fifty foot tall giant terminator with a laser gun. At this point I actually thought some idiot had switched a reel with one from Transformers but apparently not. The characters perform some fairly entertaining escape manoeuvres and get away from the giant transformer. The giant transformer then opens two hatches on its’ legs and reveals two terminators on motor bikes.
It gets worse.
One of these terminators is taken down by liberal use of an oil slick, which is okay. The other is taken down by a wrecking ball on the back of a truck. Then a Hunter Killer – the flying terminators we know so well from the first three films – appears. It takes out a bridge ahead of the truck, which pulls a handbrake turn to stop. The chain, still dragging the terminator bike, whips round and slams into the Hunter Killer, blowing it up.
I haven’t seen anything quite that ridiculous since I last watched the Power Puff Girls. And that has a certain amount of self referential humour to it.
T4 is awful, really awful. The action scenes are nothing but extremely over the top cartoon sequences, like the ones I just described. The characterisation ranges from standard to hilarious. I lost count of the number of times someone yelled “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Several times it happened as the characters held their hands to the sky.
The script is... Well half of it is quite interesting – the stuff we saw in the trailer with the Terminator who thinks he’s human. That’s fairly entertaining but then there’s a load of utter rubbish involving John Conner and a secret plan to destroy the terminator base. It’s one of those plots where a lot gets said and discussed and yet nothing actually happens.
T4 has so many problems – even ignoring the characters, the acting and the action. The score is terrible (it’s a Danny Elfman one, which gives you quite a nice idea of how bad it is) the plot doesn’t really make much sense, there are too many loose ends, the terminators are nowhere near as dangerous as they should be and they appear to have made John Connor into a total dick.
It’s not as bad as Star Trek and Indiana Jones 4 – there are a couple of characters that I liked – but it’s really, really bad. Save yourself the time and money.
Overlord
Chris Livingstone has been waxing lyrical about the Overlord 2 demo. I’ve always been aware that Overlord existed in a faint way. I seem to remember Rhiana Pratchett reviewed it for PC Zone, which may be a bit unfair because I believe she helped write it. Anyway, if Livingstone likes it, the chances are that I will so I thought I’d try out Overlord as Overlord 2 isn’t out for a few months.
Oh boy.
Overlord is a weird hybrid of Action RPG and RTS. You play an evil emperor who has upgradable armour, spells, health and so on but you’re not exactly Altair in the combat stakes. For that you have your minions. You start off with five basic minions and you acquire more as you go on. I had thirty five minions of various types running around after me by the time I had finished and I’m sure I could have picked up more if I’d been paying attention.
Overlord’s big selling point was its knowing attitude towards high fantasy. I hate High Fantasy, I think it’s a dead genre that no-one has done anything decent with for years. Overlord takes the tired clichés that litter every example of the genre that I can think of and gleefully subverts them. You spend the first act gleefully clubbing hobbits to death, then move up to Elves, Dwarves and everything in between.
The game plays constantly with the nature of evil. There aren’t really any “good” options in the game. You are, for example, tasked with rescuing a supply of food for a nearby village. To do this, you work your way through a hobbit village, slaughtering everything you encounter. Once you find the food store, you can either keep it for yourself or return it to the village. Oddly, returning it to the village is the more evil thing to do as it keeps the villagers alive so you can enslave them more effectively.
Having said that, these choices are almost all cosmetic. Once you’ve decided to be evil or really evil, nothing really affects your progress. Characters attitudes towards you change (often hilariously) but you’re never presented with extra manna or anything, as far as I could tell.
I’m not sure that this is a bad thing, however. Moral choices, as Daniel Floyd pointed out, are never actual choices in games because they always reward one choice more than the other, thus negating the morality and making it more about economics. Here, you don’t gain anything by helping the villagers other than their thanks and you don’t really gain anything from stealing their food. It’s just fucking hilarious.
Overlord’s main plot is.... pretty reasonable and there are more than enough brilliant side quests to keep you entertained. The moral choice aspect makes keeps things interesting as well. I’ll definitely be playing it through again so I can see how things would have turned out if, for example, I’d abandoned my loyal wife for a goth girl I came across in a dungeon somewhere.
As far as the main quests go... there are a few very grindy ones. There are no objective markers so often it’s not entirely clear where the hell you’re supposed to be going. I spent half an hour wandering around a Dwarf Village before working out that I was supposed to enter a prison cell I’d opened to allow the game to progress. These moments are rare, but they’re bloody annoying when they do happen.
What does make up for the grind are the fun ways you can solve some quests. For example, I was charged with killing some feral unicorns by some elves because the unicorns were preventing them from worshiping at a sacred tree in the middle of a grove. I was a little short on minions at the time and so rather than charge in and risk death, I set fire to the meadow which burned up the unicorns as well as the sacred tree. The Elves cried. It was fantastic.
What else is there to say? Well the controls work very well (on PC at least, I’m told they’re quite badly broken on the consoles. Har har.) There’s a good amount of content so It’s good value for money... The graphics aren’t that good and I came across a couple of bugs here and there but overall, I’d definitely recommend it. Check out the demo on Steam.
Friday, 12 June 2009
Prototype
I didn't hold out much hope for Prototype and it turns out my lack of faith was highly justified.
For those who don't know, Prototype is an open world game that follows a young man who has had a genetic experiment performed on him and now he... mutates a lot. or something. He can run up walls, absorb people into himself, he's practically invincible, can superjump etc. etc. etc.
I found it really hard to get into this game. Part of the reason behind this is the total lack of plot. You're never really given an explanation as to who the main character is, who the company who've infected him are, why the hell we should care about his sister and so on.
The writing is incredibly lazy. For example, when your character breaks out, he is treated to the sight of the scientists who were supposed to be performing an autopsy on him being gunned down by soldiers working for the company. Why do they do this? Well, no reason that's evident. It's just a very quick and cliched way of getting across that the company are EVIL. As if doing genetic experiments on live human subjects didn't make that point clearly enough.
Problem number two with this game is the AI. Every cop and soldier in the game is looking out for you but you can disguise yourself as a civilian. This means that the AI has been programmed to ignore all but the most blatant signs of supernatural goings on. This boils down to you can jump across cars, superjump into the air and land right in front of a cop, shattering the cobblestones, and he'll just gaze at you. I punched a civilian once, several dozen other civilians saw me but a cop was looking the other way. The cop instantly ran over and looked at the civilians' corpse, ignoring me completely. Apparently me standing on top of the civilians body and several other people cowering at my feet pleading for me not to kill them wasn't a big enough clue for this flatfoot.
So apart from the AI and the plot is this game any good? I'm not sure. There's free running, which is okay, some faintly entertaining combat stuff. There's still far too much pointless running around and I'm not sure if I can be bothered to commit the sort of time to this game that seems to be demanded.
I will be playing a little bit more but after the first few hours of play, my impressions really aren't very good.
For those who don't know, Prototype is an open world game that follows a young man who has had a genetic experiment performed on him and now he... mutates a lot. or something. He can run up walls, absorb people into himself, he's practically invincible, can superjump etc. etc. etc.
I found it really hard to get into this game. Part of the reason behind this is the total lack of plot. You're never really given an explanation as to who the main character is, who the company who've infected him are, why the hell we should care about his sister and so on.
The writing is incredibly lazy. For example, when your character breaks out, he is treated to the sight of the scientists who were supposed to be performing an autopsy on him being gunned down by soldiers working for the company. Why do they do this? Well, no reason that's evident. It's just a very quick and cliched way of getting across that the company are EVIL. As if doing genetic experiments on live human subjects didn't make that point clearly enough.
Problem number two with this game is the AI. Every cop and soldier in the game is looking out for you but you can disguise yourself as a civilian. This means that the AI has been programmed to ignore all but the most blatant signs of supernatural goings on. This boils down to you can jump across cars, superjump into the air and land right in front of a cop, shattering the cobblestones, and he'll just gaze at you. I punched a civilian once, several dozen other civilians saw me but a cop was looking the other way. The cop instantly ran over and looked at the civilians' corpse, ignoring me completely. Apparently me standing on top of the civilians body and several other people cowering at my feet pleading for me not to kill them wasn't a big enough clue for this flatfoot.
So apart from the AI and the plot is this game any good? I'm not sure. There's free running, which is okay, some faintly entertaining combat stuff. There's still far too much pointless running around and I'm not sure if I can be bothered to commit the sort of time to this game that seems to be demanded.
I will be playing a little bit more but after the first few hours of play, my impressions really aren't very good.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Left 4 Dead 2 update
Valve have confirmed that yes, they are going to continue supporting Left 4 Dead in spite of its sequel.
So, internet:
1) I told you so
2) Stop moaning about it
3) check out this gameplay video, it's going to be fucking AWESOME.
Although that gameplay vid does demonstrate quite nicely the main problem with console controls. They're so jerky, there's no fluidity, no subtlety.
Smug smug smug.
Grin.
Sleep.
So, internet:
1) I told you so
2) Stop moaning about it
3) check out this gameplay video, it's going to be fucking AWESOME.
Although that gameplay vid does demonstrate quite nicely the main problem with console controls. They're so jerky, there's no fluidity, no subtlety.
Smug smug smug.
Grin.
Sleep.
Songs what I have been listenining to recentlyz
1) Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden
Normally I don't like Iron Maiden because they're one of those bands than encourage people obsessed with 80's hair metal to claim that no modern metal can match it. This is utter bullshit but anyway....
Fear of the Dark is a fantastic song. It's a lot shorter than most 80's metal songs (seven minutes, rather than the more usual nine) and it has a real progression to it. It also builds and builds in the way, for example, Telegraph Road does.
It's not fantastic by any means but it is a very good example of a genre which has been rather unfairly tainted by Aerosmith and the like.
2) 99 Red Baloons by Goldfinger
Now, as a musical purist, it does annoy me slightly to not hear this song in the original German. Particularly as I'm told the lyrics are completely different in English. Having said that, this song does beat the original in one all important way: It uses guitars instead of synth.
There is something for a trend at the moment for punk bands redoing 80's "classics". Orange did it with Karma Chameleon and their version is quite definitely better than the original.
Previously, I'd always assumed cover versions were attempts to grab quick publicity like Madonna's butchered version of American Pie. These versions are suitably obscure that they won't offend the people who legitimately love the original versions, though.
