PC News and Game Reviews

Plot:

I think at this stage we are all well aware of the Plot of Crysis. This game has had an enormous amount of media hype, which is reflected by the huge amount of video game play footage that has been released to date. Suffice to say at this stage 99% of gamers are well aware of the story behind Crysis….but for those of you who are not….read on. Island in the middle of the Pacific. Alien craft crashes on the Island. North Koreans get to the Island first and seal it off. Americans send in elite Nano Suit clad Delta Force Operators to investigate!!!

The demo deals with this initial insertion of you and your fellow delta force players by HALO (no not the game of the same name, High Altitude Low Opening) parachute jump. The cut scene rendered in the Cry Engine2 is amazing. The characters look far better than anything I have seen to date. You leap from a transport plane and for the first time you are given control. As you speed towards the ground you deploy your parachute only to be hit by “something”. It’s all very cinematic but basically I’m gathering that an alien hits you just before you hit the water!

Thanks to your nano suit you easily survive the fall and emerge onto a beach at night time. A short walk though some caves and you encounter your first North Koreans, who are easily dispatched. The focus now turns to rendezvousing with your other Delta Force Operators. You soon meet one who was caught up in some trees, and with him you go to find a third team member. This is the second cut scene of the demo and is really well done. Think Predator, when Billy first stumbles upon the commandos skinned alive in the trees! You come into a clearing to find about 4 North Koreans mutilated…and then see a large pool of blood on the ground…….you then find a third Team-mate “Aztec” hacked to pieces and suspended in some form of web. Very well done and very good at creating a sense of dread at what the hell you will be facing later in the game!!

The demo now transitions into day time, with you getting your first “oooooo….ahhhhhhhh” moments as the Cry Engine 2 dazzles you beyond belief. But alas there is no time for sunbathing as you need to crack on! Your first task is to take out a jamming device, to allow communications with your base. Once done you investigate the North Koreans command post and download their logs for inspection. You are then called to rendezvous with the rest of the team. It is here you see the third and final cut scene of the demo. This is a well know piece of internet footage at this stage but it was still nice to see on my screen! You turn a corner to kind a frozen ship! As you debate just what the hell is going on a huge alien bursts out of the ship and rips one of your men up…….demo ends.

Game Play:

Nano Suit: This must be mentioned; as it is the one thing you will rely on most in Crysis. The nano suit gives you the unique ability to channel energy around your body to increase your attributes. You can increase your strength, speed or armour. You also gain the ability to cloak in a predator like light bending effect. These abilities are amazing as they themselves can dictate how the game unfolds. For instance take the first major encounter with the North Koreans. You need to take out the jamming radar. I played the demo several times and each time I took it out differently. The first time I snook up while cloaked and simply switched it off. I was able to time the passing of the guards and switch it off. The second time I simply shot it from the hill about until it exploded. This approach however brought the wrath of the North Koreans down as they came in a hummer to search for me.

The speed attribute I found I used the least, as even on hard setting I did very little retreating. However it is good to get out of dodge quickly if an MG is trained on you! The strength attribute I used far more. I really did have fun smashing houses to pieces and punching through walls!!! This brings me on to what I see as the most significant step forward that Crysis introduces.

Destructible Terrain and Buildings: We have all seen the videos of Crysis, as buildings explode into pieces…but I got a genuine surprise at how well the physics is handled in Crysis. Below are a series of screen shots taken using fraps, they demonstrate just how “destructible” the buildings are in Crysis!!!

• The shack, untouched
• Frag Out, grenade in place!
• Boom, building ripped to pieces
• Debris litters the place, the structure is gone

Crysis offers a frightening level of detail. It is this level of detail that makes this game great. The fire fights are intense and dynamic. Trees fall down around you are bullets fly!!! The total physics offers a new element to FPS game play. On another play through I killed all the Koreans in this shack by smashing through it wlth a Hummer from the other side of the building. I then jumped onto the roof of another hut, punched a hole in the roof and dropped a grenade into it……blowing it to pieces. Similarly I could have used my cloak ability and bypassed the entire outpost, thus saving my ammo….but I was never going to do that!!!!!

Graphics + Sound:

If you have looked at the screenshots then you know what the graphics are like. They are bordering on photo realistic. Crytek have gone to a huge effort to make things look real, and it has paid off! The sound is not found wanting, and the Koreans speak in their native tongue which is excellent, as on easier levels they speak English which is….well…just silly as they are North Korean. You should not know what they are saying, so please don’t waste your time and play it on hard!

Conclusion:

I have to give this demo 9 out of 10. I take off one point as this is a demo!!! This demo is excellent. If this does not draw you in then nothing will. The physics and the freeform level design move Crysis well away from the “shooter on rails”. You can approach the level from a number of different ways, either sneaking your way around or running and gunning! On top of this you also introduce the ability to use your suit to smash entire buildings down….of throw barrels around taking enemies out! The weapons are excellent and each can be modified with a number of enhancements (silencer, grenade launcher and better sights). I’m looking forward to this one, I just hope there is not a bug in sight when it is finally released!!!Excellent!

