Back From the Dead, Part 22
So yeah, once again I’ve been neglecting this blog. And once again I plan on rectifying that. I could give the typical excuse about how things have been busy with school and so forth, but I wouldn’t be saying anything that hasn’t been said hundreds of times before. I’m going to try to do some more quick gaming-related posts, usually just with my random thoughts on whatever game I happen to be playing at the time. They’re quick for me to write, and they’re quick for people to read, so it’s a win/win situation.
I was going to write a post about Mass Effect 3, but what is there to say? It is an amazing game that is well worth playing, and you shouldn’t allow yourself to be dissuaded by all of the negative attention that the ending has been receiving in various forums and news sites. If a game manages to make me laugh, tear up, and get angry - all in the space of forty hours - it has earned my respect. It is my game of the year so far, and it’s going to take something pretty fucking great to topple it. So yeah, play that if you haven’t done so already.
See you soon.
My Random Thoughts on the Playstation Vita
In my previous post about the Playstation Vita, I said that I planned on doing a full review of the hardware. For various reasons however, I’m probably going to skip that in favour of a quicker read about my general positive and negatives thoughts. There are quite a few excellent full-length reviews of the Playstation Vita’s hardware out there, and many of them are far more in-depth than anything that I would end up creating. If you’re interested in reading something that exhaustive (and I’m not using that as a pejorative term), there are quite a few good reads out there. A few of which include the reviews from…
In a manner that is true to the nature of this blog, I’m going to discuss some of the individual aspects of the Playstation Vita, some of which I like, and some of which could definitely use a little bit of work. Let’s get started:
Positives
Beautiful screen: This has been said time and again by people much smarter than myself, but it’s worth repeating: the Playstation Vita’s screen is absolutely gorgeous. It’s bright, the viewing angles are great, and colours are vivid in all of the right ways. The pixel density isn’t as high as what you would see on an iPhone 4/4S, but holding up my old second generation iPod Touch next to the Playstation Vita makes for a rather laughable comparison. This is the first OLED device that I have ever owned, and it definitely makes a very solid first impression. As for the touch panel that accompanies the screen, it’s very responsive and an overall joy to use. All of the games that I have played utilize the touch screen in some capacity (usually for the menus), and I never found myself struggling to select anything. Entering text in on the keyboard is equally easy thanks to the responsiveness of the screen and the operating system - it’s easily comparable to the iPhone in this regard, and it absolutely puts my old HTC Hero to shame. Sometimes the screen can seem a little too responsive, and I have had a few accidental taps while navigating through the home screen, but after using that aforementioned HTC Hero for a year, I would rather have a screen that is slightly over-responsive than a screen that has to be pounded on in order to trigger events. Much has been said about the less-than-stellar battery life of the Vita, but if Sony had to make a compromise between screen brilliance and battery life, then as far as I’m concerned, they made the right choice.
D-pad is great: During the brief amount of time that I owned the PSP, I tried to play Street Fighter 2 on an old SNES emulator (playing SNES games was actually one of my primary motivations for purchasing a PSP-2000 in the first place). Much to my chagrin, the awful d-pad on the PSP made pulling off quarter circles nearly impossible unless you were willing to sacrifice your thumbs in the process. Sony has clearly recognized the room for improvement, because the Playstation Vita’s d-pad is quite well done. Admittedly, I haven’t played any fighting games on the system yet (though I’m probably going to purchase Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 at some point while I wait for Street Fighter x Tekken), but the slight clickiness (for lack of a real word) of the d-pad comes in very handy when playing something like Lumines - a game in which discrete movements become very important in order to move blocks in precise increments. When it comes to d-pads, the Dual Shock 2 from back in the Playstation 2 is still the gold standard (I put so many hours of Virtua Fighter 4 Evo in using that d-pad), and I’m doubtful that the Vita’s d-pad will reach the same level in a fighting game. However, the Vita’s d-pad is great in its own right, and I’m happy to see that Sony didn’t treat this under appreciated control mechanism as an afterthought like a certain other hardware manufacturer out there (I’m looking at you, Microsoft!).
Discrete volume adjustments: This seems like such a silly thing to talk about, but I love the volume adjustment on the Vita. If you’ve ever used an iPhone or an iPod Touch, it’s exactly the same system that Apple uses in those devices. While that may not seem like such a big deal, it’s an immense upgrade after having to content with that awful slider on the Nintendo DS Lite. Words cannot express how much contempt I have for that ridiculous slider that requires a fingernail and a hand free of trembling in order to operate. And that’s not even getting into the possibility of accidental movements while playing a game (on several occasions, I accidentally jacked my DS Lite’s volume up to the maximum while wearing earbuds). The Vita has none of those problems - the volume buttons are on the top of the console, and they feel very solid against your fingers. Similar to the iPhone, pressing one of the volume buttons reveals a series of notches on the screen, thereby allowing you to adjust the volume to exactly the desired level. While one could argue that discrete adjustments are inferior to an analog potentiometer, there is more than enough granularity between individual volume levels on the Vita. You definitely won’t find yourself in a situation where one volume setting is too quiet and the next level up is too loud. Again, it feels silly to bring this up, and I’m pretty sure that the PSP had an identical system, but I feel obliged to give praise where it’s deserved, especially after years of being an otherwise satisfied DS Lite user (and I am very satisfied with my DS Lite, don’t get me wrong).
Solid selection of launch titles: I have only played three games so far, but all of them have been worthy purchases, and I feel like there is something for almost everybody in the Playstation Vita’s launch lineup. Console launch lineups have been something of a running joke throughout history, but I’m happy to report that the Playstation Vita bucks this trend in style. I will have to write individual blog posts about the games that I have played in the future, but I can say with no hesitation that Wipeout 2048, Hot Shots Golf, and Lumines are all worthy purchases if you’re fans of the genres that those games respectively belong to. Hot Shots Golf in particular came out of left field for me (sorry, I don’t have any golf puns saved up). It’s the first golf game that I have played in over a decade, and it absolutely has a hold over me. I have been playing it before going to sleep on weekdays, and even in the mornings before I leave for work. Wipeout 2048 is great as well, and I can happily report that the lower framerate as compared to the Playstation 3 version did nothing to diminish the fun that I had while working my way through the various events in the game. Now if only Sony Liverpool could patch in the Racebox from Wipeout HD…
Negatives
Home screen interface: Again, this is the obvious criticism to make, but it’s important enough to repeat - like many people, I am not a fan of the bubble system at all. I realize that Sony is trying to create a interface that is friendly for touch screens, and in that respect, the cross media bar might not translate over properly. However, that alone is not enough to excuse new interface that Sony has concocted. My biggest problem with the home screen is that the bubbles are ugly. No, they’re butt ugly. I would even go as far as to say that they’re ugly ugly. After scrolling through the beautiful icons on the iPhone 4, turning on the Vita’s home screen feels like entering a different world, and a far less hospitable world at that. Going beyond the appearance of the bubbles, I don’t even like the placement of the bubbles. Perhaps it’s the engineer in me, but I like how Apple just uses a simple grid for their icons. It’s simple, it’s predictable, and it works perfectly well. The Vita’s bubble placement looks like the aftermath of a programmer vomiting up a jar of jellybeans. Dear Sony, if you want to make this thing better, just take Apple’s Lion Launchpad and rip it off shamelessly. It would work perfectly on a touchscreen, and it’s a proven layout for a landscape display. Problem solved.
