Tour Of Duty

Ok, so this week I was a little apprehensive about the game I was going to review. Medal of Honor holds a special place in my heart as one of the finest WWII shooters I’ve played. I still have fond memories of attempting to storm the beach at Normandy, only to be shot to pieces as soon as I’ve stepped of the boat.  Last week Medal of Honor was released, with the series set in Afghanistan and focusing on hunting Al-Qaeda.  As per usual before a big game release, I checked out IGN’s review and was astonished. They gave it a 6. That means that the game is just passable.  For a game this big, a 6 is just beyond belief.  But I was intent on at least trying is out, if nothing else to see if it was as bad as they said.

And I am glad I did.  This game is fantastic.  The visuals are spectacular, giving many moments where you want to pause to really soak it in (even though you’ll probably die doing so).  As I said this game is set in Afghanistan, so you won’t be speeding down the side of a hill on a snowmobile while shooting at bad guys like James Bond, as you did in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  You see it’s hard to look at MoH without comparing it. For the record CoD was given a 9.4 from IGN, and sort of set the bar of military first person shooters.

One of the issues brought up regarding MoH was the lack of character development, which I will agree with. You never find out who your character is and why they joined the army. But then again, do you really need to?  The game play is great, well paced with spectacular set pieces that give you an epic cinematic feeling, without resorting to a “Do this and save America the world” mood.  It feels gritty and real. Everything from the sound of gun fire to the dust being whipped up around you adds to this, and to that extent it becomes an immersive experience.

The multiplayer was actually developed by a different studio (Dice) who were responsible for Battlefield Bad Company 2, and has a solid, polished feel to it. The ultimate test came on Thursday night when I was playing it and time came to turn it off and call it a night. My initial reaction was “aww”, and regret that I couldn’t play just one more map. There are a few different modes to help keep it interesting, including objective based death match, team death match and more. It also features a leveling system, although the number of classes is a bit lacking at only 3.

So the big question is, is this game worth getting?

My answer is yes.  The game, in my opinion, is fantastic.  Where CoD is like watching Commando, MoH is more like Saving Private Ryan. It feels real and gritty, not over the top set pieces with increasingly more outlandish stunts and action.  Of course, this all may change with CoD Black Ops comes out next month.

On a side note I learnt a lesson. Never take a review for granted.  Especially with companies like Game offering 7 day return policy. If you think you may like a game, I say grab it, try it and if its crap *cough Kane and Lynch cough*, and if so return it and get your money back.

Next week: Splinter Cell Conviction. A little older, a little wiser.

Monkey Business

Growing up as young kid I feel in love with a strange little show from Japan detailing the exploits of a magical monkey man, and his ragtag group of companions including a pig monster, some sort of water demon, a horse that’s really a dragon and a young Buddhist boy who till this day I still think was a girl.  The show was called Monkey (I knew it as Monkey Magic due to the opening credits tune), and it was based off an ancient Chinese story call Journey to the West.  As I grew up I always thought this would have been a great idea for a video game of some description.  Luckily I wasn’t the only one, and the good people at Ninja Theory decided to take this story, twist it a bit, and come out with a fantastic little game called Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

Set 150 years in the future, you play Monkey, A loner on the run from Mechs and slavers. During your voyage you are enslaved by a young girl named Tripitaka (but everyone calls her Trip) who agrees to let you go free if you take her back to her home village. 

The game itself plays similarly to Ubisofts treatment of the Prince of Persia franchise. You’ll need to negotiate your way through a beautifully designed New York city years after a global war has ravaged the earth.  You’ll climb pipes, leap for hand holds and other such acrobatics while trying to reach your destination, all the while searching for floating orange orbs to level up your abilities.

Combat comes in the form of your magic staff.  The staff can be used to fire stun rounds, plasma rounds, or just beat the snot out of things.  It all flows quite smoothly, and although uses a fair amount of button mashing it feels instantly familiar to use.  Also worth a mention is Monkey’s cloud. In the tv series monkey whistles and a magic pink cloud comes along to take monkey where ever he needs to go. In Enslaved the cloud is represented as a flying blue hover disk that when you get enough speed on looks kind of like the aforementioned cloud. Its clever and really cool to zip about on.

The game itself isn’t particularly long, but at the end its quite satisfying.  You feel the story has been told, and the pacing of it is fantastic. 

There are some downsides though.  Sometimes the graphics get a little glitchy, and there are some moments of frantic button mashing, but these are usually forgotten when one of the many beautiful set pieces are revealed to you. 

One of the other things I noticed in this, which I usually don’t pay attention to, was the sound track.  The voice acting is superb, with monkey being voiced by Andy Serkis aka the guy behind Gollum. The music is also fantastic, matching the atmosphere of the game, without being too intrusive.

This game is defiantly worth a look, and if you’re still unsure I suggest downloading the demo and giving it a try.  It’s free and it’ll help give you a really good idea of what to suspect.

