PC News and Game Reviews

Brief preview of Fallout 3 on the Xbox 360 (First 10 Levels)

The christmas rush is here again. Developers around the globe are working round the clock to have
games on store shelves for the holidays.And as always with this time of year we’re spoiled for choice
with dozens of games battling for our cash.One such game is the new offering for Bethesda, makers of ESIV: Oblivion and now Fallout 3.

First off i’d like to clarify, i have never played the original Fallout games. But judging from screenshots that really doesn’t matter as this new title seems to be nothing like its predecessor’s.
Of course we have a similar setting but apart from that gameplay, view and pretty much everything else has been changed for this new outing.

Outline/Gameplay

The game kicks off in typical RPG fashion as you design your character and lay the ground work to mold him into a certain class. I have to say i was really impressed with how Bethesda freshened this experiance up. When you start the game you literally start at your character’s beginings. After ploping out of your mother you are greeted by your father (Liam Neeson). And through him you make choices on sex and apperance. You then get to experiance a gaming first as you take your first baby steps around and discover your skills using a pop-up book. There’s more progression iinside the vault as you move up through childhood, teen years and finally become an adult.

Its then that the game really kicks off as you leave the safety of the vault and enter Capital Wasteland. Once outside you really get the Oblivion feel about the game. Lots of open world to explore and NPC’s to meet. You really have to take alook around your surroundings to find what to do. The story isn’t sppon fed to you. Its all around you, on the radio, in books and notes or just picked up by earwigging on NPC conversations.

Now on to the fun part, the combat. This is where Fallout really sets itself apart from Oblivion. Combat is handled in two ways. As a basic FPS, relieing on your own skills to take down opponents. Alternatively you can use V.A.T.S, this feature basically lets you target specific parts of your enemy with the hit percentage based of distance and your skill with the equipped weapon. Its comes in really handy when the surrounded as you can target multiple opponents to attack. It also works as a kind of overview/command tool, giving you the chance to think about your strategy before attacking.

There is a downside to V.A.T.S though, it relies on AP (Action Points). This means you are limtied to a certain number of shots. The amount per shot depends on the weapon equipped. Once you expend your AP you need to wait from them to replenish. I think this was a smart idea by Bethesda, if you had infinite AP the game would be more like an RPG from FP than an FPS/RPG.

GFX

Graphically Fallout looks gritty and dull, but in a good way. Th art design matches the setting very well and although it wouldn’t rival Crysis it suits the game. Of course the version tested was on the 360 so add some AA on the PC and it will look even better.

What really stood out so far is the graphic ways to kill your enemies. There’s lots of bloody murder with arms, legs, torso’s and heads flying especially when using V.A.T.S. There’s also the Bloody Mess skill which basically devastates your opponent to bits, this has been one of my favourites so far.

As with any RPG there’s not much to say about the GFX apart from they lend themselves well to emersing you into the gameworld.

Conclusion

So far i’m really enjoying the game. Although it is very reminescent of Oblivion it brings enough to the table to keep me involved. I think the best way to describe it is as a lovechild of Oblivion and Stalker. After 8hrs i’ve barely cracked the surface of the main story and i feel there’s a hell of alot more to experiance. Expect a full review soon.

If your in anyway into your console RPG’s, you’ed of realized as i have that up to now the Xbox 360 really hasn’t unleashed many jems in the genre. Sure we had Oblivion but outside that the rest were sub-par at best. Blue Dragon, Enchanted Arms, Eternal Sonata, these games all tried to set the bar for future action RPG’s on the 360 and failed misrably. Our last glimmering hope for 2007 was a big budget title by renowned RPG makers Bioware.

I have always been a big fan of Valve, since the early train rides into Black Mesa…..to the recent Zombie Killing madness of L4D.