Hand grooves are uncomfortable: In order to avoid placing your hands on the back panel, Sony has installed finger grooves on the back edges of the Vita. The problem with these is that they are extremely uncomfortable to use for even a short period of time, at least for me. I have small hands, and even I get wrist cramps when I move my hands into that position. I can’t imagine how awkward it must feel for people with larger hands. Trying to contort your hands into that position for an hour while playing something like Wipeout is just an invitation for carpal tunnel. My solution to this problem is to just avoid using the grooves altogether. I have my fingers overtop the back panel, but you know what? Fuck it. If a game requires such extensive use of the back panel that my preferred method of holding the system becomes impractical, then I just won’t play that game. Period. As an engineer, my hands are my livelihood, and I’m not going to put them at risk because Sony wants me to hold their device in a specific fashion.
Update system for games:On the bright side, I’m happy to report that the updating times on the Vita are a significant improvement over those on the Playstation 3. Not once have I had to go grab a sandwich or walk my dog while waiting for an update to finish. However, the update system still has a few odd quirks. For starters, you have to download and install the game updates as separate steps. Seriously. Within a game’s LiveView (basically a home screen window that shows all of the information pertaining to a particular game, including the manual, the trophies, and which of your friends own the game), you have to press an orange icon that begins the update process. However, this orange icon doesn’t always show up automatically. While trying to play Hot Shots Golf with a friend over ad-hoc, I was displeased to learn that we couldn’t connect to the same game because I wasn’t running the same version of the game as him. When I went into the game’s LiveView, I didn’t actually see an update icon until I hit the refresh icon. While that may not seem like a big deal (having to press an update icon is hardly something to write home about), this is the year 2012. I shouldn’t have to explicitly check when a software update is available - the game should tell me when it’s available, because sooner or later I’m going to be somewhere where I have no WiFi reception, trying to play an ad-hoc game with a friend, only to leave with bitter disappointment. Once the actually download is completed, the quirkiness doesn’t stop - you actually have to go into your notifications panel, tap on the “download complete” notification, and initiate the install process manually. Why Sony decided to split the download and install into separate steps is absolutely beyond me. When was the last time that you downloaded a game update for a system (any of them - the iPhone, the 360, the PS3), only to stop and say to yourself “you know what? I really don’t want my device to install this update right now. I was hoping that I could do that myself.” Again, in the year 2012, the user-friendliness of our devices shouldn’t be regressing. Obviously, this is a new device, and you can be sure that future system updates will follow for the Vita. Here’s hoping that the update process becomes a little more seamless in the future.
WiFi reception seems spotty: Admittedly, I haven’t put the WiFi on the Vita through a rigorous stress test, but it seems to be a little flaky, especially when compared to the WiFi on the iPhone 4. While downloading the very first system update for the Vita, the WiFi actually turned itself off while the screen was asleep, thereby forcing me to begin the download process again from the very beginning. Beyond that, the icon in the corner of the screen always seems to show one or two bars out of three, regardless of how close I am to my router (the iPhone 4 by comparison gives me a full three bars almost everywhere in my home). I have become so paranoid when downloading updates over WiFi that I will actually prevent the screen from sleeping while the download is in progress. I’m not sure if there’s any sort of correlation between the sleep functionality and the WiFi’s connectivity, but it seems to be working so far. Again, here’s hoping that this is simply a software fix that Sony can work into a future system update.
Sometimes I hate discussing the negative aspects of a product at the end of my blog post, because it makes the reader leave with the impression that I’m regretful of my purchase. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. During the three weeks that I have owned the Vita, it has been receiving daily usage. I bought the Vita with the hope that it would provide me with a portable gaming experience that I cannot find on a system like the iPhone (i.e. a system that has no buttons and therefore is very limited in terms of what kind of games it can play), and so far it has been delivering handsomely. Having a system with a brilliant screen, plenty of horsepower, and physical controls is a delight, and thankfully Sony’s approach of throwing everything in but the kitchen sink seems to be a successful one. While the initial launch lineup is strong, time will tell whether or not they can keep the momentum going. Furthermore, time will tell whether or not third-party developers will want to support the system over the long term. For the time being though, the Vita has kept me sufficiently entertained, and its future seems bright indeed.
Why I’m Excited/Nervous for the Playstation Vita
Against my better judgement, I have decided to jump onto the early adopter bandwagon once again. On February 15th, the Playstation Vita First Edition Bundle and five games should be en route to my house. The last time that I was this enthusiastic about purchasing a piece of electronics at launch was when the very first MacBooks were announced in 2006 (that is, the polycarbonate ones). In that particular case, my initial excitement over owning one of the very first MacBooks was tempered mere months later when Apple updated those MacBooks with Core 2 Duo processors (the launch MacBooks only had Core Duo processors). There are plenty of risks associated with being an early adopter, and my experience back in 2006 represents only one of many possible scenarios (thankfully, my MacBook didn’t have any hardware issues, though random shutdowns were apparently quite prevalent during the first generation).
There are so many reasons to wait for a few months (at least) before taking the plunge with the Playstation Vita. However, my excitement for Sony’s newest platform runs deep, and the positive impressions from various reputable sources have only served to fortify my excitement. I thought it would be an interesting mental exercise to go through some of the reasons why I’m so excited for the Vita. Additionally, I will also discuss a couple of the potentially concerning aspects of the system. Let’s get started:
Reasons Why I’m Excited
Traditional portable gaming experience: Ever since my parents bought me the first generation Game Boy (remember that gigantic thing with the spinach green display?) when I was six years old, I have been a huge fan of portable gaming. Throughout my life as a gamer, I have been the owner of a Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Playstation Portable, and a Nintendo DS Lite. With the exception of the PSP (which I ended up selling in order to help pay for the aforementioned MacBook), all of those devices received ample amounts of attention. While I am a very satisfied owner of an iPhone 4, the truth of the matter is that it’s a poor substitute for the traditional portable gaming experience, at least in my view. I don’t know if it’s because of the lack of buttons, the selection of games, or some combination of the two, but even after owning the phone for over a year, I always reach for my DS Lite when I want to do some portable gaming before going to sleep. The Playstation Vita’s potential to preserve the traditional gaming experience while giving us the most console-esque experiences ever seen on a handheld is enough to excite even the most skeptical side of me.
