Simon Says...

So yesterday's George Something was a pre-emptive strike on the formidable Alien franchise, taking you on a nostalgic walk through the H.R. Geiger rendition of memory lane, dripping with pixelated ooze and atmospheric 'blips' of the motion tracker...

...Well, what's got me mad this week?

George. That's what.

He got me all excited for Aliens: Colonial Marines, to the extent I actually parted with real, hard earned cash for it. (well credit, but still I will have to pay for it)

IT SUCKS.

Actually that's not true, I really enjoyed every bit of the multiplayer us Crows played last night (that's right we all own it, Jamie has to be different and got it on Xbox - he said the graphics suck, and I sense you'll be hearing more from him about it)

But yeah, we all have it, me and Rich played a good few hours last night, I was naturally talented as a Marine, and did an ok job. But feel like i've basically seen everything the game has to offer already, with a very limited range of gameplay types, (Team Death Match, Survival, Escape and some other one i forget - it's late)

So if I enjoyed it, why does it suck?

Well it was enjoyable, dont get me wrong. But it has suffered from the same major issues a lot of games of recent have.

First off, limited content. I am getting sick to fucking death of this. Companies getting so greedy/needy of the income that DLC can offer that they are clearly holding back content for future release, this is hugely unfair on the consumer and someone needs to step in and stop this killing the industry as more and more releases are disappointingly short and limited.

Second off, it has more bugs than a dutch red light districts used mattress storage facility. Once again, despite failing twice before in attempting to program a functioning Alien wall climbing ability, it is again, over complicated terrain issues, invisible barriers and hideous collisions galore.

Third off (this is getting ridiculous) certain play modes feel very unbalanced, as you gain abilities and XP to unlock additional features the tides turn, but I dont envy late comers to the multiplayer. Aliens feel hugely outnumbered, and out gunned.

Fourth off, the single player... SPOILER ALERT ...pits you against human enemies for a while, now this is where I flipped the desk and quit. The AI is horrendous, there is a lot of 'clipping' and the graphics (on max) were low res and blotchy, with low poly models, I suspect due to the pace they move at, it was easier on the old processors...

Sega have to take action on this, release a hi res texture pack for free *Sleeping dogs stylee* and it'd cheer up the hardcore fans at least. Can't be long before a community would pick it up, if only the game was worth bothering to make it for... ...but there are some good points that could make it great...

For what quality moments there are, you can tell they were made by fans with a love and passion for the franchise, they've clearly worked hard to make it smooth and balanced unlike AVP2, the customization is cool with lots of unlocks and variants for play styles, the motion tracker is my favourite feature as  it's reminiscent of doom3 when it disarms you while you use it, encouraging team play; co op features are fairly seemless it has to be said. So kudos to that. As is the team management and friend grouping in the multiplayer, although the ingame voice does fuck around with the steam chat we were using... ...another bug perhaps overlooked by devs.

Overall it's enjoyable, short lived, and overpriced due to the 'on hold' content for later release.

3/5. Could've been 5/5 should've been 4/5. But not.

Si Tye

[no pictures, can't afford them now I've spent my money on this game...] Blame Sega.

 

George Something...

Brought to you in central alignment because left adjust appears to be broken. Don't blame me. [SiTye]

So with the launch of Aliens Colonial Marines on the eve of release, I thought i'd take a look back at some of the Alien franchise games that has had me "mostly cumming at night... mostly." 

Alien games have been around almost as long as the films dating back to 1982. Sadly I wasn't even the glint in the face huggers eye then, so my first taste of Ripley and her ability to get trapped in confined spaces with Queeny came in 1996, with the release of Alien Trilogy by Acclaim. 

Now I was 12 when I owned a Sega Mega Drive, Mega CD and 32X; Sadly though, the game was just too awesome to be released on my consoles. 

Luckily I had a friend who had recently bought a Playstation, so we spent many an hour walking through corridors pooping ourselves every time we heard the Motion Tracker's infamous 'pip' sound. Looking back at it, it's quite funny to think this game used to keep me up at night with its 2D Alien Sprites, but back then we didn't have anything better and I feel what makes a game (or a film) scary isn't necessarily the visual but the combination of sound, suspense and atmosphere.  [And fucking huge, dripping with ooze, monsters? - Si Tye]

Now this game scared me off Aliens for sometime; My next encounter came in the form of Rebellion's, Alien versus Predator (gold edition) for the PC in 2000. Now there was a release of the game a year earlier but I apparently missed that release which now looking back I'm glad about, as the original didn't have a save game feature. 

