PC News and Game Reviews

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.

Given Bioware’s long running history with superb titles in the genre, most were expecting a solid title from its first dip into the next-gen console market. But in truth we got so much more. Mass Effect is in a word ’spectacular’. Though could you predict anything less from the creators of possibly the greatest console RPG of all time, Knights of the Old Republic?

Graphics - 10

Does it usurp Gears of War’s throne as prettist game on the 360. Well no, but its not far off. Being its an RPG title, ME obviously has alot more to render than GOW but its still by far the most beautifully crafted and textured RPG game engine ever created.

Character models are incredibly detailed, fully realised, wonderfully animated and almost photogenic. When engaged in diologue you really get sense of awareness and emotion from them. You get to feel every part of the story through them instead of simply reading it in text or through the voice work. And given there is so many different alien species in the game it is no mean feat to keep each one unique and at the same time fresh.

As with the character’s, the ME galaxy is extremely detailed and well textured. Be it a barren moon or an expansive space station, everywhere you go seems to come to life all around you. Much like KOTOR each world you visit has a destinct vibe which is really brought to life with the engine. This is one game thats trully uses GFX as a means to make the gameplay more immersive and fun instead of an expensive marketing ploy.

My only gripe here and the reason i came close to deducting a point is upon entering an area the texture buffer is too slow to keep up with the game. This basically means for 3-5 seconds character’s and elements of the world will be missing most details and look rather like globs of putty. This slightly breaks the atmosphere but not so much so that it ruins the game in anyway. This problem was also evident in GOW, hopefully future developers will be able to find a way around this problem.  

 Also all weapon models in the game are simply recolours. Don’t get me wrong they look cool but some variety would have been nice.

Sound - 10

Nothing quiet beats perfection now does it. As with the GFX the sound in ME really adds to the immersion factor and gameplay. Out of any genre, RPG titles really excel with good voice work and enviromental sound/music. And im pleased to say ME has all of the above.

What really stands out though is the voice work. In a game thats 20-30 hours you know thats got to be a big script. But unlike alot of new games ME is fully voiced, meaning every NPC character has a voice of there own. And even if some of them have but a few repeated lines, it again just helps to suck you into the game’s atmosphere.

Gameplay - 10

RPG’s over the years have always been for a certain type of gamer. Until Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy series popularity really took off in chapter 7 most casual gamers thought RPG’s were just for ‘nerdy’ types with too much free time. But over the years the genre has been fleshed out and made more universal.

With that in mind i feel Mass Effect will have the same level of impact on the casual game market as FF7 did way back in 97. Unlike many other popular RPG series out now, ME is just a joy to play. It isn’t all statisics, nullifying elements and the like. It’s a really a fun action shooter with some complex customization under the hood. So don’t expect to get by with +100 fire damage or +50 shell defense, you also have to have a keen dead eye and make good use of cover.

As stated unlike most conventional RPG’s ME plays alot like a shooter. You move in a squad of 3 which you can customize with the characters you meet in your adventures. Each member has different core techniques, be it combat, tech or biotics (mage type). And you’ll need to really think about the mission before selecting your crew. For example if your going into a battlefield in open range having a good sniper covering your movements can be the difference between living and dying.

You can choose to advance your crew member’s in any way you see fit, so for example Lt.Alenko has strong core tech abilites but if you wanted you good make him more rounded by upgrading his abilty with an assault rifle. And thats the great thing about the upgrade tree’s you can select different weapons or biotecs to be proficiant in. Meaning just because your character is well trained at healing doesn’t mean he/she can’t pull out a shotty and hold there own if they get cut off from the rest of the squad.

Why this is also interesting is as we know most gamers will connect or begin to favour certain characters in RPG’s. With the freedom available in this system it means you don’t have to change the way you play the game in order to have your favourite characters with you while progessing the story. Meaning if you like Alenko but prefer to destroy Security Droids rather than disabling them your free to do so.

Once you’ve assessed the mission and picked your squad you’ll be dropped into the area via the SSV Normady, the fastest ship in humanities fleet and piloted by Seth Green no less. When you come across enemies you’ll have complete control over your team mates, you can issue orders and formulate the best plan of action for that particular situation. This is all realtime, there’s no pausing to consider your options which just adds to the tension as you try to get your bearings under heavy fire.

I’m sure there’s probably some people thinking right now, “Is this another Deus Ex”, all FPS and little RPG, and i can safely say no. ME really takes equal parts, which makes it just as strategic as your fav RPG and just as entertaining and fun to play as your fav shooter. Its tough to explain the combat in ME since there’s never been anything like it. You really just have to play it to get a sense of how good it really is.