Good platform for indie developers: I have so many small PSN games and XBLA games that I have been itching to play, but have never actually gotten around to checking out. Games like PixelJunk Shooter 2, PixelJunk Eden, Joe Danger, and even Super Stardust HD have been sitting on my console, just waiting to be played. I really feel like those kinds of games would be much better served on a portable system, where it is far easier and far more comfortable to get some gaming in during small 10-15 minute blocks. Thankfully, it seems as though Sony is committed to supporting smaller developers, and they have even taken steps to provide indie developers with Vita development kits. When it comes to being developer-friendly, there is no denying that Sony does not have a great track record. The Playstation 3 is notoriously difficult to program for (despite what the Sony Defence Force would have you believe), but there is hope that the Vita will be different. Assuming that Sony can deliver on their promises to be a facilitator of indie development (especially at a time where Microsoft seems to be running in the opposite direction), I am confident that we will see many great indie titles and smaller “arcade-style” games throughout the PS Vita’s lifespan.
Sony’s track record for supporting consoles: A lot of people seem to be worried about the PS Vita’s initial sales in Japan, and while the initial outlook is hardly something to write home about, I wouldn’t take it as some sort of doom call for the system’s long-term future. Rocky launch periods are par for the course when it comes to Sony, but they have always emerged from the initial storm in fairly good shape. People declared the Playstation Portable to be a dead system more times than I can count, but if you look at the library of games available for that handheld, it actually turns out to be a pretty respectable list. Meanwhile, the Playstation 2 had an absolutely horrific launch, with almost no good launch titles, insane shortages, and a heap of bad press. However, when you look back on that console, it had a fantastic library of games (especially for JRPG fanboys like myself). And of course, one cannot discuss discuss problematic Sony launch periods without an analysis of the Playstation 3. From the absolutely embarrassing E3 2006 presentation to the Blu-Ray diode shortages and the software quirks, the Playstation 3 spent the first year of its life oscillating between a tragedy and a running joke. Sony didn’t give up, though. Instead, they got their shit together and turned the PS3 around, and now it’s a solid entertainment system at a great price point that still has at least one more good year left in it. All of the fear about the Vita being “doomed” because of a rough launch is unwarranted when you look at the past storms that Sony has weathered.
Reasons Why I’m Nervous
Selection of RPGs: Like I said before, I’m a huge JRPG fan, and the Nintendo DS’s dominance of that genre in this console generation is almost an indisputable fact. With games like Suikoden Tierkreis, Dragon Quest IX, SMT: Devil Survivor, Radiant Historia, and The World Ends With You (I suppose that the specific genre of WEWY could be debated), the DS has been keeping the beloved JRPG genre afloat at a time when the major consoles have given us equally disappointing lineups. Between the 3DS and the PS Vita, it is difficult to tell which of those portables is going to carry the JRPG torch. There are some PS Vita games that seem to suggest a promising future for JRPGs (Final Fantasy X, Tales of Innocence R, and Disgaea 3), but I am certainly hoping that in this specific area, the Vita is more like the DS and less like the Playstation 3.
Continued developer interest will depend on sales: We can already safely assume that the Vita is going to attract sufficient interest from first- and second-party game developers, but whether or not third-party developers will continue to support the Vita is going to depend on how many systems Sony manages to get into the hands of consumers. In a world filled with iOS and Android devices, there is no denying that the portable landscape is very different than it was in the previous generation, and Sony has a whole new set of opponents to compete with, not only for the consumers’ money, but for the developers’ attention as well. If the Vita doesn’t end up being a strong seller, a lot of third-party developers may decide that it’s much more practical to just develop games for iOS and Android devices instead of dedicating resources to making Vita games. Earlier in this post, I talked about how I’m not concerned with Sony’s support for the Vita, but third-party support for the Vita is something that requires an entirely separate discussion. The launch lineup certainly looks promising from a third-party perspective, but the long-term support remains to be seen.
We’re not that far off now! When my PS Vita arrives, I will probably start working on a full review of the system. That review will eventually be posted on this blog as well as on the Neowin forums. It also might end up on the front page of Neowin as well, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Until then, I still have some DS games to finish while I wait for my Vita.
HIS Radeon HD 6950 Impressions
On Boxing Day of last year (which I suppose was only a few weeks ago), I managed to pick up a HIS Radeon HD 6950 from Memory Express on sale. I had been looking for a video card to rejuvenate my aging gaming PC for a while, and I figured that Boxing Day gave me a good excuse to take a chance on a distributor that I knew almost nothing about. I have chosen three games in order to measure the card’s performance: Battlefield 3 was chosen because it’s one of the most demanding games on the market right now in terms of resource consumption, Crysis was chosen because it’s considered by many to be the quintessential game for hardware benchmarking, and Hard Reset was chosen because I wanted to have at least one Unreal Engine 3 game on the list.
Here are the specs of my admittedly aging gaming PC:
- 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad
- 8 GB of RAM (DDR3)
- 1 TB Hard Drive
- HIS Radeon HD 6950 w/ 2 GB
- Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Battlefield 3:
Here is a screenshot showing the video settings that I used while playing. It’s just the default settings that the game assigned to me - I didn’t bother messing around with any of it: http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/8758/bf3settings.jpg
Anyways, with those settings, I was averaging about 40-60 frames per second in a 32-player Conquest server (mostly Caspian Border and Grand Bazaar, though we had some Metro and Wake thrown in as well). The game only rarely dipped below 40, but for the most part, it held steady within that range. On a purely qualitative level, I was quite happy with the performance. Not once during my 2.5 hour session did I ever feel like the gaming was chugging. It looked great and ran great for the duration of my session. I had nobody to blame for my horrible kill-death ratio but myself ;).
Crysis:
Just for the hell of it, I decided to turn the settings up to Very High. The game had defaulted to High for most of the properties, but I was feeling slightly ambitious. Here is a screenshot showing the specific settings that I used: http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/8955/crysissettings.jpg
With those settings, I was getting around 30-50 frames per second, depending on how much action was happening on screen. Keep in mind that those frame rates were measured while I was walking around in a pretty large environment that overlooked the water and quite a bit of foliage. I took a couple of screenshots that show the environment I was walking through while these measurements were taken: here and here (looking at those screenshots in retrospect, I didn’t have my AA setting high enough, so that should probably be kept in mind when looking at those performance numbers). I understand that different people have different ideas of what is considered to be a tolerable frame rate, but personally I found the game to be perfectly playable with these graphics settings. Keep in mind that I only played through the first hour of the game, and so there’s a good chance that I could encounter an area later on that makes my frame rate take a nosedive (I remember Crysis Warhead taking a very large performance dip whenever the aliens were on screen, as opposed to the regular North Korean troops).