This game allowed you to play 3 different species: Aliens, Predator and the poor old Marines, stuck in the middle. 

In the 4 years between my last encounter graphics and game-play had come on leaps and bounds and gone were the days of 2D Alien sprites jumping their way towards you. Playing 3 different species was really nice and made the game feel very different depending who you were. The Marines was still scarier than a night with Jamie in a dark room, with only the motion tracker and flare gun to help you navigate the dark areas of the maps, it really made you think that every dark corner would mean game over. 

Playing as the Alien was fast paced and disorientating and even though you relied on melee you felt like nothing could kill you. 

The Predator was the tank of the 3, armed to the teeth and with more visionary senses than Derek Acorah; those dark corridored buildings seemed like nothing but fairy tale princess castles. 

A FEW YEARS LATER... 

...10 to be exact.

 Rebellion released another Alien vs Predator. Having not played this franchise for a decade I was really looking forward to this one. So imagine my disappointment if you played it...

...Unfortunately the single player Campaign was mediocre at best, and the multiplayer was a pain to connect to at release; but they eventually sorted the multiplayer out with dedicated servers. By then though the majority of the population had moved onto other games, so the servers started to thin out. Which was a shame, because I thought the multiplayer was fun, especially infestation, where you and your fellow online players teamed up as marines. One player was chosen at random to be an alien and his job was to kill as many marines as possible and when a marine was killed, he would become an alien as well and join the fight. There was another multiplayer mode called survivor which you and 3 other marines had to survive AI waves of aliens. This i was really looking forward to, but sadly it didn't push my buttons, the arenas were small, very limited and was extremely hard to even survive the first couple of waves. 

So now 3 years later, on the eve of Aliens Colonial Marines. I wait with anticipation as to what Gearbox has created for me the scaredy crow. 

George.   

Rich Reviews...

 

When EA and Visceral games first revealed Dead Space 3 in the form of an action packed trailer, I won't lie, I was a bit apprehensive; The Lost Planet-like enemies and environment; the fact that the main character seems to have become quite the Nathan Drake of his universe, the addition of co-op and most disappointingly, the fact that you fight human enemies this time round; I knew all of this going into Dead Space 3 and I was expecting it to be nothing but an action packed romp through another necromorph outbreak featuring our favourite grunting and head stomping deep-space engineer, Isaac Clark. What I found however, was that Dead Space 3 had some genuinely tense moments and a very solid crafting system (but more on these later).

First I'd like to set up the story; After the events of Dead Space 2, Isaac Clarke has returned to earth to, well, drink heavily and obsess about the Marker, a man made obelisk based on an alien artefact found on earth. It's clear that after the Ishimura, and the Sprawl, poor Isaac has not been in the best mental state, which is made worse by his girlfriend, Ellie, leaving him due to his inability to re-integrate into society. [Fair enough huh? - Si Tye]

 

It's not long after the game starts that you are thrust into even more unfortunate events which lead you from Earth to a flotilla orbiting the planet Tau Volantis, and eventually leading you down to the planet's surface. I won't spoil any of the twists or main story beats here but the way the story deals with some of the long standing questions of the franchise feels a bit convoluted and a bit tacky, but then again, answers are never what you truly want from a mystery. The human interaction between Isaac and the rest of his team is serviceable for the position they are in. The conversations are usually “What do we do now?” or “Isaac you need to go and do this thing for me” but every now and then you get some down-time chatter, which I feel brings their situation into a more human light. There is what might pass as a love triangle here, but it's never the main focus and the way it eventually wraps up is predictable and ultimately forgettable.

During the 15(ish) hour experience you will spend your time in two main hubs, the flotilla and the planet surface. The Flotilla is easily the highlight of the game featuring some lovely, thick, Dead Space atmosphere and the ability to move between the ships to venture for supplies or to just see what's around the next corner.

