Posts Tagged "Review"

Reviewing Operation Arrowhead (OA) is a tricky thing to me for many reasons. For one, I'm a huge huge fan of ARMA 2, with over 150 hours clocked in the game over the past year. Secondly, the ARMA series seem to epitomize PC gaming as a whole for me; offering an experience that just wouldn't be possible on consoles. Certainly there are other games, and genres that are designed for the PC - RTS and MMO games come to mind, but ARMA is wholly unique, it's something you just can't get in any other game.

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Shattered Horizon is unlike any game I've played in 2009, and most likely anything else I'm going to play in the near future. In a genre (multiplayer team-shooter) where each game is trying to distinguish itself in some significant way from Modern Warfare or Team Fortress 2, Shattered Horizon takes a truly novel approach. You get one weapon with three attack modes, there is no gravity, and you're in a true three dimensional environment. At first glance the game seems to have very little to it, but there are many hidden subtleties that make Shattered Horizon a winner.

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DiRT 2 races on to the scene in a flurry of mud, shiny graphics, flashy menus and fun physics.

I don't generally like sims, which is why I probably enjoy DiRT 2 so much. It's distant enough from a sim racer to be enjoyable without being as far out as something like Flatout or Burnout. My first experience with a Codemaster's racing game was with GRID, a fun game that left me frustrated with the multiplayer experience and wanting to take those cars off-road. With DiRT 2 I'm able to finally get dirty (I'm so sorry).

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Guybrush Threepwood returns in Tales of Monkey Island, the fifth Monkey Island game. Those of you who have played previous games may remember subtle references to an unbreakable five game contract many of the characters mentioned. A decade ago I was eager for a fifth game and I never really gave up hope. Tales certainly delivers; it's the strongest Monkey Island game yet.

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Last night I had my first chance to play Left 4 Dead 2. Although the demo was good, it didn't really give a good impression of what the full game is like. Wow.

Just.

Wow.

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This weekend The Orange Box is on sale for $9.99

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This weekend Tomb Raider: Anniversary is on sale for $4.99.

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World of Goo, 2008 IGF Winner for Design Innovation and Technical Excellence, is on sale this weekend for $4.99


Is it worth it?

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How can you avoid a game like BioShock?  It's been hyped for years, and besides that, the reviews it's received upon release almost guarantee a perfect game.  96% as an average score is no small accomplishment, and it was with this information that I bought the game on release day over Steam.

To preface my thoughts further, I'll be comparing this game a lot to Half-Life 2 , a game which has an identical score on Metacritic.   They're both generic FPS games, meaning that neither are trying to be overly tactical or reinforce realism.  

The first thing I took note of with BioShock were the graphics, particularly the water.  It's pretty, but it was a little disappointing at the same time.  Ken Levine (designer of the game) made a point of drawing attention to the water in many of his interviews, saying it would be the most realistic water in any game, ever.  While it does look very good, it never actually behaves like water.  Every tiny river or stream you see was placed there on purpose, and in some cases it shows.  I was under the impression that they had programmed this water so that the developers could designate a source and then let gravity and physics determine the flow.   

Aside from that the graphics are very good.  It's running on Unreal Engine 3, which is certainly shiny.   

 Sometimes a little too shiny, all of the characters look like they were made out of wax.    

The things this game got right were the action, and the fun feel of an FPS game.  For the first few levels I had a real feeling of tension as I never knew what would be waiting for me around the next corner.  After a while however, the levels became pretty repetitive and I always knew when the enemies had respawned (something I hate in games).

The story was pretty standard FPS fare, with a "twist" in the middle.  Naturally, after this twist there was very little in the way of story and you were basically just working your way towards the conclusion.  I'm not upset about the story, what I am upset about is how it was delivered:

You never interact with any characters face to face.  The only interaction you ever have, is listening to people talk to you over a radio.  Beyond that, the history of the city is brought to you courtesy of tape recorders lying around everywhere.  Not tapes, the entire recorders.  How exactly did they get there?  Why were so many people walking around dictating their personal thoughts onto recorders that they'd use once and then leave behind wherever they were?  It's a lazy way to give backstory to your world and I see way too many games using this crutch; Doom 3, FEAR, No One Lives Forever...

Take a look at Half-Life 2; there were actual citizens in the cities.  You'd actually see them being oppressed, or see them struggling against the system trying to eek out a living.  Along the walls there is graffiti, depicting the struggle against the combine, pictures of combine soldier holding a baby - a symbol of the loss since the suppression field stopped everyone's reproductive systems.  It makes you feel like you're a part of the world.

Granted, BioShock has posters around with propaganda, but without those other elements it doesn't have the same "punch."  The world feels like a video game, something reinforced by the loading screens you see whenever you change levels.  

For people who enjoy shooters BioShock is a good experience; on par with games like FEAR.  However, Half-Life 2 this is not, and it certainly doesn't deserve the uninhibited praise it's been getting since launch.

Bottom Line

70%

Yesterday I'd read a preview about a new adventure game called Runaway: The Dream of The Turtle.  This prompted me to visit the official website where I downloaded the trailer they had available and I learned that there was a demo as well, in French.  

The developer, Pendulo, is a Spain based developer that makes their games in French.  Although Runaway will be localized for North America and will have English voice actors when it is released in March of next year, it's currently already released in Europe and Quebec in a French version.

So I downloaded the demo and was struck by just how bad my understanding of the French language was.  Particularly when it's non-Quebec French and spoken much much more quickly for the purposes of the game.  However, by reading the French subtitles as I listened I was able to understand pretty much everything that was said.  One or two key words escaped me but it didn't take long before I figured out what the characters were talking about.  In fact, after about 15 minutes of playing the demo my brain had woken up and I didn't have any trouble understanding at all, I even started thinking in French.   

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