Every Generation Needs a New Revolution

Civilization is one of my all time favorite game series. I have fond memories of playing the original Civ on a friends PC and later playing the graphically superior Mac version for hours on end. Watching the Civ series grow and get better over time has been awesome for me. There’s been multiple ways the game could have been fucked up (hey, lets not make it turn based!), but it only seems to become more fun. Sid Meier rules, and his Civilization games have stolen hundreds, if not thousands of hours from my life. Not bad for what basically amounts to a fancy video board game.

Now that you know I’m fully biased towards the Civ series, you can probably guess that I thoroughly enjoyed Civilization: Revolution (Civ:Rev). However, just like all previous Civ iterations, I was extremely worried that something would go terribly wrong with the next iteration. I feared that Firaxis might make the game too complicated, or that the controls might suck, or that they might over simplify the game for the console. However, Firaxis did a great job finding the right balance of complexity (it’s roughly as a deep as Civ 1 or 2, although some might argue less) and found a control scheme that works really well on the 360.

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Condemned 2: Simulating Hobo Beatdowns Since ’08!

After hearing enough accounts about how “cool the bear is,” I figured it was time to man up and play some Condemned 2: Bloodshot (C2:B).

Let’s just jump right in. C2:B is much better than Condemned: Criminal Origins (C:CO). Gone are the repetitive door-axe and crowbar mechanics from C:CO. C2:B actually took me by surprise and put much more emphasis on melee and combos. Also, the cooler parts from C:CO have been retained, like using lots of environmental objects as melee weapons.

The melee system has been improved greatly from C:CO. In C2:B, you can do various “Attack Combos” which are followed up by a super damaging attack. I mainly used the one-two (left-right) punch, which is followed up by a 3x damage attack combo. Parrying and blocking then attacking are also followed by an extra damaging punch which rewards players for not turning the game into a slug-fest.

You can throw a hook as well by pressing down on the left stick, then attacking. I found that throwing hooks was a little awkward in normal combat though, and hardly used them. Apparently you can use hooks to disarm enemies, but I found that throwing my weapon was usually as effective. Plus, throwing a weapon at an enemy usually stuns them for a long enough time to get in close and pummel them. Oh, you can still kick enemies as well, but if you kick too many times in a row you get tired or something. Kicking wasn’t really effective either so I didn’t really use it that often.

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Kane and Lynch: Why’s Everybody Always Pickin’ on Me?

I was eating lunch with a group of producers one day about the time Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (K&L) was released. Unfortunately, K&L came out during a storm of other awesome games (it was a holiday 2007 game, going up against the likes of Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, Bioshock and so on). We were discussing various games that we had been playing when one of the producers at the table asked me “Have you played Kane and Lynch? It’s really good.” He seemed fairly adamant that this game “had something to it” and his comments stuck with me to this day. I had been itching to play it, and finally decided to see what the fuss was about.

K&L starts out interestingly enough. You play as Kane (Lynch can be controlled only in co-op, more on that later) who is being broken out of a prison transport by Lynch. It soon becomes apparent that K&L tries to straddle the style of a comic book and something out of a Hollywood heist movie. As you stumble around the tutorial level, large groups of similarly dressed (and masked) goons help cover you as you make your escape. The game jumps off immediately with huge fire fights against swarms of police, SWAT and even some choppers.

The first thing that stood out to me from a gameplay / technical perspective, is that when you shoot enemies, they just sorta twitch. I can’t think of a better way to describe it. When other games’ AI have actual pain animations, it feels a little cheap to have the enemy just kinda procedurally twitch when getting shot while not stopping. Plus, enemies can take a hefty amount of damage. I’m sure it was purely for balance reasons, but tagging a human character three times with a gun in practically any game should drop him. That’s not the case in K&L, especially for leg shots, which can take 5-10 shots to drop a guy.

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Dark Sector: Hey, You Spilled Some RE4 Into My GoW!