 

It was on the flotilla that I had one of those awesome tense moments involving Isaac re-building an engine and a legion of necromorphs that I could hear approaching but they were always just out of view. Little did I know that at this point I had just passed the half-way mark for scary scenes. I have to give it a mention here; There is a space walking section during the flotilla which had me dropping my jaw! The openness of space, the disorientation, looking around and seeing nothing but dead, hulking ships all around you, left me feeling like they've really nailed that stuff this time around. The second hub is on the planet's surface, which, unfortunately, doesn't ever reach the same quality of atmosphere, bar a few areas that reminded me a lot of The Descent, except instead of cave diving I was sheepishly creeping through a not quite abandoned kitchen. There was a cool section during your first 20 minutes or so on the planet where you need to run from heat source to heat source to maintain body temperature, but these sections do not last long and before you know it you're back to your usual tricks of stomping heads and picking up strategically placed text logs.

 

Flying among the wreckage of the flotilla is pretty damn awesome.

 

The game play has undergone some changes since Dead Space 2: Isaac can now do a side-roll by holding down a direction on the left analogue stick and hitting the sprint button. Isaac can also crouch and hide behind cover by clicking in the right analogue stick. Why does Isaac need the ability to roll and take cover you ask? Well dear reader, you fight humans in Dead Space 3, which has to be the absolute worst part of the game. The human enemy encounters usually come down to sitting behind cover and shooting other guys in and out of cover. Riveting stuff, I know, but it just made me question “Is this what I want from a Dead Space game?”

 

The answer is no, by the way.

 

Human enemies aside, the aiming controls are as tight as Dead space 2, and aside from the crafting system nothing else has really changed. The dozen or so types of necromorphs you encounter will feel largely familiar, even though some are brand new. You spend a lot of time backing off from an approaching necromorph, blasting off his limbs one by one until he's a pile of bones at your feet. As I really enjoyed the combat in the previous games I felt right at home here. I did have several annoying moments where I was being hit by one necro and before I could recover I would be hit by another, which led to my cheap and untimely death too many times during my play-through. Unlike previous games, Dead Space 3 has ridiculous amounts of both ammo and health, even on hard difficulty. There were only 3 or 4 times during the later parts of the game where I found myself unable to heal or reload. Though it should be noted that once you beat the game it does offer some enhanced difficulty options where ammo and health are restricted to crafting-only, which brings us to the crafting system.

 

 



Who wants a moustache ride?

 

In Dead Space 3 you can craft both items and new weapons, as well as upgrade your current gear at Benches. Throughout the game world you will find loose items that you can collect to craft into new weapons. You also get access to a scavenger bot, which you can deploy of pre-determined locations to collect scrap for you. Once you have enough components collected you can bring up a list of pre-made weapon blueprints that you can build with your materials. Alternatively you can dive in head first and build a weapon from scratch by selecting a grip, then adding upper tools, lower tools, and several attachments. The idea is that every weapon component has different abilities, so you're making tools to be able to deal with various necromorphs more efficiently. Do you want a buzz saw with a shotgun under-sling for getting up-close and personal? Or perhaps a harpoon launcher with a bayonet for a mix of medium to close range? The versatility of your options and the joy of letting loose on space zombies with a weapon you have designed and created was a large part of my enjoyment of Dead space 3, and I perhaps spent too much time looking off the beaten path for resources and then spending a good amount of time at the bench going over what I could do with all this stuff. I won't go into it much here but EA have micro-transacted the hell out of this system, but just know you DO NOT need to pay them for these guns, you will collect enough to build whatever you want around half way through the game.

Speaking of things I didn't want to get into it: This game has co-op! Isaac can now team up with perhaps the most dickish character in the game: Carver. I didn't play it that way personally but from my single player experience I noticed only a few sections where co-op was absolutely needed to progress (certain doors require co-op) the rest of co-op sections are playable with just one person. For example there are consoles scattered throughout the game with two control panels. Each person would control half of the puzzle, and you would solve it as a team...Or just use both of the analogue sticks if you're solving it. Overall the co-op seems bolted on, especially during the cut scenes where Carver would have been right next to you the entire time in co-op, he just randomly appears in single player. There is at least one section late in the game where it would have been impossible for Carver to be where Isaac was, but he just appears anyway.

 

sometimes the co-op can go to some strange places...

 

So Dead Space 3 is a well-made game!

 

It features some very cool systems and really does have some tense moments, but between the human combat, some very annoying level design (disappearing path section, anyone? Ugh) and some half-assed features like co-op, Dead Space 3 amounts to an often unfocused mixed bag. If you want a rarely scary action shooter with an awesome crafting system then this is your game! If you were looking for a game in the same vein as the Dead space 1 and 2, you may want to just give this a rent, or at least know what you're getting into.