I love 99 Red Balloons for two reasons: Firstly, it is a lot faster than the original which makes it feel like it's got more energy than the original every had. Secondly, he slips into German for the third verse. This is awesome, and seems to increase the energy of the song even further
3) Jyosei Kashimashi Monogatari by Morning Musume
This one is going to be a hard sell.
Okay, so it's J-Pop, which isn't the most respected of genres (for good reason) but there are a few things I like about this one song.
1) The video is quite charming, in a really odd way.
2) It's *really* catchy
3) They do the same dance Mona does in Wario Ware: Smooth Moves
4) Most of the girls are quite hot. Which I admit has nothing to do with the music at all.
5) It's got a *lot* of energy in it. If this came on in a club, if suitable amounts of alcohol had been consumed, the dance floor would probably collapse from overly energetic dancing.
So yeah. I got recommended this, by the way. I didn't go out of my way to try and find it.
Stop judging me.
Stop it.
4) That's What You Get by Paramore
Sorry, I couldn't find a studio version of that song.
I love this song mainly because of Rock Band - I've been playing a drum campaign through on expert and this is one of the only songs I can get all the way through. The drum line is really fun to play.
Taken on its own merits, though, it's a surprisingly charming song. The singer is charismatic and it's rocky without going into actual metal territory.
5) Dirty Little Secret - The All American Rejects
Now, normally I shouldn't like the All American Rejects because they're generally a little bit emo for my liking. This is one song though that transcends its emo roots.
One reason for this is the video - which contains Post Secrets. Anyone not familiar with that project, head over to their website right now. It's incredibly touching to see these secrets for you to see in a high budget mainstream music video. It also means there's a genuine reason for the Emo - rather than generic whining which a lot of the genre tends to fall foul of.
Secondly, there's the drum line, which is a lot of fun to play. Sorry, I'll stop getting my recommendations from Rock Band one of these days.
Then there's the guitar line which is really, really damn simple but very catchy. Listen to it a few times and you'll be humming it all day.
So that's it, pretty much. I've got to go to my Ju Jitsu class now but I should say one thing before I go.
Seriously, why are the RIAA trying to close down torrent sites? I found all the songs I was after bar one studio version withing a few seconds on Youtube, one of the biggest sites on the internet.
But you can't keep those songs, you tell me.
Yes, you fucking can. Insert the word "kiss" before any youtube URL so www.youtube.com/whatever becomes www.kissyoutube.com/whatever and BINGO. A downloadable version for you.
A gift from me to you :)
Normally I don't like Iron Maiden because they're one of those bands than encourage people obsessed with 80's hair metal to claim that no modern metal can match it. This is utter bullshit but anyway....
Fear of the Dark is a fantastic song. It's a lot shorter than most 80's metal songs (seven minutes, rather than the more usual nine) and it has a real progression to it. It also builds and builds in the way, for example, Telegraph Road does.
It's not fantastic by any means but it is a very good example of a genre which has been rather unfairly tainted by Aerosmith and the like.
2) 99 Red Baloons by Goldfinger
Now, as a musical purist, it does annoy me slightly to not hear this song in the original German. Particularly as I'm told the lyrics are completely different in English. Having said that, this song does beat the original in one all important way: It uses guitars instead of synth.
There is something for a trend at the moment for punk bands redoing 80's "classics". Orange did it with Karma Chameleon and their version is quite definitely better than the original.
Previously, I'd always assumed cover versions were attempts to grab quick publicity like Madonna's butchered version of American Pie. These versions are suitably obscure that they won't offend the people who legitimately love the original versions, though.
I love 99 Red Balloons for two reasons: Firstly, it is a lot faster than the original which makes it feel like it's got more energy than the original every had. Secondly, he slips into German for the third verse. This is awesome, and seems to increase the energy of the song even further
3) Jyosei Kashimashi Monogatari by Morning Musume
This one is going to be a hard sell.
Okay, so it's J-Pop, which isn't the most respected of genres (for good reason) but there are a few things I like about this one song.
1) The video is quite charming, in a really odd way.
2) It's *really* catchy
3) They do the same dance Mona does in Wario Ware: Smooth Moves
4) Most of the girls are quite hot. Which I admit has nothing to do with the music at all.
5) It's got a *lot* of energy in it. If this came on in a club, if suitable amounts of alcohol had been consumed, the dance floor would probably collapse from overly energetic dancing.
So yeah. I got recommended this, by the way. I didn't go out of my way to try and find it.
Stop judging me.
Stop it.
4) That's What You Get by Paramore
Sorry, I couldn't find a studio version of that song.
I love this song mainly because of Rock Band - I've been playing a drum campaign through on expert and this is one of the only songs I can get all the way through. The drum line is really fun to play.
Taken on its own merits, though, it's a surprisingly charming song. The singer is charismatic and it's rocky without going into actual metal territory.
5) Dirty Little Secret - The All American Rejects
Now, normally I shouldn't like the All American Rejects because they're generally a little bit emo for my liking. This is one song though that transcends its emo roots.
One reason for this is the video - which contains Post Secrets. Anyone not familiar with that project, head over to their website right now. It's incredibly touching to see these secrets for you to see in a high budget mainstream music video. It also means there's a genuine reason for the Emo - rather than generic whining which a lot of the genre tends to fall foul of.
Secondly, there's the drum line, which is a lot of fun to play. Sorry, I'll stop getting my recommendations from Rock Band one of these days.
Then there's the guitar line which is really, really damn simple but very catchy. Listen to it a few times and you'll be humming it all day.
So that's it, pretty much. I've got to go to my Ju Jitsu class now but I should say one thing before I go.
Seriously, why are the RIAA trying to close down torrent sites? I found all the songs I was after bar one studio version withing a few seconds on Youtube, one of the biggest sites on the internet.
But you can't keep those songs, you tell me.
Yes, you fucking can. Insert the word "kiss" before any youtube URL so www.youtube.com/whatever becomes www.kissyoutube.com/whatever and BINGO. A downloadable version for you.
A gift from me to you :)
Mass Effect
I've been having another crack at Mass Effect. This is mainly because my three main activities at the moment are:
1) Packing
2) Agonising about whether job interviews went well.
3) Agonising about whether I'm going to be able to get any more job interviews.
And pretty much anything is better than any of those three activities. I say pretty much anything. They're still better than Resident Evil 5.
Anyhoo, it is better than I remember it.
Last time I tried to play it through, I got stuck on the first level. It wasn't too difficult or anything, it's just that I would always get to the bit where you have to disarm the bombs and I'd completely lose interest. As far as first levels go, I think it's actually worse than the one from KOTOR 2, which had my previous WORST LEVEL EVARRR award.
So anyway, I zipped through the opening level whilst chatting to my girlfriend, and actually found myself having fun running around in the citadel... Things only improved when I got to Novera - the level with the giant ant creatures. The combat was more fun than I remembered and the Biotic powers were turning out to be useful - although no-where near as useful as force lightning.
Then I got to Feros - the level where the plant creature takes over all the civilians and I remembered why I really didn't like this game the first time round.
Some of the levels are pretty good. A lot of them are *total* shit. The plant creature planet is all rubbish, as is the level where you're blowing up the Krogan Geophage factory thing.
What saddens me slightly is Bioware have clearly spent a lot of time placing hidden events in the game for the more dedicated players to find. I really, really wish, though, they'd made the main levels - the ones everyone was going to play - actually fun.
But the characters are well realised - much better and more likable than the ones in KOTOR 1, Jade Empire or Fallout 3 (which I know wasn't developed by Bioware but it's the only other RPG that came out recently that I can think of) the plot is... okay and there are a lot of things to do with yourself.
I just hope the sequel follows through on the strengths and hones the gameplay.
1) Packing
2) Agonising about whether job interviews went well.
3) Agonising about whether I'm going to be able to get any more job interviews.
And pretty much anything is better than any of those three activities. I say pretty much anything. They're still better than Resident Evil 5.
Anyhoo, it is better than I remember it.
Last time I tried to play it through, I got stuck on the first level. It wasn't too difficult or anything, it's just that I would always get to the bit where you have to disarm the bombs and I'd completely lose interest. As far as first levels go, I think it's actually worse than the one from KOTOR 2, which had my previous WORST LEVEL EVARRR award.
So anyway, I zipped through the opening level whilst chatting to my girlfriend, and actually found myself having fun running around in the citadel... Things only improved when I got to Novera - the level with the giant ant creatures. The combat was more fun than I remembered and the Biotic powers were turning out to be useful - although no-where near as useful as force lightning.
Then I got to Feros - the level where the plant creature takes over all the civilians and I remembered why I really didn't like this game the first time round.
Some of the levels are pretty good. A lot of them are *total* shit. The plant creature planet is all rubbish, as is the level where you're blowing up the Krogan Geophage factory thing.
What saddens me slightly is Bioware have clearly spent a lot of time placing hidden events in the game for the more dedicated players to find. I really, really wish, though, they'd made the main levels - the ones everyone was going to play - actually fun.
But the characters are well realised - much better and more likable than the ones in KOTOR 1, Jade Empire or Fallout 3 (which I know wasn't developed by Bioware but it's the only other RPG that came out recently that I can think of) the plot is... okay and there are a lot of things to do with yourself.
I just hope the sequel follows through on the strengths and hones the gameplay.
Friday, 5 June 2009
Wii games I am looking forward to
So when I first got my Wii, I loved it. It was like nothing I'd ever played before. Boxing? Awesome. Tennis? Fab. Driving games? Fucking great.
Sadly, for about the last nine months we have had absolutely nothing out that actually interested me. Sure, Madworld looks okay but I'm sure the novelty would ware off after half an hour or so.
The good news is there are some real games coming up that look fantastic. I'm going to list them.
By the way, this isn't a list of good games... for the Wii. It's a list of good games. The difference between them is...
Well. Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers, Wii Sports, Zack & Wiki, Trauma Centre: Second Opinion, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves - these were all good games.
Bully, No More Heroes, Red Steel - they were more like games you'd completely ignore if they were on any other system but as they were on the Wii and fuck all else was out, they were given more credence. Zelda games get this treatment all the time.
Anyway, here are games that will (hopefully) be genuinely good in 2009/2010:
1) Feel
Or whatever it's called these days.
Feel is a "haunted house simulator" done by the guys who made the film The Grudge. Feel appears to follow the films atmosphere quite closely - which, for those who don't know, is typical J-Horror fare. Shit scary, lots of girls with long black hair.