Dark Sector (DS) is the first project created by Digital Extremes (DE). The release of DS sort of came and went without much fanfare; I didn’t hear much about online and only a few people around the office played it. I heard some pretty mixed DS experiences, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

To say that DS tries to mimic Gear of War would be an understatement. Most of the core mechanics are lifted right from GoW, down to the “chase cam” while holding A to sprint, to moving from cover while engaged in third-person cover. The look of the game even feels like GoW, so when I heard that the people at DE made their own engine, I was completely surprised. I actually didn’t believe it at first, and had to go verify it on my own. Sure enough, DE claims their engine was written from scratch.

In any case, DS only feels like GoW for a short while. Eventually some unique elements are introduced that make DS feel separate from another GoW experience. The “glaive,” a sort of three-bladed boomerang quickly becomes the star of the show, making players forget that Cole Train and Baird won’t be joining you anytime soon.

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Y’all Better Axe Some Bodies

Condemned: Criminal Origins (C:CO) came out about three years ago and was one of those games I just never got around to playing until now. I’ve been hearing good things about Condemned 2, so I figure I’d play C:CO first.

I didn’t really feel a strong dislike or like for the game. Overall, the experience was pretty average, punctuated by a few “Oh, cool” and a few “What were they thinking?” moments. I was impressed how Monolith pulled off a mainly a melee combat game (pretty uncommon as far as first person games go) by making the environment feel very interactive. You’re able to pull various types of pipes and electrical conduits from the walls, rip doors off lockers and even take the blade from a paper cutter to use as weapons. I was constantly searching around the world for better weapons to use and loved comparing weapon stats. However, you’re practically spoon feed the game at every turn, which detracts from the immersion.

Gun use is heavily downplayed; you’ll only be able to take out a few enemies before you run out of ammo and will have to start scrounging for a piece of rebar. I’m sure this is by design as firearms take enemies down fast and are a rare find. You are also equipped with a taser most of the time which recharges after a few seconds after being fired. Tasering enemies usually makes them drop their weapons, or at least allows you to walk up and disarm them.

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Commander Shepard in: Bringing Down the Sky

I finally got around to playing the Mass Effect DLC, Bringing Down the Sky (BDtS). In BDtS, Shepard and the funky bunch land on an asteroid (named X57) in order to prevent it from obliterating a human-colonized world. This adventure turns out to be as epic as it sounds. Landing on X57 initially feels much like a regular side mission from the main game but that isn’t the case. A new race is introduced (the Batarians, a nod to people who have read the Mass Effect novel) along with a complete story line and new gameplay elements.

The thing that stood out to me the most was how much better the combat was in BDtS than in most of the main game. Some of the spaces Bioware used, especially for the final battle were laid out well and fun to fight in; long stretches for snipers, decent cover for close to mid-rage combat and lots of flank routes. Also, the Batarians seem to have more “classes” of enemies. I was fighting a range of soldiers, biotics, robotic drones and four legged creatures all at once.

As for new gameplay elements, Shepard encounters new types of turret guns on the surface of the asteroid that have physical shields which raise and lower depending on your distance from them. These turrets also move along tracks which surprised the shit out of me the first time I encountered them. Fighting armored, moving turrets was much more challenging than turret combat in the rest of Mass Effect. The thinking and strategy required to take out base defenses was a welcome addition.

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Grand Theft Auto IV: Committing Every Sin, I’d Do It All Again

Make no mistake, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is a good game. However, no game is perfect, and even the best games deserve a critical once-over.

Even if you’re not into open world games, you have to appreciate the excellent job Rockstar did with the overall quality of their game. There are plenty of reviews out for GTA IV, so I’ll try not to cover the obvious. I really only want to cover two things: where I think Rockstar made design improvements from previous games in the series, and where I think they need to make improvements in future titles.

I Came a Long Way to See You:

Taxis – You mean I don’t have to drive everywhere if I don’t want to? Being able to call taxis in GTA IV is a lot like using mounts in World of Warcraft, except that you can skip the ride. I’d like to personally thank the developer that came up with that idea. The taxi system has fundamentally changed the way I approach the series and I can’t imagine not having that feature from now on.