All in all i can safely say this is the most fun combat system i’ve ever experianced in an RPG title. I’ve been waiting for years for a developer to come along and take some of the monotony out of the genre and although Bioware came close with Jade Empire, this time around they hit it right on the button.

Replay Value/ Longevity - 9

The main story of ME will take you in the region of 20-30 hours to complete.Theres also plenty of side quests available on the different planets you visit aswell as missions you’ll be given from your commanding officers aboard the Normandy. Unlike many RPG’s the side quests are just as engaging as the main story and many have branching story lines taking you to different planets across the galaxy. Heck you even get to visit the moon, though unfortunitly i failed to find the lunar lander :(.

Outside of this you can also explore uninhabited planets in your Mako Hummer. By doing this you’ll be able to find rare items and it is nescesary to complete some of the side quests. One tip though, make sure you check the surface scanner (map) if your looking for points of interest. I didn’t realize this till close to the end of the game and had just been aimlessly wandering across the planet praying to hit paydirt.

There’s also plenty of 360 achievements to unlock, some of which will require several play through’s to achieve and some will even require you to play as certain classes. This i feel works as a great incentive to bite the bullet and see what the other classes have going for them. And since Mass Effect 2 won’t be hitting shelves for a long long time yet, why the hell not try em.

Its finally arrived, after months and months of drooling over screenshots, gameplay vids and developer interviews Assassin’s Creed hits Xbox 360 and PS3 with the PC version to come early 08.But was it really worth the wait? Simply put, NO!. How can a developer take such a beautiful engine, intriging story and fabulous combat system and screw it up you ask. Well somehow Ubisoft Montreal have done just that and the one word that negates all their hard work is monotony.  

Assassin’s Creed previewed back at E3 2006 and was tipped as being one of the killer aps of 2007. I for one was on the band wagon the moment i saw our anti-hero Altair force his way through a crowded street and sink his hidden blade into his mark. But what you soon realize is that the trailer is pretty much the game. Practically ever single mission in the game is just a rehash of the mission before but in a slighty different city. This to me is just another sign of uncreative game design in a GFX fueled market.

Graphics - 9

This is pretty much the core and only strenght of AC. Powered with a wonderful game engine the graphics just scream ‘next gen’. From the breathtaking long distance views high above the city down to the well detailed models the game just looks and feels like pure gold. Also the art direction really captures the era superbly which is to be expected from the team behind the Prince of Persia Trilogy. Sound - 8

NWN was a must for any fans of the RPG genre, the successor to the superb Baldur’s gate series and long forgotten, eye of the beholder classics. Full 3D view and slick interaction justifiably made it the flagship for next generation RPGs. NWN II was initially staggeringly in its depth of character development, items, monsters and looked very good, performing well with even a small army on screen.

Its fatal flaw, which NWN did not suffer from, was the number of bugs. The game seemed overly complex, with simple cut scenes causing your game to crash and resulting in the campaign having to be re-started. In fact, there was warning on the loading screen telling you to save your game as often as possible. These bugs put a lot of players off what was ultimately a good game, if a little stretched.

The add-on pack is just that, new levels, monsters, classes, items and effects. It’s the usual price for a non-independent game and is designed to allow you to import your NWN II character. Curiously, there is a welcome note in the manual in which the producer basically says that they released NWN II too early and that Mask was how the game should have looked and played.

As you’re playing a character that was able to complete NWN II (you have to create one otherwise), game play is more complex from the offset then a standard RPG. You need to know the game to play it, as your using a powerful character. But immediately you can tell that the developers have worked hard on the engine, its seamless and bug free. The loading time between maps is reduced and levels are kept to a reasonable size to ensure your PC isn’t unnecessary taxed. If NWN II had looked and played like this then it would have made a much bigger impact.

The main campaign is tough, well paced and just the right length (about 10 hours). Character development to “epic levels” is possible, allowing your character to become a juggernaut of destruction. There are dozens of new feats and spells (you do need to play with the manual open to figure out what they do) which allows new ways to win battles and solve problems.

The game only falls down in its plot devices. Most games in the Baldur-NWN series have complex plots with the protagonist central to the story. Mask goes to far though, and has a horrid feature called the “spirit meter”. Not to give the plot away too much, it basically dictates how long you can spend on any map, how often you can rest, whom you can kill etc. It seems like the game creators wanted to limit your ability to regain spells or health by resting, so to make the game more challenging. It’s worked into the plot and very hard to get away from. Predictably, there is a cheat out there that doesn’t disrupt the game at all but drastically improves the game play. Its just a bad idea that could haunt the developer for some time.