Good points:
Well, for a start, look at the trailer - it looks absolutely fucking terrifying.
The motion controls also look like they make sense.
Bad points:
It'll have next to no replay value - not that you'd want to replay it. Too scary.
2) Red Steel 2
Red steel was the game that made me decide to get a Wii in the first place, or rather this trailer was.
Red Steel 1 wasn't exactly a bad game but the sword controls really weren't very good. Hopefully with Motion Plus we'll be able to have some proper ones.
Good points:
Well, the atmosphere has completely changed. They're going for a cell shaded Trigun like atmosphere this time round, which looks fucking cool.
The sword play should be... better. I'm still sure it won't be like real swordfighting (I used to do Kendo. Which, to be honest, is nothing like real sword fighting either) but as long as it's fun...
Bad points:
Nothing that I can see... but we haven't had any actual gameplay footage so it's hard to tell. Best to wait for the reviews really.
3) Super Mario Galaxy 2
Super Mario Galaxy is still one of the most awesome games for the Wii... it's astonishing how Nintendo have taken a platform game and made it... fun.
This second version looks like more of the same but more awesome experimental bits.
Good Points:
Lots of great concepts all ready on show.
The music still thrills
Yoshi
Bad Points:
Honestly? None. This game is going to be fantastic and only the needlessly cynical will deny this.
4) The Conduit
I've been pretty excited about this one for a while - mainly because unlike EVERY other console shooter, they let you properly adjust the way the game lets you aim... they said during the developer vids that they were hoping to attract some PC shooter fans and... well, that's me.
Good Points:
The weapons look good
The levels look pretty interesting
Overall, it looks pretty damn original.
Bad Points:
We still know very little about the plot or... you know. The actual game.
Shooters on the Wii have a history of being disappointing. Hopefully this will change that but we shall see.
5) No More Heroes 2
I feel a little odd saying I'm looking forward to No More Heroes 2 given that I really didn't like the first one. Look at that damn trailer, though, just look at it. The game looks fucking hilarious.
Good Points:
Funny
Original
Bad Points:
It may keep the really shit open world lite feel of the original
It may be another fucking grind machine
So there you go, five games on the Wii that I am genuinely looking forward to.
It may not seem like much, by my current list of PC games I'm looking forward to consists of...
of...
Well, Left 4 Dead 2 should be good.
Er...
Sadly, for about the last nine months we have had absolutely nothing out that actually interested me. Sure, Madworld looks okay but I'm sure the novelty would ware off after half an hour or so.
The good news is there are some real games coming up that look fantastic. I'm going to list them.
By the way, this isn't a list of good games... for the Wii. It's a list of good games. The difference between them is...
Well. Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers, Wii Sports, Zack & Wiki, Trauma Centre: Second Opinion, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves - these were all good games.
Bully, No More Heroes, Red Steel - they were more like games you'd completely ignore if they were on any other system but as they were on the Wii and fuck all else was out, they were given more credence. Zelda games get this treatment all the time.
Anyway, here are games that will (hopefully) be genuinely good in 2009/2010:
1) Feel
Or whatever it's called these days.
Feel is a "haunted house simulator" done by the guys who made the film The Grudge. Feel appears to follow the films atmosphere quite closely - which, for those who don't know, is typical J-Horror fare. Shit scary, lots of girls with long black hair.
Good points:
Well, for a start, look at the trailer - it looks absolutely fucking terrifying.
The motion controls also look like they make sense.
Bad points:
It'll have next to no replay value - not that you'd want to replay it. Too scary.
2) Red Steel 2
Red steel was the game that made me decide to get a Wii in the first place, or rather this trailer was.
Red Steel 1 wasn't exactly a bad game but the sword controls really weren't very good. Hopefully with Motion Plus we'll be able to have some proper ones.
Good points:
Well, the atmosphere has completely changed. They're going for a cell shaded Trigun like atmosphere this time round, which looks fucking cool.
The sword play should be... better. I'm still sure it won't be like real swordfighting (I used to do Kendo. Which, to be honest, is nothing like real sword fighting either) but as long as it's fun...
Bad points:
Nothing that I can see... but we haven't had any actual gameplay footage so it's hard to tell. Best to wait for the reviews really.
3) Super Mario Galaxy 2
Super Mario Galaxy is still one of the most awesome games for the Wii... it's astonishing how Nintendo have taken a platform game and made it... fun.
This second version looks like more of the same but more awesome experimental bits.
Good Points:
Lots of great concepts all ready on show.
The music still thrills
Yoshi
Bad Points:
Honestly? None. This game is going to be fantastic and only the needlessly cynical will deny this.
4) The Conduit
I've been pretty excited about this one for a while - mainly because unlike EVERY other console shooter, they let you properly adjust the way the game lets you aim... they said during the developer vids that they were hoping to attract some PC shooter fans and... well, that's me.
Good Points:
The weapons look good
The levels look pretty interesting
Overall, it looks pretty damn original.
Bad Points:
We still know very little about the plot or... you know. The actual game.
Shooters on the Wii have a history of being disappointing. Hopefully this will change that but we shall see.
5) No More Heroes 2
I feel a little odd saying I'm looking forward to No More Heroes 2 given that I really didn't like the first one. Look at that damn trailer, though, just look at it. The game looks fucking hilarious.
Good Points:
Funny
Original
Bad Points:
It may keep the really shit open world lite feel of the original
It may be another fucking grind machine
So there you go, five games on the Wii that I am genuinely looking forward to.
It may not seem like much, by my current list of PC games I'm looking forward to consists of...
of...
Well, Left 4 Dead 2 should be good.
Er...
Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott
So, at E3, Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2.
A lot of people are really, really fucking unhappy.
I'm not, I have to say. I'm not one of those people who thought Left 4 Dead was an incomplete game. As far as time spent playing it goes, I've spent over 57 hours playing Left 4 Dead so far. That's considerably more time than I've spent playing Call of Duty 4, Crysis, Dark Athena or any of the other excellent games I've paid full price for. So there's really no question over whether I've gotten my moneys worth out of this game.
Moreover, I think the sequel has some really awesome stuff in it. The melee weapons are okay and the new characters are interesting enough - I'm more excited by the changing levels, AI Director 2 and the new gauntlet runs though.
The big difference is- Left 4 Dead 2 looks like a different game. They appear to have dropped the horror atmosphere entirely which is... a questionable decision but it separates the games fairly nicely. But whatever, I thought I'd go through the criticisms one by one, see if I can come round to the detractors point of view.
I'll use the bullet points as set out by the users on the steam forum.
Plus, I think Left 4 Dead had enough content to justify the £25 asking price so this one's down to opinion, I suppose.
I think this particular complaint assumes that everyone has been playing Left 4 Dead going: "you know what, this is shit. I can't enjoy it until we have two more campaigns."
1) No-one actually knows anything about the characters yet, so let's hold off on judgement there for a while.
2) I thought Francis was going to be the most boring character of all the L4D guys (because he was the most stereotypical), and then he turned out to be one of my favourites. So lets see what Valve do with them before we yell too much, eh?
1) Drop in quality
Fuck off, this is Valve we're talking about.
2) Drop in frequency
Hm. Hm hm hm hm hm. If you were absolutely set on DLC, I can see how this would be annoying. I take the view that we're getting a completely new game and meh, it'll be £25. Fuck it, I've had my fun playing with L4D. Anything extra we get is a bonus.
The thing about that is...
What is the function of DLC?
Well, to people like Ubisoft and the guys who make Rock Band, it's a way to make money. This is fine.
For Valve, it seems to be a way to keep people playing games they would otherwise have stopped. This is why they've been releasing stuff for TF2, people started to stop playing it so they were brought back in with unlocks & other fun stuff.
Left 4 Dead, as far as I can tell, is still being rampantly played by loads of people. Shit loads. It's hard to get a handle on how many servers there are but I've never had trouble finding a decent server to play on. From that point of view, it's far more important for us to have DLC in TF2 than it is in L4D.
Getting back to the point, though, the "community" are fickle bastards. They had a hissy fit when the 360 got the survival pack eight hours before the PC did. The community will get the fuck over themselves when L4D 2 is released and it turns out to be great fun.
So yeah, that's what I think. I would like to think this will chivvy Valve along into making some extra content for L4D 1, just to shut people up cos I like extra content as much as the next guy. I won't join in the crucifixion if they don't, though.
EDIT:
I've been having a little run around on the forums and if you know where to look, the sensible users are bitch slapping the moaners in no short order. Doesn't stop the 6k users who signed up to this idiotic boycott making a lot of noise though.
I did find one really good comment, which I shall post here. In a response to a threat blaming the consoles' memory space for the sequel (where the trolls thought it should be free DLC) he said:
"Umm, actually its because the L4D team had so many ideas for L4D, that when it got down to it, it was enough new content to warrant making it a new game. 4 new characters and all of their speech, back stories, interactions, ect, 5 new campaigns, each longer than the ones in L4D, with accompanying versus and survival maps, a new game mode, 3 new SI, and at least one new UCI, 20 new items, including at least 4 melee weapons and incendiary ammo, as well as an updated director which can affect weather and map layout. If you think about it, a lot of this would be unbalanced, awkward, or impossible to put into the original game without a lot of work, and probably causing a lot of issues. Also, its a lot of time and resources spent by Valve, and while they do enjoy giving us stuff for free, they do have families and need to eat as well. Also, this provides even more of a chance to pull more people into the game. That's the real reason, but sure, this could have been a factor as well."
Since you put it like that...
:)
A lot of people are really, really fucking unhappy.
I'm not, I have to say. I'm not one of those people who thought Left 4 Dead was an incomplete game. As far as time spent playing it goes, I've spent over 57 hours playing Left 4 Dead so far. That's considerably more time than I've spent playing Call of Duty 4, Crysis, Dark Athena or any of the other excellent games I've paid full price for. So there's really no question over whether I've gotten my moneys worth out of this game.
Moreover, I think the sequel has some really awesome stuff in it. The melee weapons are okay and the new characters are interesting enough - I'm more excited by the changing levels, AI Director 2 and the new gauntlet runs though.
The big difference is- Left 4 Dead 2 looks like a different game. They appear to have dropped the horror atmosphere entirely which is... a questionable decision but it separates the games fairly nicely. But whatever, I thought I'd go through the criticisms one by one, see if I can come round to the detractors point of view.