Hard Reset:
I didn’t mess around with any of the default graphical settings that the game gave me. The only thing I changed was AA, which I changed from “Off” to “FXAA”. Hard Reset’s options menu is really cramped (odd design decision), so I had to take two screenshots to capture it: here and here.
With those settings, I was getting around 80-120 frames per second during normal sections with a few small enemies on screen at a time. When bigger enemies started showing up and when I had 10+ enemies on screen at a time, the frame rate would briefly dip down to about 55 frames per second, but it typically didn’t remain there for long before jumping back up to the 80-85 range. The game felt very fluid, as you could imagine with those frame rate levels. Similar to my Crysis measurements, you should keep in mind that I only played the game for about an hour, so perhaps there’s a section later on in the game that’s going to kick my video card’s ass. I’m actually going to play this game through to completion over the next week (I’m in the mood for something nice and simple after Skyrim), so I guess we shall find out soon.
Hopefully that write-up was mildly helpful. As you can imagine, I don’t have a lot of experience with performance evaluation techniques, and so my impressions ultimately boil down to the rather unscientific question of: “is it playable?”. Still, feel free to contact me if you have anything that you want me to explore in further detail.
My Letter to the Entertainment Software Association
The Entertainment Software Assocation - the biggest mouthpiece for the video game industry in all issues of public relations - recently came out in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Here is their official statement: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/03/esa-stands-behind-proposed-sopa-legislation-issues-statement/
I really don’t like to be preachy, but if you’re a gamer, you should really consider writing to the ESA and letting them know how reprehensible their position is. Destructoid’s Jim Sterling wrote up an excellent open letter that anybody can use, but I decided to write my own. Here is the letter that I wrote to the ESA:
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If you want to write to the ESA (and I strongly urge you to do so, regardless of how much or how little it may accomplish), you can reach them at: esa@theesa.com .
Most Anticipated Games of 2012
Like I said last week, 2011 is going to be a really tough act to follow in terms of great game releases. However, there are quite a few excellent titles to look forward to in 2012, and that’s before you consider the the release of the Playstation Vita, the Wii U, or the possibility of next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft (personally, I doubt that either will release a new console in 2012, but you never know). Continuing with my gaming-related theme of the past couple of weeks, I decided to put together a list of my most anticipated games of 2012. The list is limited to five titles (because I like nice numbers), and therefore there are quite a few honourable mentions. Those honourable mentions include…
- WipEout 2048
- Lumines: Electronic Symphony
- SSX
- Street Fighter x Tekken
- Devil May Cry (DmC)
- Bioshock Infinite
- Lollipop Chainsaw
- Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm
I’m sure that there are a few titles that I forgot about. With those out of the way, here are my five most anticipated titles of 2012:
Mass Effect 3: Definitely the most anticipated game on this list, despite how little I know about the storyline (I’ve been intentionally starving myself, for fear of massive spoilers). To be honest, I’m a little scared of how the game is going to turn out, considering how heavy the EA influence seems to be at Bioware. I have a strong suspicion that Dragon Age 2’s… disappointing performance was thanks in large part to EA’s pressure in rushing the product to market (note: I have not played the game, and I can only comment based on the popular reception), and many of EA’s questionable practices of the past year have made me instantly skeptical of anything that the company places its grubby paws over. I suspect that EA is also responsible for the decision to include co-op into Mass Effect 3, and as it turns out, that is the one aspect of the game that I am the least excited for. I’m glad that the co-op isn’t essential for getting the best ending, because there’s pretty much no chance that I will be touching that mode. Mass Effect has always been a game defined by its storyline in my eyes, and if I’m ever in the mood to partake in a pure-gameplay co-op experience, I would much rather go for something like Gears of War 3. Still, even with all of the lingering fears floating around in my mind, I - like many of you - am heavily invested in the Mass Effect storyline, and I’m dying to find out how it ends. Hell, I’m so excited about this game that I’m going to be playing through the first two games over again, just to refresh the story in my mind, and to make sure that my Shepard is ready to go.
Counter-Strike Global Offensive: I actually just purchased a new video card for my computer a few hours ago (as part of Memory Express’s Boxing Day sale), but as it turns out, the most anticipated PC game on list is a game that is running on the positively ancient Source engine. Counter-Strike: Source was a massive part of my gaming life during my early University years (especially the second year, where I was playing for an hour a day regardless of how much work I had to do). Like millions of PC gamers worldwide, I have extremely fond memories of de_dust2, cs_office, and even the original de_dust, despite its horrible imbalances (thankfully, it has been tweaked in Global Offensive). Thankfully, a quick gander at Giant Bomb reveals that the PC version of GO will have dedicated servers and the potential to host games with up to thirty-two players, which means that I will be able to relive my fondest Source memories in all of their glory. You won’t be able to play any ranked matches that have more than ten people, but who cares about that stuff anyways? Counter-Strike isn’t Call of Duty, and if I want ranked matches, matchmaking, and all of those fancy bells and whistles, I’ll walk over to my Xbox 360 and throw Modern Warfare 3 in. To be honest, I’m not sure how strong my Counter-Strike lust is going to be after years of absence and years of playing games like Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 3, but I’m definitely looking forward to finding out.
Grand Theft Auto V: I never played much of Grand Theft Auto IV. For some reason, I just couldn’t get very interested in it, despite the fact that my brother had bought it and it was in the house ready to go. Still, the GTA V trailer is looking really good, and I’m definitely excited about the possibility of running around in a much larger San Andreas-style city. From what I have heard from my friends, one of the big problems of GTA IV was how small the city was in comparison to the sprawling game area that was available in San Andreas, and so if we can somehow get the level of breadth in San Andreas combined with the amount of depth in GTA IV, it will be a success in my books. A lot of people are upset about the more mature approach that Rockstar has taken with their games in recent years, but personally I find that it reflects my personal change as a gamer. In my high school years, I was perfectly content with the silliness of Grand Theft Auto III, where I would sit on top of the casino and snip bystanders and police officers for hours on end. I don’t really feel the same way about reckless, gratuitous violence anymore. I’m not going to get on my high horse and pretend that it has something to do with a so-called maturation process. Rather, it probably just has more to do with my personal mindset. With that said, I’m definitely looking forward to whatever Rockstar has in store for GTA V, especially after experiencing the thoroughly excellent storytelling in Red Dead Redemption.
Starhawk: I wanted to have at least one new IP in the list. Admittedly, Starhawk isn’t really a completely new IP. Rather, it’s a futuristic twist on the Warhawk formula. Even still, it’s looking pretty sharp based on what little we’ve seen of it. I’ll admit that when it comes to multiplayer games on consoles, I tend to be a little difficult to impress. There are definitely quite a few console multiplayer experiences that I enjoy (the Halo series, the Call of Duty series, Gears of War 3, Killzone 3), but overall I tend to gravitate more towards the PC side, which I have always considered to be vastly superior in terms of online multiplayer. I haven’t been truly hooked on a console multiplayer game since Halo 3 back in the day (sadly, Reach has failed to achieve the same impact with me, though I do enjoy it), and I’m hoping that Starhawk can pull me in. I’ve never been a huge fan of flying (I hated any sort of aerial combat in the Battlefield games), so hopefully being a ground-based player is a viable approach in Starhawk. I suppose time will tell.