3/5 – OK!

Simon Says...

Saw this blogged and had to re-blog it. All credit to original poster (links provided)

Fascinating conceptual game involving 0 (zero) visuals. What a brilliant idea.

Especially encouraged me to repost when I saw the photo (below) of a blind gamer. Something that hasn't ever crossed my mind before...

No Quarter Game Deep Sea in Amsterdam for MuseumNight

 

NYU alumnus Robin Arnott’s Deep Sea, a game commissioned for the Game Center’s No Quarter event, made its second appearance on Saturday at the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam for this year’s Museumnacht. Deep Sea is an immersive audio-only game that blinds the player in a rubber mask and sends them thousands of meters under the sea, where they try to survive an onslaught of sea monsters. The game experiments with sense deprivation, claustrophobia, and demands the player enter a controlled meditative state to succeed. Two microphones planted in the mask measure the player’s breathing, and realistically control regulator sounds that obscure the player’s ability to listen for and hunt down the monsters.

 

Says Robin, “I was both encouraged and challenged by the first version’s reception at No Quarter. People who immediately understood the game had an intense emotional reaction – taking off the mask afterwards was like coming back from a different world. But there was definitely an entry barrier. People are visual thinkers, and without a visual component many players were confused. The Amsterdam exhibition has given me a chance to re-build the game with accessibility in mind, as well as revamping the sound design for a more intense experience.”

 

You can see more of the game at www.wraughk.com,
or follow Robin’s twitter feed: @RAGameSound

George Something...

Last week I gave you guys a brief glimpse into the world of Mechwarrior Online, which to be honest i think is still freakin' awesome and I'm still pumping plenty of hours of free time and money into it. But I feel there is something missing in my gaming life at the moment... and that is a bloomin good RTS.

Recently (as I was saying last week,) myself and Mr Rich went to the year 3050. Now while we were travelling we stopped in the year 2070. Now if that year rings a bell?(ding-a-ling) You might have guessed that it of course relates to the game Anno 2070, which was co-developed by Related Designs and Ubisoft Blue Byte, and published by Ubisoft. 

Now Anno 2070 is a City building game with elements of RTS, which I have to say is one of the best City Building games I've played, but in terms of RTS it only has a few daubs and dabs. It's as if the city building part of the game was produced by Balfour Beatty and the RTS part by Bob Ross with a size 00000 brush. It was fun for a while, but once I discovered that dab of RTS, I felt like it was time to move on. I found certainly the coop easy mode (which was all I could handle at the time) was abit linear. Create A - then do 123 - create B - then do 456 - create C and so forth. Maybe if I manned up and fought against some harder AI then maybe it would be a little more interesting. Either way I found it didn't fully satisfy my need for a decent build as much as you can, then kill it as fast as you can RTS. SOOO... I'm Still on the look out for a good RTS game. 

I think Shogun 2 is my favorite in recent years along with the Dawn of War 2 series. I thoroughly enjoy an epic space marine battle with orcs flying left, right and centre. Which thanks to the Essence engine that Dawn of War 2 uses, is often the case. Sadly most of the time it's not intended and poor Mr Orc looks like he's re-enacting the first few flights of an early form of helicopter flown by a drunken blind folded orangutan. Anyway those games are getting on abit and having racked up 300+ hours in each Shogun 2 and DoW it's time for something new.

 

With Creative Assembly working hard on Rome 2 and their new Warhammer RTS, hopefully we wont have to wait too long before another 300+ hour sitting of epic RTSness lands in our laps. 

 

ALSO...

I'm hoping Sega will get the rights to Warhammer 40k from the newly deceased THQ. Which could lead to Relic bringing out DoW3???? Maybe...please...yes? thank you. OR Creative Assembly working their magic with some sort of Spacemarine/Shogun mash up. 

 

 

Either way in the wise words of Azariah Kyras...

RUBBER DUCKY!!!!!! (May or may not have been slightly adapted by our own Mr Rich.)

Jamie Jabbers...

Hello again fine people of everywhere

I hope you are all well. No casualties since my last words I hope.  Maybe a limb or two taken. But hopefully, no fatalities. Today I wish to moan, I am sorry if you don’t like the sound of this. I understand this is the beginning of the week, and things couldn’t get any worse, but I feel this is something close to all of our hearts and would like to address the elephant in the room.