I'll use the bullet points as set out by the users on the steam forum.
- Significant content for L4D1 was promised, and never delivered
Plus, I think Left 4 Dead had enough content to justify the £25 asking price so this one's down to opinion, I suppose.
- Valve put little faith in L4D1 since they almost certainly started working on L4D2 right after release
I think this particular complaint assumes that everyone has been playing Left 4 Dead going: "you know what, this is shit. I can't enjoy it until we have two more campaigns."
- The fact that L4D2 is nearly identical to L4D1 will decimate the community for both games
- The announced date is not nearly enough time to polish content or make significant gameplay changes
- The new character designs seem bland and unappealing so far
1) No-one actually knows anything about the characters yet, so let's hold off on judgement there for a while.
2) I thought Francis was going to be the most boring character of all the L4D guys (because he was the most stereotypical), and then he turned out to be one of my favourites. So lets see what Valve do with them before we yell too much, eh?
- L4D2 is too colourful to fit in with L4D1's visual aesthetic
- The fiddle-based horde music is extremely disliked, though the differently orchestrated music is otherwise welcome
- L4D2's release will result in a drop in quality and frequency for L4D1 content, even compared to before
1) Drop in quality
Fuck off, this is Valve we're talking about.
2) Drop in frequency
Hm. Hm hm hm hm hm. If you were absolutely set on DLC, I can see how this would be annoying. I take the view that we're getting a completely new game and meh, it'll be £25. Fuck it, I've had my fun playing with L4D. Anything extra we get is a bonus.
- The community has lost faith in Valve's former reputation for commitment to their games post-release
The thing about that is...
What is the function of DLC?
Well, to people like Ubisoft and the guys who make Rock Band, it's a way to make money. This is fine.
For Valve, it seems to be a way to keep people playing games they would otherwise have stopped. This is why they've been releasing stuff for TF2, people started to stop playing it so they were brought back in with unlocks & other fun stuff.
Left 4 Dead, as far as I can tell, is still being rampantly played by loads of people. Shit loads. It's hard to get a handle on how many servers there are but I've never had trouble finding a decent server to play on. From that point of view, it's far more important for us to have DLC in TF2 than it is in L4D.
Getting back to the point, though, the "community" are fickle bastards. They had a hissy fit when the 360 got the survival pack eight hours before the PC did. The community will get the fuck over themselves when L4D 2 is released and it turns out to be great fun.
So yeah, that's what I think. I would like to think this will chivvy Valve along into making some extra content for L4D 1, just to shut people up cos I like extra content as much as the next guy. I won't join in the crucifixion if they don't, though.
EDIT:
I've been having a little run around on the forums and if you know where to look, the sensible users are bitch slapping the moaners in no short order. Doesn't stop the 6k users who signed up to this idiotic boycott making a lot of noise though.
I did find one really good comment, which I shall post here. In a response to a threat blaming the consoles' memory space for the sequel (where the trolls thought it should be free DLC) he said:
"Umm, actually its because the L4D team had so many ideas for L4D, that when it got down to it, it was enough new content to warrant making it a new game. 4 new characters and all of their speech, back stories, interactions, ect, 5 new campaigns, each longer than the ones in L4D, with accompanying versus and survival maps, a new game mode, 3 new SI, and at least one new UCI, 20 new items, including at least 4 melee weapons and incendiary ammo, as well as an updated director which can affect weather and map layout. If you think about it, a lot of this would be unbalanced, awkward, or impossible to put into the original game without a lot of work, and probably causing a lot of issues. Also, its a lot of time and resources spent by Valve, and while they do enjoy giving us stuff for free, they do have families and need to eat as well. Also, this provides even more of a chance to pull more people into the game. That's the real reason, but sure, this could have been a factor as well."
Since you put it like that...
:)
Monday, 1 June 2009
Taken
I've been meaning to watch this one for a while, mainly because the director is a young man called Pierre Morel who is responsible for one of the best action films of the last ten years.
So what's Taken like?
Well the fight scenes are good. To someone who's studied Ju Jitsu for two and a half years, they're a little showy at points but it's a film, that's what they're there for.
The espionage bits are also quite nice. Liam Neeson makes quite a good spy.
So if you're just after a film that kicks a fair bit of arse, go nuts, this film is for you.
For the rest of us, things aren't quite right, sadly.
Things go wrong from day one where Liam Neeson's Daughter has a birthday party at her step father's house. I say house, it's a mansion. She gets given a horse. A cunting horse. If the script writer thought this would make her a sympathetic character, they were wrong. When this girl gets kidnapped, it's more amusing than anything else. Imagine the headline:
"Spoiled bitch gets kidnapped. Everyone else in the world finds this faintly amusing."
Liam Neeson is hard to sympathise with as well. He's an ex-CIA spook who doesn't want his daughter to go to France, because it's dangerous. It's France. It's a hell of a lot less dangerous than America, for Bob's sake... No handguns, for a start.
Well, I say there are no handguns. Paris in this film appears to be playing Paris as seen through the eyes of an American. Every security officer that Liam encounters has a pistol at least, some have MP5's... I'm sure some French security have fire arms but I know they're not exactly fond of them over there.
The problem with the film, from a purely racial point of view, is that when Liam won't let his daughter go to France, because it's dangerous, and she does, and she does get kidnapped, the film is basically saying "Don't go to Europe, there be dragons".
I know this is kind of symptomatic of Bush era America but I expected more from a film directed by a french man and part written by Luc Besson.
Having said that, the other writer of Taken also wrote Kiss Of The Dragon, which is a considerably more sensible take on the City Of Culture. Maybe he had been watching Top Gun or something when he wrote this.
I feel like I'm taking the mild xenophobia a little too seriously, here. The problem is, that was the main feeling I got left behind with at the end of the film. Probably because there's not really much else there... The plot is... okay, the acting is... okay but there's no real suspense. Things just happen one after the other, a bit like in the first and second Harry Potter films.
It's not a bad film, by the way, it's just no-where near as good as War or Kiss Of The Dragon or any of the dozen other films that follow a very similar structure.
So what's Taken like?
Well the fight scenes are good. To someone who's studied Ju Jitsu for two and a half years, they're a little showy at points but it's a film, that's what they're there for.
The espionage bits are also quite nice. Liam Neeson makes quite a good spy.
So if you're just after a film that kicks a fair bit of arse, go nuts, this film is for you.
For the rest of us, things aren't quite right, sadly.
Things go wrong from day one where Liam Neeson's Daughter has a birthday party at her step father's house. I say house, it's a mansion. She gets given a horse. A cunting horse. If the script writer thought this would make her a sympathetic character, they were wrong. When this girl gets kidnapped, it's more amusing than anything else. Imagine the headline:
"Spoiled bitch gets kidnapped. Everyone else in the world finds this faintly amusing."
Liam Neeson is hard to sympathise with as well. He's an ex-CIA spook who doesn't want his daughter to go to France, because it's dangerous. It's France. It's a hell of a lot less dangerous than America, for Bob's sake... No handguns, for a start.
Well, I say there are no handguns. Paris in this film appears to be playing Paris as seen through the eyes of an American. Every security officer that Liam encounters has a pistol at least, some have MP5's... I'm sure some French security have fire arms but I know they're not exactly fond of them over there.
The problem with the film, from a purely racial point of view, is that when Liam won't let his daughter go to France, because it's dangerous, and she does, and she does get kidnapped, the film is basically saying "Don't go to Europe, there be dragons".
I know this is kind of symptomatic of Bush era America but I expected more from a film directed by a french man and part written by Luc Besson.
Having said that, the other writer of Taken also wrote Kiss Of The Dragon, which is a considerably more sensible take on the City Of Culture. Maybe he had been watching Top Gun or something when he wrote this.
I feel like I'm taking the mild xenophobia a little too seriously, here. The problem is, that was the main feeling I got left behind with at the end of the film. Probably because there's not really much else there... The plot is... okay, the acting is... okay but there's no real suspense. Things just happen one after the other, a bit like in the first and second Harry Potter films.
It's not a bad film, by the way, it's just no-where near as good as War or Kiss Of The Dragon or any of the dozen other films that follow a very similar structure.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
Gone Baby Gone & Yes Man
Gone Baby Gone
This, in the UK, has a special resonance for me as it appears to follow a very similar path to the Madeline Mccan story. For those unfamiliar with this particular drama - an extremely irresponsible parent leaves their child alone for ages and is very surprised when the sprog gets kidnapped.
Gone Baby Gone proves that films are better than real life, though. The film isn't afraid to raise the important question of whether or not the kid is better off with her massively irresponsible mother or with a parent who actually gives a shit.
It starts off really, really well. Casey Afflek (who is definitely one of the most innately likable actors currently working) plays a detective hired by the kids grandmother to track her down.
It's a good film, it's tense, it's well directed... the only real problem is the script. Whilst things start off simply enough, there are so many plot twists, the damn thing just gets too complicated for its own good. There is such a thing as plot twist apathy where any given film has twisted itself into a knot and yet keeps twisting. Gone Baby Gone suffers from this in spades.
It's still quite good and it's better than a poke in the eye if you have nothing better to do. It's certainly not as emotionally draining as films like this normally are so it should be praised for that at least.
Yes Man
I still like Jim Carey. Yes, I only like three of his films - The Mask, The Truman Show & Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind but in all of those films he mixes being entertaining with soul and that has to count for something.
Yes Man starts off really, really badly. It's the standard Carey wackiness that we've seen in a dozen movies before. Things do settle down when Carey takes his pledge to say "Yes" to everything - so if you wanted to actually like this film, i heartily recommend skipping the first 15 minutes.
From then on... well it's still not a very good film. The plot isn't really there, there's still a bit too much standard issue silliness but it's held together by... well- the heart of the script writer.
The film isn't really a story, so much as the question: "wouldn't it be great to live your life like this" and I, for one, wanted to say "yes" to more things after the credits rolled. It's a film that makes you feel good about life and the opportunities it offers you - so it's practically unique in that respect.
It also helps that I have read the book this film is based on and really, really didn't like it. Anyone who has any great love of the book will probably hate the extreme liberties Yes Man takes with the plot. Although Danny Wallace does have a cameo, I'm told.