Final Fantasy XIII-2: I swear, I must be one of the few people who actually enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII. It definitely had its share of flaws, and I’m definitely upset at some of the concessions that the developers made (no world map, no towns, no shops, very few NPCs), but overall I still enjoyed my time with it, and I think that the battle system in that game is a lot more in-depth than people give it credit for. The auto-battle option definitely had the potential to be abused, but you still had to perform your Paradigm Shifts at the right times, and it still required a fair amount of strategic depth. It doesn’t look like the follow-up is going to fix all of my problems with the original game (i.e. it still doesn’t look like you have the ability to control all three characters, and it looks like the game will still end if your party leader dies), but as long as they can take out some of the linearity and put in some of the elements that I feel are essential for any instalment of the Final Fantasy franchise, it’ll be an enjoyable game. The people who hated FFXIII have probably made up their minds already, but for the rest of us, I have a feeling that this will be an RPG worth playing.
Between all of the games coming out this year and all of the games of last year that I haven’t gotten around to playing yet (see my list at the start of last week’s post), I definitely won’t be bored, though I may be broke by the end of it. Oh, and then there’s those Steam sale games that I haven’t even gotten around to installing. Oh Steam…
My Favourite Games of 2011
I had to be very careful when I made the title of this post. I need to make it abundantly clear that this is not a list of what I perceive to be the best games of 2011. I have not played every game that was released this year, and there are several high-profile games that I missed out on. Such games on that list include…
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
- Uncharted 3
- Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Batman: Arkham City
- Rayman Origins
- Saint’s Row: The Third
- Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
- Battlefield 3
- Serious Sam 3: BFE
- Resistance 3
And I’m sure that there are a few other titles that I forgot to mention. There are also some titles that I started but haven’t given a sufficient amount of hours to, such as Forza 4 and Dark Souls. My point is that I cannot profess to be an authority on the best games of 2011, and so I must settle for a far less controversial (and consequently, far less interesting) premise: my favourite games of 2011. Here we go:
5. inFamous 2: I bought the first inFamous game on a sale at Future Shop, and then it sat on my shelf collecting dust for over a year after that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play it, but rather there were always other games and other life obligations standing between Empire City and myself. However, when I finally sat down to give the same a shot, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the storyline, the game world, and even the combat that so many people like to speak negatively about. The follow-up certainly isn’t the most revolutionary sequel in gaming history, but it does a solid job of improving upon many of the weaker aspects of the original game while still keeping the fun aspects intact. Much has been said about the new Cole, but the truth of the matter is that I like the charming and cheerful personality of inFamous 2’s Cole much more than the overly serious and brooding Cole from the first game. Perhaps that’s more a reflection of my own personality than anything else, but in a gaming world that seems to be heavily populated by serious, brooding characters, I would much rather have another Nathan Drake than another Marcus Fenix. The only major place where inFamous 2 stumbles as compared to its predecessor is in the music department, since they no longer had the services of Amon Tobin at their disposal (from what I understand, he was hard at work on ISAM while Sucker Punch was developing this game). Apart from that one wrinkle, this is one example of a game that isn’t revolutionary or overly thought provoking, but still manages to be a whole lot of fun.
4. Portal 2: There isn’t a whole lot that I can say about this game that hasn’t already been said by people much smarter than myself, so forgive me if this next paragraph sounds like a broken record. It’s amazing how a game can capture the attention of the mainstream gaming audience without forcing the player to kill a single person. In Portal 2, you do not engage in combat (apart from some specific instances that I won’t give away). Rather, your adversary is the environment, and you must use what scant resources are available to you (i.e. a portal gun and your brain) in order to survive and proceed. If Portal 2 was just a series of puzzles, it would still be one of the best games of 2011, just by virtue of its excellent level design. The fact that Valve was able to put together such a fun storyline for this game is a testament to just how consistently impressive that company manages to be in all of its endeavours. This is another example of a game that won’t make you step back and think about the human condition, but much like the aforementioned inFamous 2, the storyline in Portal 2 is a tool that facilitates and augments the sheer amount of fun that you will have while playing. And I haven’t even mentioned the co-op.
3. Catherine: Even after reading some of the gushing reviews that Catherine received from various gaming websites, I was still very much on the fence with this game. While the storyline certainly looked delightfully weird, I wasn’t sure if the actual gameplay itself (typically an important part of any game) would be able to hold my interest during the 8-10 hour journey. As it turns out… I was slightly correct. My biggest problem with Catherine is just how repetitive the block puzzles start to feel after a while. The developers tried to mix things up in as many ways as they could (there are different types of blocks, different types of enemies inhabiting the field, and various boss fights throughout the game), but at the end of the day, I cannot deny that during the last few levels of this game, I was slightly relieved that the end was near. This may not sound like a great endorsement for my third favourite game of the year, but my point is this: Catherine is so delightfully weird, so full of personality, and so full of heart that the repetitive nature of the gameplay is easily forgivable. Much like The World Ends With You (one of my favourite games of this console generation), Catherine does such an awesome job of combining a fairly grounded premise (faithfulness in a relationship and the concept of a soulmate) with an out-of-this-world twist (a strange nightmare that is killing those unlucky enough to become afflicted by it). I was willing to push through some of the repetitive gameplay because I was so eager to find out what would become of these characters that I had become so attached to. In this current generation of gaming, there haven’t been as many high-profile Japanese games that put endearing stories and loveable characters at the forefront, but thankfully games like The World Ends With You and Catherine are carrying the torch with their heads held high.
2. Deus Ex: Human Revolution: If Catherine was enjoyable because of its endearing story and its loveable characters, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is enjoyable for precisely the opposite reasons. The world of Human Revolution is a very dark place (both literally and figuratively) in which the twin horrors of human inequality and corporate power have reached an all-time high. That being said, going through this world in the shoes of Adam Jensen has been one of my favourite gaming experiences of 2011, and it’s not just because I was such a huge fan of the original game (I rank it amongst my favourite games of all time). Much like the first game, Human Revolution does a great job of putting you in control of a character who initially feels somewhat weak, but then becomes progressively more badass as game moves forward. While Human Revolution doesn’t really offer the freedom of gameplay style that the original game did (trying to deviate from the stealth approach tends to create a lot of problems), the multiple paths and multiple choices of augmentations certainly do a good job of creating the illusion of freedom, and I suppose that’s an impressive accomplishment in itself. Adam Jensen has become one of my favourite characters of this console generation, and he manages to do it without wearing his personality on his sleeve. The aspects of Jensen’s personality are not shoved in your face. Rather, you have to seek them out and slowly piece together the story of this tragic yet valiant character. Jensen’s story is truly a memorable one, and I definitely plan on reliving it at some point during the new year.