This aside, the dialogue is also very heavy and you have to be careful what you say since your party members can get annoyed and leave. There are even dialogue sequences whereby you have no choice at the end but to kill the bad guy you’re talking with, therefore making the conversation totally irrelevant.

Otherwise the game plays well and looks good. I would have to recommend it to anyone who enjoyed NWN II and wants to see the game to its full potential. I would also welcome further add-on modules (the scope is unlimited with an engine like this) but no more spirit meters please.

 Loading …

Well the most hyped game of all time has come and gone in a few short days!!! Crysis, the proud creation of German Developers Crytek had promised to “Bring PC Gaming Home”. Flaunting “next-gen” graphics and an action packed story line….is this the PC game to rub in the faces of the console masses…..well the short answer is yes!! I have no doubt we will see Crysis on the consoles….but it just wont be the same

Plot

At this stage here I think if you were living on Mars you would probably know the plot for Crysis. You play through the game as the super hard “Nomad”, clad in a high tech Nano Suit. You are sent as along with some other Delta Force operators to a remote tropical island in the pacific to investigate an alien crash site. The problems for Nomad start very early, with the Island being completely overrun by the North Korean Army. The situation quickly develops into all out warfare with the Koreans…..before turning very “alieny”. To avoid spoilers….lets just say the aliens and the US forces recently arrived do not get on very well!!!!

I will say that half way through Crysis you kind of loose the freedom of choice that the earlier levels present…and you switch to a more Half Life 2 experience as you battle through a scripted story line. This was disappointing but unavoidable as at the end of the day Crytek are attempting to deliver a story of some sort! Allowing complete freedom to the player would never work. Might just mention that STALKER is the only game that came close to the delivering the above, other developers have a lot to learn from this buggy but excellent game.

Graphics + Sound

Next Generation…..Yes. To shoot from the hip I would say that on medium settings, Crysis looks far better than Bioshock (another graphics poster boy). Will it make smoke come out of you computer……Yes. I was getting blue screens as I tried to over clock my machine to play on “High”. I had to settle for most settings on high, with 1280 X 1024 resolution with 2x AA (Plus my computer is not even a year old!!!!). At this resolution the game still looks fabulous. Graphics however do not make a game good……they just make it pretty. Luckily for us Crytek also paid quite a lot of attention to the other elements of the game!!!

The sound is not found wanting. Some great ambient noise in the Alien Craft certainly raised a few hairs on my neck. The Nano suit voice is something you will come to hear quite often…as you frantically switch between stealth, strength and cloak!!!

Game Play

Crysis is an honest to god FPS. You can equip an array of weapons ranging from pistols to “a damn minigun”. The choice of weapon, or more to the point weapon modifications, greatly effect the game play. Remove your silencer to do maximum damage…but run the risk of alerting the whole island to your presence. Attach a silencer and go for the quiet kill? The weapon mods are an interesting feature of the game, but certainly not novel.

The nano suit on the other hand is the one item that effects how the game plays out for you most. You will find that using stealth early on is the way to go. As the story “narrows” your options you will find that you will use stealth less and less as you are forced to follow the story line.

Another great element of game play are the vehicles and the amazing physics engine that tie it altogether. It is really satisfying to smash a tank through a building and see it crumble….with the occupants crushed. Crysis is the first game to pull this off….and it gets my vote just for that!

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the story. It was well thought out and executed well . I like the freedom of the early levels, however felt a noticeable decline in the freedom after the aliens showed up. From that point on however the experience was so well delivered that I am willing to forgive Crytek…..as either way there is only so much sneaking around you can do in the jungle

My one complaint is this (POSSIBLE SPOILER), the last chapter “Last Stand” is buggy and confusing. Simply Google “Crysis Tac Launcher will not lock on” and you will see the utter confusion some gamers encountered at this late stage of the game. Having just secured the Tac Cannon I rushed out to see the Hunter crawling up the deck of the carrier.
I just “assumed” that I had to use the Tac Cannon on the Hunter, as after all I had just went to the trouble of getting it. It took me a while to figure out it was about 20 SCAR clips and a bunch of rockets I needed to use!!!!!

Tac Cannon “No Target Locked” Bug

That done I then suffered the “No Target Locked” bug (The solution BTW is: You can only lock the last baddie, not the hunter (spider like thing = hunter)…so stop trying. Shoot the 4 turrets off the last guy and then and ONLY then can you lock the two arms on the far left and far right!!! If this fails read on!!!)…..which was really annoying as it meant re-loading a save game. I hate when this happens as the sense of immersion is hopelessly smashed!!