I'd actually recommend Yes Man over Gone Baby Gone. It's a worse film but at the end of the day, Yes Man might inspire people to change their lives for the better, Gone Baby Gone serves only to make people cynical about parents and their children.
Actually, that makes them both good.
Hooray, watch both of them.
This, in the UK, has a special resonance for me as it appears to follow a very similar path to the Madeline Mccan story. For those unfamiliar with this particular drama - an extremely irresponsible parent leaves their child alone for ages and is very surprised when the sprog gets kidnapped.
Gone Baby Gone proves that films are better than real life, though. The film isn't afraid to raise the important question of whether or not the kid is better off with her massively irresponsible mother or with a parent who actually gives a shit.
It starts off really, really well. Casey Afflek (who is definitely one of the most innately likable actors currently working) plays a detective hired by the kids grandmother to track her down.
It's a good film, it's tense, it's well directed... the only real problem is the script. Whilst things start off simply enough, there are so many plot twists, the damn thing just gets too complicated for its own good. There is such a thing as plot twist apathy where any given film has twisted itself into a knot and yet keeps twisting. Gone Baby Gone suffers from this in spades.
It's still quite good and it's better than a poke in the eye if you have nothing better to do. It's certainly not as emotionally draining as films like this normally are so it should be praised for that at least.
Yes Man
I still like Jim Carey. Yes, I only like three of his films - The Mask, The Truman Show & Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind but in all of those films he mixes being entertaining with soul and that has to count for something.
Yes Man starts off really, really badly. It's the standard Carey wackiness that we've seen in a dozen movies before. Things do settle down when Carey takes his pledge to say "Yes" to everything - so if you wanted to actually like this film, i heartily recommend skipping the first 15 minutes.
From then on... well it's still not a very good film. The plot isn't really there, there's still a bit too much standard issue silliness but it's held together by... well- the heart of the script writer.
The film isn't really a story, so much as the question: "wouldn't it be great to live your life like this" and I, for one, wanted to say "yes" to more things after the credits rolled. It's a film that makes you feel good about life and the opportunities it offers you - so it's practically unique in that respect.
It also helps that I have read the book this film is based on and really, really didn't like it. Anyone who has any great love of the book will probably hate the extreme liberties Yes Man takes with the plot. Although Danny Wallace does have a cameo, I'm told.
I'd actually recommend Yes Man over Gone Baby Gone. It's a worse film but at the end of the day, Yes Man might inspire people to change their lives for the better, Gone Baby Gone serves only to make people cynical about parents and their children.
Actually, that makes them both good.
Hooray, watch both of them.
The Killing Floor
The Killing Floor, for those who don't know is a Zombie Shooter that, the creators say, is definitely not Left 4 Dead.
So, with that in mind, let's compare it to Left 4 Dead.
Well, Killing Floor is a hell of a lot cheaper than it's zombie filled brother. Here in the UK, you get about twelve quid off.
That's where the positivity ends, annoyingly. The Killing Floors graphics are... okay and whilst I'd like to think we're all mature enough to look past a few graphical flaws, they're symptomatic of a larger problem.
The problem is the Unreal 2004 Engine. This was never the best game engine in the world and time really hasn't been kind to it. The developers have worked some impressive wonders with it but it still feels remarkably imprecise and wooden compared to any game from the last three years you care to mention.
It's not terrible, by the way, it feels quite good fun for the first half hour or so. Blasting the heads off zombies with a well placed shotgun blast feels remarkably satisfying, particularly as there isn't a cross hair so the aiming is mainly down to your instinct as you rarely have time to use the iron sights.
Sadly, the gameplay would feel much better if the weapons were more interesting. There are a couple of shotguns, which are okay, there are two pistols which are okay, there is an assault rifle which is... okay. None of the weapons have really been crafted the way you'd expect them to be. In Crysis or Left 4 Dead, the weapons all have personality, here they're just generic boom sticks.
There are a couple of interesting weapons like a completely useless bolt action rifle and a flame thrower that has so much recoil it's rendered completely useless.
As far as the enemies go, there are an impressive number of types but the best word for them is generic. There's little you haven't seen before in some other game. Left 4 Dead, House of the Dead, Resident Evil... Killing Floor borrows from all of them and not in a good way.
The only original zombie, as far as I can tell, is the patriach who is the games final boss. He has a chain gun, a rocket launcher, a sword and can turn invisible. When he comes along, it won't be long before you see the “your squad was wiped out” screen.
Yes, Killing Floor is an absolute sod when it comes to difficulty. A lot of the enemies have far too many hit points, considering your limited ammo supplies and the limited team play aspects don't really help.
You're encouraged to compete against your team mates as you earn money by killing zombies. This means it's more advantageous to go off on your own and look for things to kill rather than stick with your mates.
There are other annoyances like the fact that you're always left running around at the end of each level looking for the one zombie you have to kill in order to move on, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm punching a disabled kid for not being able to run a marathon. Killing Floor isn't bad, if it had come out five years ago it would have been absolutely brilliant but time has moved on.
So, with that in mind, let's compare it to Left 4 Dead.
Well, Killing Floor is a hell of a lot cheaper than it's zombie filled brother. Here in the UK, you get about twelve quid off.
That's where the positivity ends, annoyingly. The Killing Floors graphics are... okay and whilst I'd like to think we're all mature enough to look past a few graphical flaws, they're symptomatic of a larger problem.
The problem is the Unreal 2004 Engine. This was never the best game engine in the world and time really hasn't been kind to it. The developers have worked some impressive wonders with it but it still feels remarkably imprecise and wooden compared to any game from the last three years you care to mention.
It's not terrible, by the way, it feels quite good fun for the first half hour or so. Blasting the heads off zombies with a well placed shotgun blast feels remarkably satisfying, particularly as there isn't a cross hair so the aiming is mainly down to your instinct as you rarely have time to use the iron sights.
Sadly, the gameplay would feel much better if the weapons were more interesting. There are a couple of shotguns, which are okay, there are two pistols which are okay, there is an assault rifle which is... okay. None of the weapons have really been crafted the way you'd expect them to be. In Crysis or Left 4 Dead, the weapons all have personality, here they're just generic boom sticks.
There are a couple of interesting weapons like a completely useless bolt action rifle and a flame thrower that has so much recoil it's rendered completely useless.
As far as the enemies go, there are an impressive number of types but the best word for them is generic. There's little you haven't seen before in some other game. Left 4 Dead, House of the Dead, Resident Evil... Killing Floor borrows from all of them and not in a good way.
The only original zombie, as far as I can tell, is the patriach who is the games final boss. He has a chain gun, a rocket launcher, a sword and can turn invisible. When he comes along, it won't be long before you see the “your squad was wiped out” screen.
Yes, Killing Floor is an absolute sod when it comes to difficulty. A lot of the enemies have far too many hit points, considering your limited ammo supplies and the limited team play aspects don't really help.
You're encouraged to compete against your team mates as you earn money by killing zombies. This means it's more advantageous to go off on your own and look for things to kill rather than stick with your mates.
There are other annoyances like the fact that you're always left running around at the end of each level looking for the one zombie you have to kill in order to move on, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm punching a disabled kid for not being able to run a marathon. Killing Floor isn't bad, if it had come out five years ago it would have been absolutely brilliant but time has moved on.
Monday, 25 May 2009
Star Trek
Kirk is a dick
So they introduce this character by having him drive a high powered supercar through the desert at 80 miles an hour. Whilst this kid is around 10 years old. This was a really fucking bad idea when Episode 1 did it, and it's a bad idea here. The kid is being a petulant prick and the film seems to think this will make us warm to him, rather than pray for him to go over a cliff in the ensuing car chase.
Things only get worse when Kirk grows up. He is an arrogant narcissist who never actually demonstrates all the skills he claims to have. The one time he demonstrates any insight is when he realises they are warping into a trap – which they then do nothing about as Sulu has all ready saved them there, by making them late. Literally all they do is raise shields and go to red alert, which I'm pretty sure they would have done anyway, after seeing the hulks of a dozen space ships when they materialise.
All the other characterisation is terrible
The characters are either really, really two dimensional (Uhura, Sulu, Bones) or a racist cliché (Chekov & the other aliens in the film – ever notice how there's only ever one representation of every race? That's the Star Trek equivalent of having a token black person. At least they had the good presence of mind to maintain their token black person in the form of Uhura.) Other than possibly the main villain, I can't think of a single character who was more than a string of cliches.
The plot makes no fucking sense
I actually quite liked the story of the aliens coming back and re doing time from their perspective. Yes, it's a story that Star Trek has done many, many, many times but the motivation for the villain was probably the strongest here, if a little two dimensional. HOWEVER, explain to me how no-one on the federation flag ship is more qualified than all these people they have just brought on to the ship (who are fucking CADETS). Kirk is the least qualified person available to be captain and he gets made Captain. Despite being a mutineer. No-one even makes him captain, he just says he is. This is the fucking flag ship of the federation, I'm pretty sure they take a dim view of that sort of stuff.
I hated the special effects
Now, the effects looked quite good, but they had two big problems. Firstly, there was too much CGI. It's really hard to take something seriously when it looks like a computer game. Secondly, the camera work was far, far, far too modern. And by modern, I mean constantly moving, jiggling all over the place, switching focus, maintaining a kinetic pace, not staying on anything in case people noticed that what's happening on screen is not actually that interesting. I tend to switch off when things are trying too hard to impress me and Star Trek tried way, way too hard. I know it has years of low budget stodge to blast through but the solution to that should not have been to shake the camera to the point where the audience gets motion sickness.
The film seemed to be convinced that it was really, really funny.
And it just fucking wasn't.
There were several other small reasons but when your list so far has covered Characterisation, plot, directing and special effects, there's not much more you can do to put a nail in this particular coffin.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Franklyn
So I saw this trailer a while ago and it really intrigued me. I've been burnt by trailers like that before, however. For example, the trailer for The Fountain promised an epic love story across two centuries and whilst this was technically true, the film came across as extremely asinine.
It was with a healthy degree of cynicism, therefore, that I approached Franklyn and....
Wow.
I now have a new favorite Clever Film. I'm wary of giving too much away as the way the film portrays events and the drip feed of information it gives you is part of the brilliance surrounding it.
For example, the film constantly withholds information from you. One character, for instance, is looking for his son. You never see the picture he shows people of the boy. In a normal film, you'd think "ah, there's some sort of twist there, then" but the film also carefully withholds so many other bits of information (with a considerably amount of skill, it must be said) that you're never sure what's relevant and what's not.