I recently played through a demo of Timeshift. This title has been on the cards for quite some time, but due to changes at the 11th hour it was delayed for some time!!!

Graphics

Timeshift is built using its own proprietary engine. The engine itself scrubs up pretty well, features include depth of field effects, some fancy “Crysis-esque” blurring effects and decent textures. The lighting was nice and the demo opened with some really cool water effects….it poured rain and water flowed from gutters etc. It looks good, and is certainly not let down by visuals.

Setting

Having read the developers website the story goes as follows. You play as one of two guys who have just invented a “Time suit”. The trouble starts when your partner in this venture grabs the working time suit and jumps off into “time”. You fix up your time suit and follow him forward in time. The game starts here in the future, with your former friend by now a dictator (having used his suit for pure evil like he should!). The demo opens with you viewing 2 “rebels” being kicked about the place by armed soldiers who look a bit like the combine. Now maybe its just the demo that reminded me of City 17……but I felt like I was playing HL:2 at one stage. There are giant screens littered about the city with your old “friend” quietly reciting rhetoric in an attempt to talk the rebels down. Now where have I seen that before? A mad doctor on a screen in a ruined city (17).

Game Play

I must say that it feels very much like a console fps game. The interface is clunky and stupid, in-line with using an XBOX controller, not a mouse. The combat is fun and frantic. Enemies seem to jump out from every corner in a heavily scripted ballet. The weapons in the demo are a machine gun with a grenade launcher (HL:2), a crossbow (HL:2) and a type of shotgun (HL:2). The demo consists of running and gunning your way through a linear path, with the occasional fixed gun emplacement to allow you to should “git some, git some yeah” as you mow down men!

Seen it all before you might say…..well yes you have…..but not all in the same game. Your time suit has a few unique features. By pressing F you activate your time suit allowing you to rewind, pause (slow) or forward time. In the demo the computer basically decides which way to manipulate time. For instance if you just hit F in a fire fight you will go into Max Payne “bullet time”. You can then move up and grab weapons from your enemies….or shoot them several times in the head. You then hit F again and time speeds up…and everyone starts spewing blood onto the ground. It’s captured a little better in the cut scene at the start of the game, but it is certainly a good game feature. The rewind time is used once in the demo. You basically run down a corridor and up ahead of you a rocket slams in blocking your path…..not for long! Again you hit F and time rewinds…allowing you to pass before the rocket strike!!! You then speed things up again and the rocket slams into the corridor, with you safely on the other side! The demo ends with one of the fixed gun battles I talked about already.

Conclusion

Now the idea I had in mind for Timeshift is a little different to what has been made. I had an idea for jumping between thousands of years….and each level being a completely different setting (i.e you chase the evil geezer through ancient Rome…only to end up in the trenches of the Somme Twelve Monkey’s style). I’m well aware of the horrendous balancing challenges this would present for a game, obviously so are the Timeshift developers (they went nowhere near it). But what it looks like they have done is make a good FPS, with a few novel features. Its fun to play….but it is a) on Rails and b) Easily a HL:2 mod. With the addition of the time features you are half the way there I think. I’ll wait for the full game!

EA have just missed the goal with this one but it is salvageable!

I don’t normally gripe about icehockey games that are out on the market because I love the sport so much and I think that EA Sports do a good job, most of the time. I’ve been buying the EA sports hockey games for the last ten years and they have gone from strength to strength.

The latest instalment is NHL08 which was religiously released recently like it’s predecessors. As like all the previous titles this is no different when it comes to graphics and immersion. With each title they get a bit closer to the gritty realism of the sport. This post however will not be highlighting the few faults in gameplay, I’m actually quite happy with the game itself, my main gripe is the interface which has fallen short on nearly every title since I first bought the game in 1998.

The interface is aesthetically pleasing, layout is ok although EA have always made a small menu like 800X600 res, it’s cramped and players lists and attributes have to be found with the use of scroll bars. Just make an interface that fills the screen, you have alot more space to play with then. However, I have gotten used to this method since they first introduced it around 2000/01 titles. So it looks nice but…

After a brand new install of the game, and an attempt at running a patch (which didn’t work) my game menu soon started to crash. Crash in such ways like, buttons disappearing, Team logos and players faces disappearing, buttons refusing to work after certain menu selections. During the game itself upon pressing escape to bring up the ingame menu as normal, about 1 in 4 times, this ingame menu would not appear and the game would freeze forcing a Ctrl-Alt-Del to task manager.