Next Week: Medal of Honor. Can EA topple Activision in the war based first person shooter market?

Spiderman Faces His Greatest Foe Yet: Camera Angles

So last week I picked up a copy of Spiderman Shattered Dimensions with a little bit of trepidation. You see, the last few installments for everyone favorite web spinner have all been, shall we say, less than stellar. In fact some might even go as far as to say that they were craptastic.  I’m glad to say that this game turns a corner for the franchise.  

The basic story is that Mysterio, a fish bowl headed amateur magician/villain, has attempted to steal an artifact. Spidey turns up and in the ensuing fight the artifact is broken and bits sent flying into other dimensions.  Now Spidey needs to team up with three other Spidermen from different dimensions.  

This adds a depth of game play, as each of the different Spidermen have different play styles and abilities.  Ultimate Spiderman wears the symbiote suit and uses a special attack called rage which sends tendrils flying out in all directions.  2099 Spiderman fights villains in a neon future using a special spider sense ability that slows time down. Noir Spiderman is probably the most different in style, and in my opinion the most fun. Noir Spidey creeps around in the shadows and focus on silent take downs and webbing unsuspecting bad guys while avoiding being seen.

Overall this game is fun. Lots of web slinging fun.  The different Spidermen all add a different dimension (no pun intended) to the game play, and help the game from becoming too repetitive.  There are some downsides, which while are not deal breakers, they do make the game somewhat frustrating.  Wall crawling is massively annoying.  It’s almost impossible to control the camera making wall crawling an almost vomit inducing experience.  Luckily there are only a few times when you need to use it, so the blow is lessened.  There are also some button mashing moments, such as guarding civilians from wave after wave of henchmen, which can be just plain annoying. I mean how long could it possibly take two guys to open a door? Surely at a console the size of the one they’re bashing away at there must be an open door button. 

All that aside, Spiderman is still fun. A little short, but a hell of a lot of fun.

Next Week: Enslaved. A futuristic retelling of an old Chinese fable.

Overdue

Ok, so this week I'm a little late with my posting. I can attribute this to one thing. Dead Rising 2.
If you've not played Dead Rising before, its pretty much an exercise in zombie genocide.  At its heart, dead rising 2 is a dumb game. Its got a wafer thin plot about a extreme motorbike rider who is trapped in a Vagas like casino complex that has been overrun by hoards of the undead. You mission (whether or not you choose to accept) is to kill lots of zombies, get the medicine your daughter needs to survive, and clear your name. Not exactly from the pen of William Shakespeare.

What Dead Rising 2 does well is Killing. Whether that is killing thousands of zombies, murderous psychopaths or marauding looters. At your disposal are a huge array of weapons. Everything from hand bags to park benches can be picked up and used to beat a zombies head in.  Then there are combo weapons. These are combination's of two other weapons to make an instrument of mass zombie destruction.  Some examples are boxing gloves with bowie knives stuck to them, to a cement saw the spits plates out. There are so many different choices you can make that it never seems to get old.

There have also been some drastic improvements from the first Dead Rising too. Survivors AI has jumped ahead, choosing to follow you through a crowd of zombies rather than try and kill everything that comes with in 50 meters. That's my job.This makes the task of retrieving survivors from various locations a lot less painful.  Couple that with a more open environment and less pressing time constraints than the first game and you can see that Capcom have really set out to raise the bar.

Now the downside, and yes Dead Rising has its fair share of annoyances.  Firstly the psychopaths. I imported my character from Dead Rising: Case Zero, so I already started at lvl5. Even with this head start I found the psychos impossible at early levels. It seemed that to beat them you really had to find ways to bug them out. Now most of the forums online suggest ignoring them as long as you can, and if need be restarting with the character at a higher level, it feels as though these are things that you shouldn't be required to do to enjoy the game first time.

Poker. Several of the missions you're given revolve around playing some poker, hell there is even a group of people who won't let you rescue them till you've beaten them at a high stakes game seemingly ignoring the swarm of brain eaters massing around them.  Combine that with the length of time it takes to play and win, you really start getting pushed for time.

Finally Multiplayer. This comes in two flavors. Co-op or TIR. Co-op feels a little tacked on. You both play Chuck Greene, and if the host saves you get booted out of the game.  While Co-op could have been awesome, it always feels like your running around in someone else's game.  TIR on the other hand truly surprised me. It plays like a game show where you and three opponents are pitted against each other in a variety of zombie killing games.  What ever money you win you can cash out and add to your saved game, increasing Chucks bank roll.
Over all I am enjoying Dead Rising 2, despite its flaws, and I know that as soon as I've finished the main story, I'm going to be starting again and seeing if I can save some more of those damn survivors I missed.

Next Week: Spiderman Shattered Dimensions. Can this game finally break Spideys run of craptacular games?