The visual style is superb - one of the stories has a Gothic feeling which perfectly captured the Victorian fascination with the macabre (which is what I've always loved about gothism). The acting is brilliant as well. I had literally no idea that one of the main characters was played by Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale until I saw the credits - she gives an astonishingly good performance - she's disconnected, heart broken and rebellious but has a playful side.
I really can't recommend this film enough. It's not particularly action packed - despite how the trailer represents it... if the trailer intrigues you, I'd definitely recommend checking it out, it's out on DVD in this country in late June.
It was with a healthy degree of cynicism, therefore, that I approached Franklyn and....
Wow.
I now have a new favorite Clever Film. I'm wary of giving too much away as the way the film portrays events and the drip feed of information it gives you is part of the brilliance surrounding it.
For example, the film constantly withholds information from you. One character, for instance, is looking for his son. You never see the picture he shows people of the boy. In a normal film, you'd think "ah, there's some sort of twist there, then" but the film also carefully withholds so many other bits of information (with a considerably amount of skill, it must be said) that you're never sure what's relevant and what's not.
The visual style is superb - one of the stories has a Gothic feeling which perfectly captured the Victorian fascination with the macabre (which is what I've always loved about gothism). The acting is brilliant as well. I had literally no idea that one of the main characters was played by Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale until I saw the credits - she gives an astonishingly good performance - she's disconnected, heart broken and rebellious but has a playful side.
I really can't recommend this film enough. It's not particularly action packed - despite how the trailer represents it... if the trailer intrigues you, I'd definitely recommend checking it out, it's out on DVD in this country in late June.
Left 4 Dead SDK
The SDK is out, which hopefully means many awesome user generated maps. Or, more likely, three decent ones, several dozen shit ones.
I've tried using the SDK myself but, as with every single other level editor I've tried to use, I got about half way through building my first room before I ran away screaming. I used to love building levels in my youth but that was in the days of Duke Nukem 3d when developers were still using sprites. I feel old.
I have, however, tried a few of the user levels out.
There are some really nice ideas out there - I played a map called Back To School (which is an appropriately B-Movie ish title) which...
Well, I was fighting through the woods in standard Blood Harvest But Not Quite As Good territory when I came across a house. It was fairly bland until I got to the roof, where I found a sniper nest, with - get this- just the sniper rifle there. No M4, No auto shotgun. You then had to blow up a barricade to proceed, which alerted the horde.
I chose to load my bots up with sniper rifles and shoot from the roof. It went really well, the zombies swarmed up the house, inside and outside. We fended them off as best we could in some really tense gameplay.
Then I heard the tank music. I turned around and found myself face to face with a tank. I didn't have time to react, I only had time to think "oh fu-" before he had hit me full in the face. I went flying off the roof and landed several hundreds of feet away in a crumpled heap on the floor.
It was great fun :D
Most of the levels I've played are far from complete - there are loads of purple placeholder textures but most of the ones I've tried have had at least one very good idea in them. Give it a month and we should have some good levels to play with.
I've tried using the SDK myself but, as with every single other level editor I've tried to use, I got about half way through building my first room before I ran away screaming. I used to love building levels in my youth but that was in the days of Duke Nukem 3d when developers were still using sprites. I feel old.
I have, however, tried a few of the user levels out.
There are some really nice ideas out there - I played a map called Back To School (which is an appropriately B-Movie ish title) which...
Well, I was fighting through the woods in standard Blood Harvest But Not Quite As Good territory when I came across a house. It was fairly bland until I got to the roof, where I found a sniper nest, with - get this- just the sniper rifle there. No M4, No auto shotgun. You then had to blow up a barricade to proceed, which alerted the horde.
I chose to load my bots up with sniper rifles and shoot from the roof. It went really well, the zombies swarmed up the house, inside and outside. We fended them off as best we could in some really tense gameplay.
Then I heard the tank music. I turned around and found myself face to face with a tank. I didn't have time to react, I only had time to think "oh fu-" before he had hit me full in the face. I went flying off the roof and landed several hundreds of feet away in a crumpled heap on the floor.
It was great fun :D
Most of the levels I've played are far from complete - there are loads of purple placeholder textures but most of the ones I've tried have had at least one very good idea in them. Give it a month and we should have some good levels to play with.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Fast & Furious
When I read reviews of the The Fast & The Furious franchise, and then watch the films myself, I'm always struck by how completely the reviewers have missed the point.
Okay, so The Fast And The Furious was nothing but Point Break with Vin Deisel instead of Patrick Swazie and Tokyo Drift was alternately awful and extremely racist BUT 2 Fast 2 Furious was a good film. It wasn't great but it was a silly action film. It was a B movie, like War, Cradle 2 The Grave, Eagle Eye etc. etc. etc.
Fast & Furious continues in this vein. It's not Shakespere, it's fun. It's not entirely a car film, either. In fact, I've seen better car chases in several films but the acting is solid, the plot is above average for a film of this type and the number of times CGI is over used is minimal.
There's not really much more to say about it - it's a good, solid film. The reviewers say that it uses its strongest weapon first and then just trails off.
Now, this may or may not be true. I don't think it is but I can see how people would think that. The opening sequence is very, very good. Up until some CGI nonsense. However, it doesn't slip into X-Men 2 territory, where everything after the opening sequence is a pale imitation of those first few minutes. Fast & Furious mixes it up. There are interesting character dynamics, a fun mystery to unfurl and Jill from Chuck pops up a few times.
So yeah. If you were going to go and see Fast & Furious, expecting some B-Movie fun but were put off by the reviews... just go. Reviewers have always had problems identifying the good B-Movies from the bad ones. This is one of the good ones. Not great, but good.
Okay, so The Fast And The Furious was nothing but Point Break with Vin Deisel instead of Patrick Swazie and Tokyo Drift was alternately awful and extremely racist BUT 2 Fast 2 Furious was a good film. It wasn't great but it was a silly action film. It was a B movie, like War, Cradle 2 The Grave, Eagle Eye etc. etc. etc.
Fast & Furious continues in this vein. It's not Shakespere, it's fun. It's not entirely a car film, either. In fact, I've seen better car chases in several films but the acting is solid, the plot is above average for a film of this type and the number of times CGI is over used is minimal.
There's not really much more to say about it - it's a good, solid film. The reviewers say that it uses its strongest weapon first and then just trails off.
Now, this may or may not be true. I don't think it is but I can see how people would think that. The opening sequence is very, very good. Up until some CGI nonsense. However, it doesn't slip into X-Men 2 territory, where everything after the opening sequence is a pale imitation of those first few minutes. Fast & Furious mixes it up. There are interesting character dynamics, a fun mystery to unfurl and Jill from Chuck pops up a few times.
So yeah. If you were going to go and see Fast & Furious, expecting some B-Movie fun but were put off by the reviews... just go. Reviewers have always had problems identifying the good B-Movies from the bad ones. This is one of the good ones. Not great, but good.
Wallace & Gromit - The Last Resort
The second Wallace & Gromit adventure flopped onto the tubes a couple of weeks ago and I finally gathered the wherewithal to play it. I wasn't exactly enthralled by episode 1. Episode 2 is... better. It's still not really that good though.
This time around, things proceed in a much more game friendly format for the plasticine canine and buffoon. There are three separate acts and a coda, all with separate objectives and tones to them. Episode 1 did have this but the acts were all fairly tenuously linked - I got the impression that I was playing a day in the life of Wallace & Gromit which made the plot fairly hard to swallow.
Here, you have an act where you set up a hotel, an act where you run it and an act where you deal with a situation that has arisen due to the antagonists.
That's right, there are actual antagonists this time around. This is extremely fecking welcome as, bar a squirrel and a giant bee at the end, there were no malicious forces in episode 1, which made the whole thing seem a little too twee.
So. Episode 2 is better. Did I like it?
Well. Sort of.
I don't resent the time I spent playing it but I never really laughed out loud or found myself making real leaps of intuitive logic. The puzzles & game mechanics are a little too simple - meaning that the puzzles are either easy or obscure. Neither of those make for very interesting puzzles. And, unlike Sam & Max, the game doesn't really have humour to fall back on when the puzzles fail.
So, all in all, not as funny as Sam & Max, not as clever as Sam & Max, not as good as Sam & Max.
I am being a little harsh, perhaps. With the exception of the Ace Attorney games, the Sam & Max episodes are the only decent adventure games to appear on our screens for some considerable time. The Wallace & Gromit adventures are certainly far superior to the Strong Bad ones and A Vampire Story.
This time around, things proceed in a much more game friendly format for the plasticine canine and buffoon. There are three separate acts and a coda, all with separate objectives and tones to them. Episode 1 did have this but the acts were all fairly tenuously linked - I got the impression that I was playing a day in the life of Wallace & Gromit which made the plot fairly hard to swallow.
Here, you have an act where you set up a hotel, an act where you run it and an act where you deal with a situation that has arisen due to the antagonists.
That's right, there are actual antagonists this time around. This is extremely fecking welcome as, bar a squirrel and a giant bee at the end, there were no malicious forces in episode 1, which made the whole thing seem a little too twee.
So. Episode 2 is better. Did I like it?
Well. Sort of.
I don't resent the time I spent playing it but I never really laughed out loud or found myself making real leaps of intuitive logic. The puzzles & game mechanics are a little too simple - meaning that the puzzles are either easy or obscure. Neither of those make for very interesting puzzles. And, unlike Sam & Max, the game doesn't really have humour to fall back on when the puzzles fail.
So, all in all, not as funny as Sam & Max, not as clever as Sam & Max, not as good as Sam & Max.
I am being a little harsh, perhaps. With the exception of the Ace Attorney games, the Sam & Max episodes are the only decent adventure games to appear on our screens for some considerable time. The Wallace & Gromit adventures are certainly far superior to the Strong Bad ones and A Vampire Story.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Velvet Assassin - First Impressions
I've championed Daniel Floyd's video gaming lectures on here before, especially with regard to non-writers writing for games. I originally thought that Fear 2 would be the ultimate argument for this. No, it turns out. Velvet Assassin is.
Things start off badly in Velvet Assassin. In the PC version, at least, you can't adjust any visual settings. At all. This almost certainly means I'm not running it on my native resolution which goes some way to explaining why the graphics look to rubbish.