When L4D was released, I was blown away. The games only major complaint, was the lack of content…..I guess I shuld have got worried when Valve dragged their heels about releasing the SDK. If that was not warning sign enough the “Survival Pack” was basically 2 vs levels we had hacked 6 months before, and one one impossible Survival lighthouse map.

I guess this was the biggest warning sign, very poor effort at a DLC release. That said I was sure Valve would make good at E3, and wow us with 4 new maps for the excellent L4D, but no…they release L4D 2….with the plastic wrap still on the ground from the first release!

WTF guys? Do you really expect us to shell out for a new game, after getting a game that was 70% finished to begin with. I buy all my PC games, as I know my custom helps make games better and keep prices down. This is nothing short of betrayal by what I used to consider a PC institution. Shame on you. Thumbs up to the developers who I know went: “Are you sure this is a good idea?” - Well the Boycot L4D group has 10k members….and that will only rise….

Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott, join up here.

Left 4 Dead launched in November 2008. Since then I have been playing it religiously. I can honestly say its the first game that has held my attention this long, without growing tired of the content or game play.

Like most players I did not invest much time in the single player game. Although the L4D bots are excellent, they are still bots and can never come close to human companions. For this reason most player were drawn online to the fantastic campaign mode.

If I can make one major criticism of L4D, it would be the lack of content from the outset. I thought that 4 “movies” was not enough content to launch with, and that delaying the game to add more movies would have been a better idea, and lead to a better product hitting the shelves. That said I was surprised how the AI Director really did make each play through a completely different experience, however it is not strong enough on its own to make up for a lack of content and the fact that after 6 months

Online campaign mode is excellent. With a good team you will quickly overcome the game on expert, and earn your achievements without too much difficulty. Valve (Turtle Rock) have managed to meld excellent multi-player FPS action, with scripted crescendo events that would usually be seen in Half Life 2. The union of of classic multi-player with scripted events allows the developers to get the best of both worlds. They can deliver a strong narrative, while still making a game with excellent co-op play.

Where Left 4 Dead has come into its own is the versus mode of play. While I battled my way through the campaign mode I spared little thought for versus, but having played it for a few months…I can never see myself going back to campaign mode again!!! Vs puts two teams of 4 players against each other. Both teams get to play as Survivors and Infected, which each round being scored based on how well you did (or how poorly you did!!!)

The jewel of the versus mode for me has to be playing as the infected. The level of co-ordination involved to bring down a team of good survivors is astonishing. Smokers can be used to pull a well disciplined team apart, right after a boomer has blinded the entire team with some well place vomit!!! To add to that the excellent Hunter class allows spectacular acrobatic leaps from rooftops right down on top of your unsuspecting victims!! What I really love about this mode of play is that the sometimes predictable AI director takes a back stage, as human infected players can set ambushes that the infected AI could never hope to match (The top of the ladder in Mercy Hospital Finale being one that springs to mind).

The only disturbing trend I have seen in VS mode is the “race” to the safe room you sometimes see. Basically the survivors charge as fast as they can, seriously limiting the amount of time the infected players have to spawn. The end result is the level is over with a handful of rounds fired!!! ITs an exploit I thing the developers need to address, because 12 year old spotty teenagers are getting a great kick out of doing it over and over…..

I would have to give this game a 9.5 out of 10, its a gem. More content please.

Far Cry was a great game, right up to the point when them stupid indestructible mutants showed up. With Ubisoft taking the rights to the name “Far Cry”, and Crytek taking the technology, I was sure that Crytek would make the better game. I am biased of course, but I always put faith in the original developers. Well it would seem I was wrong, and Ubisoft found an excellent development team, who made a great game…..read on!

Story
Fairly standard stuff here. Set in default generic African war torn country. Two factions are fighting for power. Supplying both sides with guns and ammo is the ominous “Jackel”. you goal from the outset is simple, kill the “the Jackel”, the bastard supplying both sides with weapons. As the story plays out it becomes clear your mission will not be ending quite as planned.