1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: It’s a testament to Skyrim’s greatness that I’m willing to offer it my game of the year pick despite the fact that I have yet to finish it. I’m not sure how many hours I have put into Skyrim thus far (perhaps about twenty?), but I’m sure that I still have many, many more in my future. I fully expect Skyrim to keep me occupied for the remainder of December, as well as the full span of January. I’ve been a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind, and Skyrim does a great job of improving upon many of the weaker aspects of the last two instalments while still retaining the magic that made both of those games so great. Getting rid of the governing attributes in favour of a raw skill system was a pretty gutsy move on the part of Bethesda, but it paid off. One aspect of the previous Elder Scrolls games that always annoyed me was how those games locked you into a specific play style at the very beginning (though to be fair, that particular drawback in not exclusive to the Elder Scrolls franchise). Dispensing with the governing attributes and the class system allows you to create a character that truly represents your play style while still preventing you from becoming a one-man killing machine (you have to commit to your skills sooner or later, since a jack of all trades will inevitably become a master of none). I’m willing to bet that my Khajiit dragonborn is quite different from your dragonborn. While I focused my attention on light armour, one-handed combat, archery, sneaking, lock picking, restoration, and alchemy, you probably focused on some different areas, and your friends probably differed from both of us. I cannot recall the last time that an RPG truly allowed you to create a character that is a reflection of your own personality. There have been many games that have attempted this feat (and they all succeeded to some degree), but Skyrim manages to pull this off while making very, very few compromises. There are so many amazing aspects of this game (the believable game world, the consistently interesting main quests, the engrossing side quests, the subtle humour sprinkled throughout, the absolutely gorgeous visuals, the improved combat system, the ocean deep collection of literature, the challenging dragon priest battles) that I simply don’t have the room to discuss them all. What it ultimately comes down to is this: Skyrim is my favourite game of 2011 because of its undeniable and unmatched ability to make me stop whatever I’m doing and play it some more.
Every year is always met by the inevitable collection of cynics who claim that the game industry is “dying” or “running out of good ideas”, so let me throw my voice into the discussion by saying that 2011 has truly been a fucking incredible year for gaming. As people who play video games, we truly are fortunate to be living in a time like this, and I cannot wait to see what 2012 has in store for us. It certainly has a tough act to follow.
Miscellaneous Gaming Awards of 2011
Once again, I have been neglecting this blog for far too long. Sometimes it’s hard to come up with decent ideas to talk about every week, and so I started to fill up the spaces in between by talking about various news articles of the week. It turned out to be a pretty shitty idea. It wasn’t interesting to read through my various synopses of seemingly unrelated news articles, and the posts themselves had a very limited shelf life. One thing that I like about the various lists that I have put together is that they tend to have fairly decent shelf lives. I can go back to my post about the iPhone 4 almost a year after writing it, and it still reads like something that is somewhat relevant. Moving forward, I would definitely like to put together more posts of that nature instead of trying to be a reporter (and failing at it). So with that being said, I have a three-week plan in mind where I talk about various games that came out in 2011, along with games that will be coming out in 2012. None of the lists that I have in mind are of the original nature, but hopefully they’re at least mildly interesting. Here’s part one: the miscellaneous gaming awards of 2011!
My favourite under-appreciated game: Motorstorm Apocalypse: I’ve already discussed this game at great lengths in my original post earlier this year, but I was slightly surprised to see this game come and go without much fanfare. The delay that it went through (Sony made a decision to delay the game in response to the disaster in Japan) may have hurt the hype machine, but it’s a bit of a shame to see such a fun game go by seemingly unnoticed. The challenge in Motorstorm Apocalypse has been discussed at length (I even had a few words to say about it), but one of the things that I really loved about Apocalypse is how it demanded your undivided attention. Hazards can creep up out of nowhere (walls caving in, trucks tipping over, roads collapsing on themselves), and the only way to avoid disaster at the higher skill levels is to ensure that you’re completely focused on the track and what’s coming up ahead of you. I have tremendous love for the Forza series, but unless you’re playing on a really complicated track, you can usually play that game somewhat passively. If you take that passive mindset to Motorstorm Apocalypse, you’re going to find yourself frustrated early and often.
My most surprisingly good game: Mortal Kombat: I have a confession to make: I didn’t care for any of the Mortal Kombat games of the previous generation (Deadly Alliance, Deception, …whatever the other ones were called). I got quite a bit of enjoyment out of Deception, but that was more due to the various game modes that they crammed in (my buddy and I had a blast with Chess Kombat) as opposed to the core fighting system itself. I didn’t find the attacks in those games to be visceral at all, I wasn’t impressed by the movement, and don’t even get me started on those shitty weapons. My disappointment with the PS2 generation of Mortal Kombat games is probably why I came into the new instalment with such low expectations. I wouldn’t even have given the game a chance if my buddy hadn’t bought the game, and in retrospect, I’m so glad that he did. It’s still not the deepest fighting game in the world, but there is no denying just how fun the Mortal Kombat is in a group of people. To be honest, I’m not sure if the new instalment is a big improvement over the old games, or if my personal disposition has changed, but that game has been fun every week since the day my gaming group started playing it. If you’re looking for a competitive fighting game, you’re better served elsewhere, but if you’re looking for fun, laughs, and a hell of a lot of hollering over supposed instances of “cheapness”, Mortal Kombat is fantastic.
My favourite non-brown, non-grey game: Bulletstorm: This game could easily stand alongside Motorstorm Apocalypse as one of the most under-appreciated titles of 2011, despite the massive amount of hype that it received (thanks primarily to Epic’s identity and EA’s treasure troves of money). I’ve heard quite a few different criticisms for Bulletstorm, from people talking about how it “tries too hard”, to people talking about how “stupid” it is. I could write an entire article about how unjustified those arguments are, but I want to focus instead on how great the game looks. In a console generation that has been largely defined by its grey and brown shooters, it’s nice to see a healthy splash of colour throughout the world of Stygia. I’m not going to sit on my high horse and pretend that grey/brown games are a bad thing - the colour palette should match the overall theme of the game, and Resistance 3’s bleak atmosphere would not be well suited by bright greens and yellows. That being said, I’m always happy when games like Serious Sam 3 and Bulletstorm come along to remind us that the FPS genre has a life beyond quasi-realism and depression.