I'm then treated to an intro sequence which breaks every rule of writing in the book. It feels like it was written by a teenager for a creative writing course at school who has heard about themes, motifs, imaginary and so on but hasn't worked out how to use them yet. It falls into the old trap of expressing something faintly poetic in the hope that it will sound profound rather than pretentious and shitty.
It also used two similes in a sentence once. That sort of thing makes me cry.
Anyway, the game.
The game loses big points in the first few minutes by having a huge (and I do mean huge) sign that flashes up whenever it autosaves that says "CONTENT SAVING DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR SYSTEM". I'm playing this on a PC, guys, we don't need to worry about shit like that. I am kind of resigned to messages like this but it's the first time where I've encountered one which flashes up in the middle of the damn screen which makes it impossible to ignore.
The controls are also fairly rubbish. They're not especially bad but they're imprecise knock offs of the Splinter Cell system.
So what about the gameplay? Well, it's unfortunate that this game has emerged a few weeks after Riddick. Riddick demonstrated that stealth gameplay could be intense, brutal and thrilling all at the same time. Velvet Assassin demonstrates that it can also be fairly dull.
Honestly, though, I didn't get very far into the game. I sneaked around under a bridge where the game explained that a purple line around my character indicated that I was concealed (if you think that would break any sense of immersion, you'd be right). I climbed up a bridge where I was amused to find the developers had been too cheap to animate the character climbing off the ladder onto the bridge. Instead, the screen faded to black when I was at the top of the ladder and faded up again with me on the bridge.
That bit was quite nostalgic, actually, I haven't seen a game do that since 2002.
I then sneaked up behind a drunk guard, stabbed him from behind then sneaked up behind another guard who wasn't drunk and stabbed him from behind. Yes, yes, I thought, this is all very well. What else can I do?
I let the next guard spot me as I ran up to him. Maybe I can disarm him in a cool way or something, I thought. No, no I can't. I can't do anything in fact. I couldn't even stab him. I had to just stand there and get shot.
It was at that point where I thought - Oh, that's the way it's going to be, is it? Fuck you - and turned the game off.
Velvet Assassin doesn't have a demo for reasons that should now be evident so if you're really determined to play it, for gods sake pirate it first.
In other news, there's a demo for Zeno Clash out so I suggest having a look. I didn't like it but I'm sure a lot of people will.
Things start off badly in Velvet Assassin. In the PC version, at least, you can't adjust any visual settings. At all. This almost certainly means I'm not running it on my native resolution which goes some way to explaining why the graphics look to rubbish.
I'm then treated to an intro sequence which breaks every rule of writing in the book. It feels like it was written by a teenager for a creative writing course at school who has heard about themes, motifs, imaginary and so on but hasn't worked out how to use them yet. It falls into the old trap of expressing something faintly poetic in the hope that it will sound profound rather than pretentious and shitty.
It also used two similes in a sentence once. That sort of thing makes me cry.
Anyway, the game.
The game loses big points in the first few minutes by having a huge (and I do mean huge) sign that flashes up whenever it autosaves that says "CONTENT SAVING DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR SYSTEM". I'm playing this on a PC, guys, we don't need to worry about shit like that. I am kind of resigned to messages like this but it's the first time where I've encountered one which flashes up in the middle of the damn screen which makes it impossible to ignore.
The controls are also fairly rubbish. They're not especially bad but they're imprecise knock offs of the Splinter Cell system.
So what about the gameplay? Well, it's unfortunate that this game has emerged a few weeks after Riddick. Riddick demonstrated that stealth gameplay could be intense, brutal and thrilling all at the same time. Velvet Assassin demonstrates that it can also be fairly dull.
Honestly, though, I didn't get very far into the game. I sneaked around under a bridge where the game explained that a purple line around my character indicated that I was concealed (if you think that would break any sense of immersion, you'd be right). I climbed up a bridge where I was amused to find the developers had been too cheap to animate the character climbing off the ladder onto the bridge. Instead, the screen faded to black when I was at the top of the ladder and faded up again with me on the bridge.
That bit was quite nostalgic, actually, I haven't seen a game do that since 2002.
I then sneaked up behind a drunk guard, stabbed him from behind then sneaked up behind another guard who wasn't drunk and stabbed him from behind. Yes, yes, I thought, this is all very well. What else can I do?
I let the next guard spot me as I ran up to him. Maybe I can disarm him in a cool way or something, I thought. No, no I can't. I can't do anything in fact. I couldn't even stab him. I had to just stand there and get shot.
It was at that point where I thought - Oh, that's the way it's going to be, is it? Fuck you - and turned the game off.
Velvet Assassin doesn't have a demo for reasons that should now be evident so if you're really determined to play it, for gods sake pirate it first.
In other news, there's a demo for Zeno Clash out so I suggest having a look. I didn't like it but I'm sure a lot of people will.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Zeno Clash - first impressions
I've been zipping through Zeno Clash for a couple of hours and have a few thoughts.
For those who don't know what it is, there's a trailer here which sums it up quite nicely.
So, observations:
1) It's really fucking weird.
The design is excellent, the setting is pretty unique and the story is... interesting. To be honest, the primary reason to play it is because it's so odd and if that doesn't appeal, you may as well stop reading now.
2) The combat is... a bit shit
You know how the combat in the trailer looked stilted and rubbish? Well, the game is exactly like that. The shooting is extremely unsatisfying & The hand to hand combat pales in comparison to Assassins Creed, The Chronicles of Riddick... even Crysis.
They've falling into the age old trap of assuming that punching people in the head becomes infinitely more fun the more you do it. This may well be the case in real life but it's really not in the game.
3) The voice acting aint up to much.
I feel bad criticising an indie game for having bad voice acting... but it's valid. Indie games are becoming more and more important in the industry right now and if they want to be taken seriously, they need to show that they can do what big budget titles can do in different ways. They do this with the story quite well- you're not eased into the world, all you know is you've killed your father-mother. I don't know what this is yet but I'm rather intrigued. If they'd spent a little extra on the voice actors, the story could have been the main selling point of the game.
4) The source engine is REALLY fucking showing its age.
Now, most of the time this isn't an issue but occasionally, you find yourself wandering through a desert and there will be a two foot high fence on your left and right and you can't pass it. Somehow, they've managed to make a game set in a desert / wilderness a corridor shooter.
About half of the time you're not actually fighting in these corridors but even when the game does open out, it feels small and restrictive. I get that these guys are working on a small budget, I really do, but could they not have picked a better engine? Maybe the Unreal 3 engine or... I don't know, the Cry Engine? Fuck, Merchants of Brooklyn felt more open than this.
5) This is another one of those games where most things about it are good... it's just the gameplay is shit.
It falls into the same category of Fallout 3 and, hopefully, like Fallout 3, many people will be able to look past how shit the fighting and gunplay are but I don't think I'll be able to. It's a game, it's an interactive experience. If the interactive bits are terrible, I'm wondering why the hell they didn't make an animated film instead... I can't help thinking that would have been better for everyone concerned.
6) Despite all of this, I'm going to continue playing it tomorrow.
If I'm honest, I'll admit that I'm not really enjoying playing it. And not even in a The Path way, where I'm not especially enjoying it but I'm so immersed in the game world I don't care. I'm going to continue, even though I have no idea why.
I really don't think it's worth buying anyway. I'd recommend trying it before you buy it but guess what, there's no demo (for reasons that are becoming apparent) so if you want to try before you buy, I suggest torrenting. Don't pretend you don't know how to do that. Hopefully you'll get more out of it than I did.
For those who don't know what it is, there's a trailer here which sums it up quite nicely.
So, observations:
1) It's really fucking weird.
The design is excellent, the setting is pretty unique and the story is... interesting. To be honest, the primary reason to play it is because it's so odd and if that doesn't appeal, you may as well stop reading now.
2) The combat is... a bit shit
You know how the combat in the trailer looked stilted and rubbish? Well, the game is exactly like that. The shooting is extremely unsatisfying & The hand to hand combat pales in comparison to Assassins Creed, The Chronicles of Riddick... even Crysis.
They've falling into the age old trap of assuming that punching people in the head becomes infinitely more fun the more you do it. This may well be the case in real life but it's really not in the game.
3) The voice acting aint up to much.
I feel bad criticising an indie game for having bad voice acting... but it's valid. Indie games are becoming more and more important in the industry right now and if they want to be taken seriously, they need to show that they can do what big budget titles can do in different ways. They do this with the story quite well- you're not eased into the world, all you know is you've killed your father-mother. I don't know what this is yet but I'm rather intrigued. If they'd spent a little extra on the voice actors, the story could have been the main selling point of the game.
4) The source engine is REALLY fucking showing its age.
Now, most of the time this isn't an issue but occasionally, you find yourself wandering through a desert and there will be a two foot high fence on your left and right and you can't pass it. Somehow, they've managed to make a game set in a desert / wilderness a corridor shooter.
About half of the time you're not actually fighting in these corridors but even when the game does open out, it feels small and restrictive. I get that these guys are working on a small budget, I really do, but could they not have picked a better engine? Maybe the Unreal 3 engine or... I don't know, the Cry Engine? Fuck, Merchants of Brooklyn felt more open than this.
5) This is another one of those games where most things about it are good... it's just the gameplay is shit.
It falls into the same category of Fallout 3 and, hopefully, like Fallout 3, many people will be able to look past how shit the fighting and gunplay are but I don't think I'll be able to. It's a game, it's an interactive experience. If the interactive bits are terrible, I'm wondering why the hell they didn't make an animated film instead... I can't help thinking that would have been better for everyone concerned.
6) Despite all of this, I'm going to continue playing it tomorrow.
If I'm honest, I'll admit that I'm not really enjoying playing it. And not even in a The Path way, where I'm not especially enjoying it but I'm so immersed in the game world I don't care. I'm going to continue, even though I have no idea why.
I really don't think it's worth buying anyway. I'd recommend trying it before you buy it but guess what, there's no demo (for reasons that are becoming apparent) so if you want to try before you buy, I suggest torrenting. Don't pretend you don't know how to do that. Hopefully you'll get more out of it than I did.
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Dark Athena & Time Travel
So the new Chronicles of Riddick game just got released and I've been playing it through for the last couple of days.
Fuck me, it's a masterpiece.