As I said, I’m actually quite happy with the game play, the graphics, physics and playability. In certain circles the game realism needs adjusting, but there are parties hard at work making editors that can change the game for the better. But why make a buggy interface? EA, you nearly had it. The first official patch, made no attempt to fix these bugs, it was a non essential patch, in my opinion, to unlock some extra textures in the game. Wtf? I have had frustrating times with other of EA’s NHL titles with buggy interfaces, in the 2005 release I would get Internet Explorer scripting errors during game play! Oh Please…

Your game menus in NHL98 and 99 were perfect. It does not have to be flash and spectacular, I know what the game is about I don’t need fancy sliding menus and pulsating buttons to interest me!

I fault you in the lack of continuity for just missing the target with the interface, but commend you on game play, graphics and dedication. Please give us a patch to resolve these annoying errors.

I have been happily enjoying using Steam. At first I thought it a bit NAZI authoritarian the way I had to register every single file through Steam before I was able to play. Some people griped that to play a single player game they needed an internet connection (also broadband, or it took 6 years to register your products!)

But as time went on Steam improved and recently has become half decent due to the “Friends” integration that allow you to join your friends online with a click. Nothing novel here (Crossfire) I might add but it worked.

Having battled my way through Half Life 2: Episode 1 in about 4 hours, I eagerly awaited the arrival of Episode 2. When I heard of its impenitent arrival I was a little disappointed to learn that it was being sold as a bundle of games. The marketing wizards in Valve offered us:

• The Orange Box, 5 games in one (HL 2, Episodes 1+ 2, TF 2 and Portal)
• The Black Box, this pack was initially set for release with 3 titles (Episode 2, TF 2 and Portal)

So it was not all bad, The Black Box was obviously the choice for me…..that was until Valve decided to bin it!!!! Yes Valve, you decided to turn your back on millions of PC gamers who already own Half Life 2 and Episode One, and in some silly marketing move decide to bin The Black Box and force PC gamers to but 5 games, 2 of which 99% of them have? Why did you do this you horrible freaks!

The retort: Valve have made it clear that you will get 2 keys for HL 2 and Episode One, and if you do not use them you can give them away…….Well thank you Valve. Maybe when you release Half Life 3 you can sell each person 5 copies of it….that way they can give 4 to their friends…and be the coolest kids in school…..SAPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What makes more sense is this…..The cretins of console gaming are being served up The Orange Box, so they can play through Half Life 2, just really slowly as they desperately try to focus on The Combine with there awkward game controllers. So they get the 5 games…..all nicely bundled…but PC gamers get screwed to buy products they already own!!!!!!!!! Simple matter for Valve I guess, Xbox = Bigger Market….sell one product. Don’t forget where it all began. Gordon didn’t jump over mushrooms and climb down green pipes you know. Keep consoles for playing virtual tennis in your living room, racing rally cars, kicking football or climbing down green pipes with a slice of pizza in your hand!!!

I have a lot of respect for Bethesda Softworks, they brought us Oblivion…and that was not half bad!! But every now again a game is made….that should never have been made.

Star Trek Legacy is a space combat simulator. It has a single player campaign mode, a skirmish and multiplayer mode (correct me if i’m wrong).

Graphically the game is adequate. The ships are well rendered and receive battle damage as the game progresses. The many planets and nebula are also well rendered. No praise at all here, it looks “OK” nothing more.

The single player campaign consists of flying from one planet or asteroid belt to another and scanning aimlessly. Usually a cut scene comes along to present the next fight….which brings me on to the combat……there is none. Basically this is how in-depth the combat gets….ready…..Left mouse button fires phasers…..and you guessed it…..right mouse button fires photon torpedoes! You don’t aim, and due to a tracking system built in, you don’t steer the ship either (usually you can using wasd controls). So you basically get your kicks from holding down the left mouse button until the enemies shields go down….once this occurs you press the right mouse button and the enemy ship explodes. Why did you think this would be fun for gamers? WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is another small shred of user input during combat given the fact you can divert energy to your various systems, and assign damage control teams. However I found that even if you ignore the power diversion you need to be a complete dribbler to loose the missions!!!!

As you progress you earn command points to buy bigger and more powerful ships. The thing is as the combat system is the same these new ships just mean you can hold the mouse button longer as you have more phaser energy. So the trill of getting a shiny new ship is lost. As your fleet “swells” with ships you use the number keys to select each vessel and give it orders. However I found when I first took command of a fleet once I changed ship the one I was just commanding would drift to a stop and do nothing unless it was attacked There was one situation where I was flying towards a planets by pressing 1….moving as far as I could and then pressing 2 and catching up with my first ship….and then alternating…silly yes…..depressing…..yes

As for the skirmish mode. Well the combat is the same…so enough said on that.

As for the Multiplayer…could not bring myself to share my broadband connection with this game……just not worth it.

3 out of 10 for the half decent graphics, crap game don’t waste your pennies!!!!