Best game that I want to play more of: Dark Souls: I didn’t get very far in Dark Souls, which is a damn shame because it’s a really, really well done game. Dark Souls is a strange creature, because when you look at the game at the pure base level, it doesn’t look very appealing. The graphics are quite ugly by today’s standards, a lot of the enemy designs are typical examples of what you would expect from the genre, and the voice acting is pretty awful. That being said, the beauty of Dark Souls is not of the superficial variety. When you’re covered in sweat and nervous about what might be lurking behind that corner, when you’re running away from that overwhelmingly powerful enemy in an attempt to salvage the 20,000 souls that you’ve collected, and when you finally defeat that boss after the forty-fifth try, you will realize that Dark Souls is a beautiful game and a member of an extremely rare breed. I have a lot of games that I want to play in the next little while (Skyrim, Uncharted 3, and the complete Mass Effect trilogy once the third one comes out), but I have made a promise to myself that I will return to the world of Dark Souls at some point next year.
Biggest “I told you so”: Duke Nukem Forever: People got mad at me when I said that Duke Nukem Forever looked like shit prior to its release. It wasn’t enough for them to merely disagree with me and leave it at that - they were angry that I would dishonour their lord and saviour. By suggesting that DNF might be a subpar game made me a blasphemer, but at the end of the day, it also made me correct. I only put about four hours into DNF, but that was enough for me. From the subpar graphics to the outdated jokes and the complete lack of badass elements (Duke needs to hide and regenerate his health? Seriously?), it’s a little shocking that something this awful actually made it out of Gearbox’s hands and into the world. In fact, this game is so bad that it has forced me to go back in time and reassess whether or not Duke Nukem was ever a cool character at all. Was Duke actually cool, or was it just my juvenile past self that clung to his jokes and personality because of how subversive it was in the gaming climate of its time? Perhaps it’s best not to think about it. Perhaps I should remember Duke at his finest: back when Duke Nukem 3D was the king of FPS.
See you next week. And this time I mean it :).
My Random Thoughts on Bastion
So after last week’s foray into somewhat serious territory, I’m in the mood to do another gaming post this week. Last month I played through Bastion on Xbox Live Arcade, and I enjoyed my time with the game quite a bit. It’s always nice to have a new IP that leaves you feeling good about this industry that has become increasingly obsessed with sequels, prequels, and reboots. Here’s a more detailed rundown of what I liked and didn’t like about the game:
Positives
Interesting weapons: Bastion is an action RPG, and as it turns out, the game does a pretty good job of paying attention to both the action and RPG elements of its weapon system. I can’t quite remember how many weapons are available in Bastion (I want to say twelve, but that could be off), but there were very few of them that left me with a bitter taste. The team at Supergiant did a pretty good job of making each weapon feel unique, despite having a relatively high number of them. You have your typical ranged weapons (pistol, shotgun, rifle, flamethrower) and your typical melee weapons (sword, hammer, spear), but they have all been adapted to the top-down perspective quite well. The upgrade system for the weapons was also implemented nicely, and the game did a pretty good job of making you feel increasingly powerful as you upgraded your favourite weapons to their maximum capability (granting you such abilities as being able to ignore armour, which came in pretty handy).
Looks beautiful: Don’t take my word for it - just go look at some screenshots. The hand-drawn visuals look fantastic by all but the most jaded standards. The Kid in particular is really well designed, and the little touches (such as the red handkerchief hanging around his neck) give him a very distinct appearance within the game world. I played the game on the Xbox 360, but from what I’ve heard, it looks even better on the PC once you get your resolution nice and high. Oh, and did I mention how colourful the game is? We really need more of that in this console generation. A lot more.
Excellent score: Between this game and ilomilo, I’m really impressed by how these smaller, more indie games have managed to get a hold of some really fantastic musicians for their scores. Not only is the soundtrack great (in fact, just talking about the soundtrack is tempting me to buy it), but the developers did a good job of putting music in at the right places, and the game does a good job building the intensity of the music as the intensity of the action builds. The music and the narrator also end up complimenting themselves nicely, and speaking of which…
The Narrator: When I first heard that the game was going to have a narrator, I immediately began anticipating the worst case scenario. I imagined becoming frustrated as an increasingly annoying in-game voice commentated on every little misstep I took. Perhaps that has something to do with the large amount of time I spent with NHL 11 over the past year. In any event, my predictions could not have been more wrong. The narrator is fantastic, and he really does a good job of adding some life to a world that is very much devoid of human life. Looking back on the time I spent with Bastion, I can honestly say that the game’s fun factor was enhanced greatly by the narrator, and I’m glad that Supergiant decided to take a leap of faith with the narration, because it paid off.
New Game Plus: We really need this feature in more games! I played through Bastion again as soon as I finished it the first time, and it was a blast both times. The game world has a series of idols that you can worship to in order to increase the difficulty in various ways (one idol makes enemies faster, another prevents them from ever dropping recovery items, and so forth), and so your experience with New Game Plus can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Being able to continue with your already upgraded weapons was awesome, and the second play through encourages you to experiment with some different weapons once you get little bored with your fully-upgraded gear. New Game Plus is fantastic in almost all of its manifestations, and I want to see it done more often (I’m looking at you, Deus Ex: Human Revolution!).
Negatives
Aiming system: For some reason, Supergiant decided to abandon conventional wisdom, and they mapped the “fire” action to one of the controller’s face buttons. The problem with this is that aiming while shooting and moving becomes a frustrating exercise in finger contortion. The game has an auto aim system that works well most of the time, but every once in a while you’re going to want to manually aim at something, and doing so pretty much requires you to stop moving, take your left hand, and use that hand to manipulate the right analog stick while firing with your right hand. Just map that button to a trigger next time, yeah? They’re called “triggers” for a reason.
Some annoying challenges: The game has some pretty cool levels that basically test your skill with various weapons. Scoring high in these challenges grants you additional items that you can use to upgrade your gear. For the most part, these challenges are implemented well, but some of them are annoying beyond belief. One of them in particular has you trying to kill a bunch of really small flying creatures (and by “a bunch”, I mean about one-hundred) while they fly off the ledge where you can’t reach them. Oh, and you only have a melee weapon. You can throw that melee weapon, but you’ll hit about two or three of the creatures at best. And did I mention that you’re being timed?
Can’t move the camera: This one isn’t the end of the world, but it’s a pretty odd omission for a top-down action RPG. Considering that the environments are all hand-drawn, there’s a chance that they just couldn’t rotate the camera because the set-pieces were only drawn from one perspective, in which case I forgive them completely. It just seemed a little weird to me at first glance.
Automatically equipping new weapons: Some of the levels have you discovering new weapons. This would normally be fun and exciting, except for the fact that the weapons are always equipped automatically, taking up one of the slots that you had previously allocated for something else. It gets frustrating when you take your time carefully deciding which weapons you want to bring along (certain combinations compliment themselves more nicely than others), only to have your decision making thrown in the trash because the developers decided that you just had to experience that cool new weapon first hand.