Cell Phone Interface – I think Rockstar has managed to make the best cell phone / text message interface in any game to date. EA has tried similar (smack talking emails from rival snowboarders in the SSX series, for example) virtual cell phone systems, but they always fall flat. In GTA IV, the cell phone is integrated into various missions where you must use the camera phone functionality, receive text messages to find car locations to steal and so on. Rockstar even included little details like that static-y interference buzz some phones make when you’re near speakers (I thought it was my real phone the first time I heard it). You can customize and upgrade your phone as well with new themes and ring tones, which really brings the phone to life.

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Stranglehold: A Benchmark for Destruction

After finishing Stranglehold a while ago, I’m still impressed with the amount of destruction the player is able to do. Pretty much all prop models, and a good portion of environment can be destroyed in one form or another, all of which goes into physics. If you’re into destructible environments, Stranglehold is your cup of tea.

Stranglehold borrows a lot of it’s design from the Max Payne series. Tequila is able to jump and dive around and slow down time, all which were awesome features of Max Payne. In addition, Max Payne had a “follow the bullet” cam on sniper rifles, which in Stranglehold has been mapped to an ability you can use at any time (on the d-pad) assuming you have enough energy stored up.

The combination of the cool Max Payne abilities with all the destructibility adds up to be a pretty decent experience. Unfortunately, the game really falls short due to the art. The lighting on objects is either very flat or very contrast-y, especially on characters. Don’t get me wrong, the artists did a great job with the variety of destructible objects, but the over all “look” of everything in the game is pretty noisy which ends up being distracting for gameplay.

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Addicted to PMOG

I bet you’ll be hearing a lot more about PMOG (passively multiplayer online game) in the near future. I learned about it a few weeks ago and signed up for the beta. Well, I got an invite to start an account today, and I can say that I’m officially addicted.

The concept is simple: install a firefox “game” plug in, browse the web, and get points (datapoints in PMOG). Once you get enough points, you level up. As you visit various sites, you might stumble upon a “portal,” which is placed by other people playing the game. These portals might take you on missions which in turn, get you more points. Missions are just a string of sites that players connect together with “lightposts,” which are basically just comments on each site. So far I’ve learned how to set up an emulator for my DS, where to shop for girls, or the scoop on letterboxing, all while leveling up.

There are some other interactive elements such as dropping off crates with goodies for other players, dropping mines to take points away from other players, and deploying “St. Nicks” which prevent other users from planting mines on that page.

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Before I Forget: Rainbow Six Vegas 2

I completed Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (RB6V2) a few days ago. I have to preface by saying that I enjoyed the first one immensely. Sure, the first RB6V has some issues and bugs, but overall I had a good time playing co-op with friends and got a few weeks of multi-player out of it.

After buying the game with three other friends from work, I learned that RB6V2 only has two player co-op! Well, I guess technically they have four-player in terrorist hunt mode, but story mode is where it’s at. I could see why from a design standpoint why they reduced it to two. The implementation of re-spawning on any other alive member of the squad makes the game incredibly easy, even on higher difficulty settings. This was the case in RB6V2 , since it allows one player to be extra aggressive and draw fire, and the other guy to hang back and basically be the mobile spawnpoint. In RB6V, having three extra spawnpoints made the game challengeless.

A friend of mine and I played all of RB6V2 on co-op on the “realistic” setting with little trouble. Another friend of mine has been playing through on realistic on his own, and having much more difficulty. I decided to help him out on the last two levels, and his impression was that all tactical gameplay went out the window after I joined in, but that it was a lot of fun to see me killing other guys and whatnot. Evidently, the difficulty doesn’t scale well for co-op, but the fun factor scales appropriately. Game design issues aside, I think it was a mistake to move away from four player co-op, if only because it’s what people expected from the first game. I will say that the co-op portion of the game is much smoother in the sequel, especially with hot-joining. The server / map list from RB6V wasn’t really gamer friendly.

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