End Of An Era

Well, in case you missed my last post, Halo Reach was released last week, taking a staggering $213 million on day one. So basically if you're reading this chances are you already own it.  The game itself if the perfect swansong for Bungie, with a combination of an epic campaign and near flawless multiplayer. 

The campaign tells the story of the fall of Reach, a human colony, from the view point of Noble Six who along with the rest of Noble Company are charged with defending the planet.  While only 9 missions long, and taking about 6-7 hours to finish, it is a satisfying conclusion to the series. I liken it to Limbo in that its not overly long, but the enjoyment you get from that is more than enough. 

As far as multiplayer goes, as would be expected from Bungie, Halo has more options than you can shake a gravity hammer at.  Firefight is back, where up to four of you have to defend yourselves against wave after wave of bad guys.  Deathmatch has a slew of options, from standard slayer to headhunter, where you need to collect and deposit the skulls of your fallen foes.  All this is made more interesting with the addition of armor abilities. This range from jet packs to invisibility to holograms and more. They all add a tactical element to the game, and none seem overpowered.

All in all if you haven't played Halo and are into FPS then go and get a copy. Now. No questions asked.

Coming this week
Dead Rising 2.  Sweet sweet zombitastic killing fun. 

Halo Vs Move

So this week is a big one for both Microsoft and Sony with Halo Reach (the last/first in the series) being released on the Xbox, and Sony releasing their motion capture device Move later in the week.  I've been weighing up between the Move and Kinect (due out November) and I've decided to wait until some more solid games are released before I'll shell out the $$ for it.  A quick calculation on the cost works it out to be about $350 for the Move adapters, plus a second set of controls, plus a game.  At this stage I'm still more keen on Kinect.

Halo.  What is there to say about Halo.  For those of you who don't know much about Halo (for shame) its effectively the title that sold the original Xbox.  Originally developed as a RTS, then a 3rd person shooter for the Mac until Microsoft swooped in (possibly in a hang glider made of pure gold) and brought the exclusive rights to the tile and earning the vocal anger of Mac users everywhere. 

With it's fast paced combat, truly epic story telling and amazing multiplayer content Halo and its 3 sequels have truly cemented their place in video gaming history.  I'm sure there are plenty of haters out there who will reel of a stack of reasons why its a flawed game, but the sales figures alone set the franchise apart in the gaming world selling over 20 million copies internationally. 


So with its release tomorrow (I plan a few sleepless nights) I've decided to celebrate by inviting a group of mates to bring their Xbox's around for a good old fashion LAN party this weekend, cos I still believe that as much fun as it is to own your mates online, its much better when you can see the look on their face when their on the receiving end of the butt of your gun for the 100th time.  Sweeet.

As you may be able to tell, I'm slightly more excited about the Halo release than Move, but that could be because I'm still relatively new to the PS3 experience.  Time can only tell.

Pew Pew

Ok, so this week I've got a few things I'm going to talk about this week. I've been playing (and as of yesterday finishing) inFamous. I know its a bit old now, but I figured that I should have played the first one before the second one comes out. Now I should start by saying I'm a huge fan of the open world sandbox style game. I loved prototype, and I think that Red Dead Redemption is still game of the year without contest, and given the caliber of games released so far that's a pretty big pegging.

So naturally I was presold on inFamous, and after playing I'd have to say its a mighty fine game. Heaps of fun to be had doing such fun things as zapping a chain link fence with electricity then basting a bad guy into them. First time I did that I burst out laughing like some sort of evil super villain. Anyway the game itself has a good story, with choices all through the game (basically broken down into good and evil choices) and some really great looking cut scenes. I'm not too sure if I'll go back and try for the Trophies I missed, but ask me that again in a month or two and I may tell a different story.

I also downloaded Dead Rising: Case Zero for Xbox during the week. For those who played the original Dead Rising, well it's like that, but better (It bridges the story of Dead Rising and the upcoming Dead Rising 2). If you haven't played dead rising, think of every cheezy, camp zombie film you've seen and you're close to being upto speed on things. The important thing in Dead Rising is that pretty much anything can be used to kill the hoards of zombies shuffling around the small desert town. A new feature is the ability to combine weapons to make stuff thats even more awesomer. For example, get a leaf rake and a battery, slap em together and you've got an electro rake. Massive Win!
Dead Rising 2 drops at the end of the month, so for a good look at how it runs, and what improvements they've made *cough* gun aiming system *cough*, its well worth the 400 odd points it'll set you back.

In a final note, I had some quite tragic news during the week. Up until a few months ago I was a WoW addict, playing with a small guild becoming friends with most of the members. I found out (through facebook of all things) that the guild leader, Malac, passed away after a motorbike accident. A lot of people in the past have told me that because I didn't know these people in real life that they I couldn't really call them "friends". Well on this matter I am forced to strongly disagree, and am morning the passing of a good friend, great guild leader, and a pretty damn good raid leader too. Malac you'll be missed.