It’s pretty rare for me to play through a game again as soon as I finish it the first time. In fact, the last time I did that was with Mass Effect 2, so Bastion is in some good company indeed. Oh, and this is also the first time that I’ve ever collected every single achievement for an Xbox 360 game, which I was pretty proud of myself for ;). The game is available for the Xbox 360 and the PC, so if you’re in the mood for a beautiful action RPG with a whole lot of personality, I suggest giving it a look.
My Random Thoughts on Section 8: Prejudice
Again with the long absence. Sometimes there’s nothing else to blame except my own laziness. Better late than never though, right?
In any event, my friends and I have recently been on the lookout for some good PC games to play together. We figure that since split-screen gaming on consoles seems to be falling by the wayside, we will just bring all of our laptops together and get a little bit of LAN gaming going (well, “LAN gaming” in a loose sense of the term, since a lot of games don’t support actual LAN play anymore). Thankfully, PC gaming seems to be going through a bit of a resurgence, and now we have plenty of smaller games like Sanctum that run nicely on laptops and provide some good co-op entertainment without breaking the bank. One of the games occupying the vast majority of our PC gaming time right now is Section 8: Prejudice, and since we’ve poured at least five hours into that game so far (5.6 hours according to my Steam profile), I feel as though I’m entitled to say a few things about it. So let’s start this off:
Positives
Spawning System: I feel like this has been talked about by people more eloquent than myself, but it bears repeating: Section 8: Prejudice has one of the most inventive spawning system that I’ve ever seen in a first person shooter. Rather than spawning at a control point, a squad location, or an otherwise random area on the map, this game has you jumping into the battlefield from an airship. You can drop in to literally any part of the map that you want, thought you want to steer clear of enemy territory, since anti-air placements can chew you to bits in short order, and you’re incapable of fighting back while in the air. It’s fun to perform a drop, and it’s even more fun to play a game mode like Swarm (where you fight off waves of enemies while defending a control point) and see your enemies dropping from the sky into the distance, knowing that it’s only a matter of time before their forces descend upon you.
Movement System: Having a game that takes place far into the future and features soldiers decked out in futuristic armour definitely comes with its advantages. Namely, you can basically ignore all of the common “realism” trappings that games like Call of Duty and Battlefield have to adhere to. Section 8 does this in the coolest way possible: by giving you jetpacks. While it’s certainly not the first game to have such a feature (Halo Reach comes to mind), it makes things much easier in a Battlefield-style large-scale FPS game, where you don’t want to waste time traversing staircases and elevators after traveling dozens of miles. Speaking of traveling dozens of miles, Section 8 does a pretty good job of handling that common annoyance by giving your character the ability to run at superhuman speeds if the sprint button is held down for long enough. This obviously wouldn’t make any sense in Bad Company 2 (which is why I’ve wasted many minutes of my life running to control point B in Atacama Desert, only to get sniped upon my arrival), but again, not having to worry about realism has its advantages.
Bots: I spoke earlier about how my friends and I are looking for games that we can play in co-op. While you can certainly cooperate in adversarial games with human opponents, sometimes we’re just not in the mood for all of the bullshit that comes along with your typical group of FPS gamers. And that’s where bot matches become a beautiful thing. The bot AI isn’t the greatest in the world (funny how the AI in the original Unreal Tournament remains some of the best that the gaming industry has ever seen), but it honestly doesn’t need to be. My friends and I have managed to sink numerous hours into games that have bot AI that I would describe as being “adequate” at best (Gears of War 2, Black Ops, Perfect Dark Zero), but it still manages to be fun, and you can always jack up the difficulty or increase the number of bots if things get a little too easy for you. Again, it’s hardly a novel feature, but it’s one that more games should include, regardless of how well the feature is implemented.
Price: We paid $15 for this game, and we’re not even close to being done with it. On the flip side, I paid about $35 for Brink, and I only managed to squeeze about eight hours of gameplay out of it (and a few of those hours were hardly enjoyable). Even if we were to drop the game today and never play it again, I honestly don’t think of 5.6 hours of fun for $15 as a bad value proposition. There are some $60 games that haven’t given me as much entertainment. And to sweeten the deal even more, Steam recently had a sale on the DLC map packs, and we snagged them for a very nice $3.39. It would be nice if a certain other gaming franchise gave you a break every once in a while with its map packs.
Negatives
Games for Windows Live: Again, this is a subject that has been discussed by people much smarter than myself, but Games for Windows Live is synonymous with “unnecessary”. When it’s not taking an eternity to connect, and when it finally manages to get out of your way, it just doesn’t do anything to justify the extra baggage that it brings along for the ride. Steam (and now Origin) already has a perfectly serviceable Friends system in place, and I don’t like the fact that I’m being forced to work within a system that is vastly inferior to something that I’m already accustomed to using. As it turns out, the hatred towards GFWL seems to be almost universal. If you don’t believe me, just consider how the announcement that Skyrim wouldn’t be using the service was met with a fair amount of jubilation among the gaming populace.
No Dedicated Servers: This is essentially a port of the Xbox 360 version (or at least it feels that way), and so perhaps the lack of dedicated servers isn’t entirely unexpected. Still, I wouldn’t mind playing this game in a 32-player dedicated server, Battlefield-style. I imagine that would be pretty damn fun, and it would certainly run smooth. When it comes to co-op, it’s not the end of the world (especially considering how we’re all in the same room connected to the same WiFi network), but it’s always nice to see developers go the extra mile while bringing their console games over to the PC.
Swarm maps could use a little more variety: Swarm is one of our favourite game modes in Section 8: Prejudice (right after Conquest, I would say), and the only things holding it back from true greatness are the lack of maps and the lack of variety among the maps. There are only four Swarm maps (the DLC might have more, but I haven’t checked yet, unfortunately), and they all play out in much the same way. While there is some distinction between maps (Eden puts your control point on a platform while Whiteout has it on the ground), I wouldn’t mind seeing them go in a direction similar to Gears of War 2’s Horde mode, where the map structure is drastically different from one map to the next. Instead, we’re left with four maps that are essentially giant fields, and battles that play out in the same way, regardless of which direction you’re facing in the map. It’s not the end of the world, and the game mode still manages to be fun despite this shortcoming, but I can’t help but think about how much more epic this game mode could have been.
So there you have it. Overall, I must say that I’m quite pleased with Section 8: Prejudice, and the fact that it only costs $15 just sweetens the deal even more (and let’s not forget about the inexpensive DLC, though I’m not sure if the sale is still going). While four-player split-screen gaming on the consoles appears to be dying a slow death (I sincerely hope that I’m wrong on this one, but I haven’t seen much evidence against my theory), the PC remains a great way of turning your pad into a realm of headshots, unhealthy snack food consumption, and plenty of cursing.