Gameplay
First the bad…always the bad. There are too many checkpoints in this game. When starting a mission from point A to point B, you may encounter as many as 3-4 checkpoints en-route. These checkpoints are manned by up to 4-5 men, including fixed machine guns and “the jeep of death”. Now I would not mind if you could drive around them, or simply plow straight through…but the developers kindly gave the AI the ability to race after you in jeeps. Dont get me wrong, the idea/action is great…..but when it happens 4 times in 10 minutes, it becomes very repetitive and a major hastle as you expend precious ammo en-route to your target. I hear the checkpoints were added because play-testers complainind the game could be too boring due to its size, wrong solution. The ability to attack and destroy a checkpoint (permanently) would have been a good feature, as endless firefights on your way to a mission becomes annoying.

Weapons Shops: Everyman needs an AK. To acquire new weapons in FC2 you can simply pick them up. Doing this however has one major problem. The enemy weapons break and jam all the time, only when you use them….I never noticed an enemy having weapon malfunctions when gunning me down so the answer is the weapon shop, where you pay for new weapons in raw diamonds. The problem is the the unlocking system. In order to get new more powerful weapons you need to do a mission for the arms dealer. The missions are all the SAME! You travel to an area and attack the same convoy of 1 truck and 2 jeeps. It plays out the same, all the time. I really can’t see why the devs would not have introduced a variation to the missions. Maybe the truck convoy as one, kill a competitor as another, blow up a shipment coming in by air/boat etc…..variation.

The end….this is the end….my only friend The Jackel. The end is very linear. More of a gripe than a problem, would have liked to have a bit more choice.

Another compliant from a fellow gamer (playing on an archaic PS3 with a really rudimentary joy pad for control) noted that the payoff for exploring alone is not enough. The odd diamond case scattered about is a joke. Who puts one diamond in a case and goes to the trouble of putting it at the top of a mountain!!! Missions to recover cases of diamonds could have featured. The barkeep in Mikes could have told you a story about a plan that went down or a convoy that got hit, you go off find the convoy and a clue to the guys who took it. Finding random diamonds did not reward exploring, like in S.T.A.L.K.E.R the quests should encourage exploration of all areas, not token diamond treats!

The Good - Excellent gunplay. Firefights are dynamic and sprawling. You can approach an enemy village and tacky it by simply setting it on fire, or by peppering it with grenades from a hillside. You can snipe….or run and gun. There were complaints about the AI, I did not see many issues with the AI, certainly worked better than Crysis.

The Fire: Great touch. Tactical use of fire introduced a new dynamic into the FPS genre. Fire burns and spreads. People run away from fire…..people run into sniper scope……people die.

The Story: While being very simple, it does create a sense of a desperate country on the verge of breakdown. A country awash with guns in Africa is a bit of cliche, but there is enough meat in the story to keep you engaged (no need for aliens…thank god)

GFX
What can be said, great. The game looks great. Shadows and textures are excellent. Day night cycle is great. 10 out of 10 on the eye candy front.

Sound
The sound is really good. The noise of the open savanna is like watching a national geographic. Zebra can be heard “Zebraing” out of them. White enemies speak in a “diplomatic immunity” S.African accent. All good on the sond front, with the score changing when danger is afoot. 9/10

Longevity/Replay Value
Well I have only played it once, but will definitely play through it again. I did find it quite easy once I got better weapons, however the dynamic narrative does make every playthrough different. Although the missions wil remain the same, its the order in which they are done, and the characters invloved that make it appear different. I would give it a 7/10 for replay value, it’s certainly not one to sit on the shelf for years untouched.

Conclusion
Very enjoyable game to play that has annoying niggly bits. This is not a truly open world, and if your after dynamic faction conflict this is not the game for you. The factions do not fight outside of scripted battles. In fact they do not move, at all. The world is truly beatiful and an amazing achievement in itself. All in all it has to be an 8/10. Its gun play saves it from the design decisions that really annoyed me.