That said one cannot ignore the achievement. Is this game better than Half Life 2, I think so. I know PC Gamer won’t think so as Valve are secretly bank rolling them Crysis has to get 9 out of 10. I deduct one point for the debacle above. Great game….buy it…..but make sure you have at least a GeForce 8800 GT / GTS / GTX or one of the beefy Radeon cards….otherwise you will be seeing about half the frames you should be seeing!!!!

Opposing Fronts Review

Having downloaded from Steam and had a few technical frights with the horrid “game is currently unavailable”error, I was very excited about playing the follow up to the best game of 2006. Like Dawn of War (DOW - another Relic title), it seemed very hard to improve on a formula that worked so well. Company of Heroes (COH) had incredible involvement for an RTS, and very re-playable. Even some of the Skirmish maps warranted a second look. Most RTSs only require you to build a large force and march forward, even in the case of the squad based DOW. However, COH had incredible moments, like a fire fight between houses where your MG teams are dug in, or the sound of a tank approaching your horridly exposed AT gun. Even laying out barbed wire to keep pesky infantry at bay was fun.

So how could Relic follow up on their magnum opus? Well they could get DOW winter assault out and take a good look. Not a stand alone game, but featured a new army, patches and short campaign. It arrived with DOW at the peak of its online popularity so was bound to do well commercially. However as far as value of money is concerned, it was disappointing. Not only was did the army have the weakest units, in keeping with the culture of the table top game, but required incredible micro-management to make it all work. Unfortunately, if you’re not a 12 year old on your summer holidays, you just can’t invest enough time into an army like this, so it became an ultimately useless add on. Dark crusade was the same again, new races but just another skirmish gimmick.

Now why haven’t I mentioned Opposing Fronts (OP) yet? Well you have to take the Winter Assault experience onboard. OP is a stand alone game so you have to pay a lot more for it then your average add on pack. You get two new armies and two campaigns. Now Relic has added weather conditions and more varied terrain, but if you hadn’t played the original COH, then you would think the two games were released simultaneously, there just isn’t any game play or substantial graphical differences. There are also rumors of an insidious installation process….

Now to the armies, which were the greatest feature of the original, with varied units and doctrines to add to the chaos. It’s still Normandy/Western Front with the Wehrmacht having the advantage in armor and tactics but a horrendous reliance on fuel resource, while the British Army have excellent defensive options but poor armor.

However, the Wehrmact does not resemble the COH army at all, it is highly mobile, compact and fuel permitting and can unleash very powerful armored units. In the case of the Jahd-Panther, perhaps too powerful. I can foresee big changes when the patches come out, as the balance is just not right yet. Almost all the units have been overhauled and all the buildings are new. The Doctrines are very different from each other, but not necessary equal in their impact on the game. The scorched earth Doctrine is totally useless and the campaign levels which force you to use it are painful in the least.

Now to the British and anyone who has played winter assault will know what I mean by stodgy, boring and lame. Its one thing using gun emplacements and artillery to your advantage on a scripted campaign level, but in a skirmish game that does not giving you geographic advantages, your in trouble. In truth, they have an uncanny resemblance to the imperial guard. I just can’t see how this will be a popular army online; they require far too much planning and management to put up a fight. The doctrines don’t really make any difference to the game in the same way that doctrines from the original game did or the new wehrmacht options do. The commando units are good, but armor is the key to this game and infantry is too vulnerable to rocket and artillery attack to be the focus of an army. Plus, the wehrmacht are very mobile from the offset, so their armored cars just drive around your pill boxes! I don’t need to elaborate on what a King Tiger can do to them.

I wouldn’t be surprised if further armies and campaigns are released by Relic peace-meal over the next 18-24 months, to milk their (excellent) product. An opportunity was missed here though, as the focus should have moved to the Eastern or African theatres, to really add a new dimension. The Engine is probably strong enough to only need minor upgrades to hold its own for a while longer.

All the same, there are some very entertaining campaign levels for both armies. If you are familiar with the original, I would recommend playing on hard or expert difficulty to get the most out of the game. The problem if you have played the original, is the sense of déjà vu which might put some players off. I think relic is really trying to sell the same game twice. If you plan to play online then it is necessary to own OP to play the new army, even if you have bought COH already. Similarly, if you have OP but not COH, then you can’t play the old armies online. Truthfully, if you had to buy one, I would say get the original, as the armies are more balanced and the new maps in OP aren’t really that different. Overall, don’t expect to be overwhelmed by OP if you’re a seasoned COH player, but do expect to pay the say price for it.