I started with Escape from Butcher Bay, which is as good as I remember it... the acting & plot are superb, the atmosphere is stunning and the action is wonderfully brutal. It's also a fantastic counterpoint to games like Crysis and Left 4 Dead - the action in Crysis and Left 4 Dead is ultra smooth, ultra kinetic. You're rarely in the same place for long. In Butcher Bay, everything feels much slower, much more ponderous - in a good way.
I've said this before, and I stick by it- the Riddick games are the only ones ever created where I feel like I have a real body in the game world. It's a remarkable feet that adds some serious realism to what is otherwise quite a silly Sci Fi game.
So- Dark Athena. Well, the plot and voice acting is as fantastic as ever. Admiral Cain from BSG voices the main antagonist, which is fantastic :D
If anything, from what I've played, the action is even more ponderous, even more brutal and even more stealthy than it was in Butcher Bay. One bit in particular had you hunting around 10 drones on an otherwise deserted cargo deck. The deck was pitch black, the only light coming from the drones' flashlights. I was sneaking round crates, executing them one by one... It was so good I actually got goose pimples from the excitement of pulling off flawless silent kills one after the other.
Stealth gameplay is very hard to get right but they've done it here, and don't they know it.
Dark Athena isn't quite as focused as Butcher Bay, though. There is a lot more game convenient faffing around this time. Nipping to get components for a Vent Tool, a PDA and so on. This would be an issue were they not giving you a constant feed of awe inspiring set pieces. I won't talk too much about them here as experiencing them yourself is half the fun. So yeah. Two good games, definitely worth getting in my opinion.
In other news, I saw a British film at the cinema today. No, I haven't gone mad. It was Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel.
If you haven't seen the trailer, watch it now and get back to me.
Done? Good. If you liked the look of that trailer, the film is basically that but 83 minutes long instead of two. It's stunningly un ambitious. There are no scenes where any characters have to sacrifice their soul to save humanity, no car chases, no epic love stories across two centuries... Three people in a pub and a time agent are all you get.
I really, really liked it. It was very focused, which helps. It's also one of those odd films where nothing really happens but you're hooked anyway. It's like a shorter version of Gosford Park but with fewer posh people.
I know it's not really saying much, given how crap this year has been for films so far, but it was one of the best things I've seen so far. I think Push was at about the same level of quality but there were fewer things wrong with FAQ...
Put it this way: FAQ is one of those films which is flawless because it doesn't try to do too much. It doesn't over stretch its plot in the way most time travel films do, it doesn't have twelve endings... This can be seen as a bad thing but I say it's always better for a film to be too short rather than too long.
It's definitely worth seeing, if you're a cinema junkie or if you've got 83 minutes to spare and feel like a bit of silly British comedy.
And it's got Roy from the IT crowd in it, which is always a good thing.
Fuck me, it's a masterpiece.
I started with Escape from Butcher Bay, which is as good as I remember it... the acting & plot are superb, the atmosphere is stunning and the action is wonderfully brutal. It's also a fantastic counterpoint to games like Crysis and Left 4 Dead - the action in Crysis and Left 4 Dead is ultra smooth, ultra kinetic. You're rarely in the same place for long. In Butcher Bay, everything feels much slower, much more ponderous - in a good way.
I've said this before, and I stick by it- the Riddick games are the only ones ever created where I feel like I have a real body in the game world. It's a remarkable feet that adds some serious realism to what is otherwise quite a silly Sci Fi game.
So- Dark Athena. Well, the plot and voice acting is as fantastic as ever. Admiral Cain from BSG voices the main antagonist, which is fantastic :D
If anything, from what I've played, the action is even more ponderous, even more brutal and even more stealthy than it was in Butcher Bay. One bit in particular had you hunting around 10 drones on an otherwise deserted cargo deck. The deck was pitch black, the only light coming from the drones' flashlights. I was sneaking round crates, executing them one by one... It was so good I actually got goose pimples from the excitement of pulling off flawless silent kills one after the other.
Stealth gameplay is very hard to get right but they've done it here, and don't they know it.
Dark Athena isn't quite as focused as Butcher Bay, though. There is a lot more game convenient faffing around this time. Nipping to get components for a Vent Tool, a PDA and so on. This would be an issue were they not giving you a constant feed of awe inspiring set pieces. I won't talk too much about them here as experiencing them yourself is half the fun. So yeah. Two good games, definitely worth getting in my opinion.
In other news, I saw a British film at the cinema today. No, I haven't gone mad. It was Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel.
If you haven't seen the trailer, watch it now and get back to me.
Done? Good. If you liked the look of that trailer, the film is basically that but 83 minutes long instead of two. It's stunningly un ambitious. There are no scenes where any characters have to sacrifice their soul to save humanity, no car chases, no epic love stories across two centuries... Three people in a pub and a time agent are all you get.
I really, really liked it. It was very focused, which helps. It's also one of those odd films where nothing really happens but you're hooked anyway. It's like a shorter version of Gosford Park but with fewer posh people.
I know it's not really saying much, given how crap this year has been for films so far, but it was one of the best things I've seen so far. I think Push was at about the same level of quality but there were fewer things wrong with FAQ...
Put it this way: FAQ is one of those films which is flawless because it doesn't try to do too much. It doesn't over stretch its plot in the way most time travel films do, it doesn't have twelve endings... This can be seen as a bad thing but I say it's always better for a film to be too short rather than too long.
It's definitely worth seeing, if you're a cinema junkie or if you've got 83 minutes to spare and feel like a bit of silly British comedy.
And it's got Roy from the IT crowd in it, which is always a good thing.
Friday, 24 April 2009
TV shows I would kill to be on
Some shows are great to watch because they're entertaining, thrilling, moving, whatever. Some shows are great to watch because you think: "wow, I'd love to be doing that right now..." For me, these shows are:
Mythbusters
Mythbusters is a fantastic show. They take a myth or a piece of received wisdom and, in the most direct and down to earth way possible, test it. They're not perfect but they are brilliant at creating scenarios that test hypotheses that are understandable by Joe Average.
Pros:
I would get to blow things up.
I would get to be all sciency.
I would get to hang around with Kari Byron, who is hot.
I would get to build things.
I would get to be very silly on camera.
Cons:
I have no robotics/engineering/electronics skills at all - partly because of my dyslexia but mostly because I'm extremely lazy. This may be a problem in a show where they build all their own test rigs. I don't think I could actually contribute anything.
Overall Awesomeness:
9/10
You get to build stuff and then break it whilst educating people. It's fun and has a point. Brilliant, I just don't have the skills to do it.
Top Gear
Top Gear was one of my absolute favourite shows for a long time - mainly because they road tested cars I could actually buy like the Ford Focus, the Smart Roadster & the Skoda Octavia. It's gone a bit down hill in recent years but it'd still be brilliant fun to be on.
Pros:
I would get to drive loads of cars.
I would get to powerslide & four wheel drift in a safe environment
That would be my entire job.
Cons:
I would have to talk to Jeremy Clarkson.
I'd have to put up with the producers pathetic attempts at humour.
I'd be terrified I'd break all the 200k supercars.
Battlestar Galactica:
Battlestar Galactica is the single best show I've ever seen. It's action packed, complex and hugely intelligent. I would love to be in it, not as one of the main characters - they're all sewn up perfectly by the actors they all ready have but as a Marine or a random Viper Pilot.
Pros:
I would be a part of the most important television show ever created
I'd get to play with props
I'd get to hang around with Grace Park, Katee Sackhoff & Tricia Helfer.
I'm actually fairly good at physical stuff - I'm a blue belt in Ju Jitsu, I'm in shape and climb at weekends. I could wrestle with centurions and get killed in a heroic manner or something.
Cons:
The series has ended so there's not really much anyone can do about getting on it.
You'd probably get cock blocked by Helo, who is awesome in every way and probably has all the girls fawning after him constantly.
Overall Awesomeness:
10/10
Come on, it's Battlestar. As fun as the other shows are, they've got nothing on Battlestar. And you'd get to shoot blanks out of a plastic gun. WIN!
Mythbusters
Mythbusters is a fantastic show. They take a myth or a piece of received wisdom and, in the most direct and down to earth way possible, test it. They're not perfect but they are brilliant at creating scenarios that test hypotheses that are understandable by Joe Average.
Pros:
I would get to blow things up.
I would get to be all sciency.
I would get to hang around with Kari Byron, who is hot.
I would get to build things.
I would get to be very silly on camera.
Cons:
I have no robotics/engineering/electronics skills at all - partly because of my dyslexia but mostly because I'm extremely lazy. This may be a problem in a show where they build all their own test rigs. I don't think I could actually contribute anything.
Overall Awesomeness:
9/10
You get to build stuff and then break it whilst educating people. It's fun and has a point. Brilliant, I just don't have the skills to do it.
Top Gear
Top Gear was one of my absolute favourite shows for a long time - mainly because they road tested cars I could actually buy like the Ford Focus, the Smart Roadster & the Skoda Octavia. It's gone a bit down hill in recent years but it'd still be brilliant fun to be on.
Pros:
I would get to drive loads of cars.
I would get to powerslide & four wheel drift in a safe environment
That would be my entire job.
Cons:
I would have to talk to Jeremy Clarkson.
I'd have to put up with the producers pathetic attempts at humour.
I'd be terrified I'd break all the 200k supercars.
Overall Awesomeness:
5/10
Whilst driving cars in a variety of silly ways all day would be awesome, I think Clarkson and the idiot producers would make it get very old very quickly.
Battlestar Galactica:
Battlestar Galactica is the single best show I've ever seen. It's action packed, complex and hugely intelligent. I would love to be in it, not as one of the main characters - they're all sewn up perfectly by the actors they all ready have but as a Marine or a random Viper Pilot.
Pros:
I would be a part of the most important television show ever created
I'd get to play with props
I'd get to hang around with Grace Park, Katee Sackhoff & Tricia Helfer.
I'm actually fairly good at physical stuff - I'm a blue belt in Ju Jitsu, I'm in shape and climb at weekends. I could wrestle with centurions and get killed in a heroic manner or something.
Cons:
The series has ended so there's not really much anyone can do about getting on it.
You'd probably get cock blocked by Helo, who is awesome in every way and probably has all the girls fawning after him constantly.
Overall Awesomeness:
10/10
Come on, it's Battlestar. As fun as the other shows are, they've got nothing on Battlestar. And you'd get to shoot blanks out of a plastic gun. WIN!
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