I am adamant that at one point in all of your lives, you have had to do something against your will. Something you would never dream of doing because you would rather flay the skin from your ass and clean the area with salt. My example is having to watch Les Miserables with the, er…uh wife. I can tell you now that those were the longest few hours of my life and I will never, ever, ever watch that again, I tell thee. Basically, Wolverine stole a loaf of bread, and shit went down. That’s it. Then Maximus spends all his time trying to capture Wolverine, but Wolverine then takes Catwoman’s baby and brings her up like his own. And then some Borat/Ali G/ Bruno in your face for shits and giggles.

'Really, no image at the top of this post? (admit it, you thought that too)'

The reason I’m telling you this, is because this feeling of “doing what you don’t want” resides in a lot of games today, and the one I’m thinking of in particular, is Assassin’s creed 3. Yes, now I will say firstly, it has been one of the more entertaining chapters of the AC collection so far. I’m glad they finally decided to move away from Ezio Auditore Da Firenze, because they saturated the fuck outta him. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the next AC had been called “Assassin’s creed: Retirement” where an 80 year old Ezio gets taken to day care centers, feels up the nurses, and includes a quick time event where you change his catheter.

The biggest problem I have with AC3 though, is the whole tutorial integrated into the beginning. And by beginning, I mean most of the game. I haven’t played it in a while to be honest, but I’m a good couple of hours into it. And I’m still doing missions that introduce new game mechanics. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Les Mis flashback hits me and I get the sweats. Fade out.

Coming back to the real world though, and I know that these tutorials can be handled very well. Look at Gears of War 1 and 2, you could choose to either jump straight into the fight, or go an easier root to try out the controls. The new Devil May Cry has a training area in the main menu where you can try out the new gear and new combos you have unlocked, the actual game couldn't give a flying head butt whether or not you know what you’re doing….half the fun is in uncovering how to progress.

What’s more is that there are certain aspects of the game that I will probably never use again, a bit like in AC: Revelations, with the whole bomb creation, (not that I even got close to completing that one) I used the mechanic in the tutorial mission and never looked towards that section again.

To finish off my rant then; Oiiii, games developers, NOOOOOOOO. If you are going to include the infamous tutorial section, either make it unique and entertaining, or give me the choice to take part. I don’t want to play a game I've spent £40 on with you feeling the need to explain every single thing to me. Leave me to my own devices, Give me room to breathe, and I will enjoy every second of it more. 

Over and out y’all.

Jam Master Jamie

Simon Says...

What ever happened to being a gentleman...

So I am sitting here, trying to work out how to approach this subject, in fact, I am sitting here trying to work out what to even write about if I am honest, I am distracted by life and it's complications these days...

...So rather than be Captain Grumpy I am going to write about the game of the year for me 2012. That was Chivalry. The best game I've played in a long time, despite it's huge, huge flaws.

It isn't particularly original, it isn't at all well made, (more on that when I concentrate and get grumpy) but there is something about playing it that just distracts me, absorbs me and makes me care about it, I get in to the game, I want to swing that axe so hard, and thanks to a very well designed (if poorly executed) control system for a mouse and keyboard (or xbox controller if you so wish) that i can swing that damn axe right into the neck of my enemy, sending his head toppling to the ground and rolling away before arrogantly opening an ingame voice menu and unleashing a cheeky laugh, or perhaps a glorious battle cry.

So what's the catch you ask? Why am I not slating it?

It's good, it's showing very promising signs of improvement, albeit not in the areas I'd expected, the reason 1.6GB patch didn't even fix the very obvious GUI error messages you get when say joining a full server for instance, but they did add several new maps, some of which are remarkable in design and scale, with new features such as traps and fixed weapons. They added new weapons, which personally I haven't got on with, they're not particularly useful but perhaps I just need more practice.

'I'm sure that's not how it's meant to UGRGHLGLL'

Well, get to the bad points then..

Yeahhhh, OK  I couldn't hold it forever, the game is buggy as Georges pants when Jamie used them as a handkerchief that week he had a cold, tonnes of graphical errors, usually resulting in laughter more than confusion, but the major problem with the game is lag, even the lowest pings still suffer what I've yet to work out as either full on server response lag or graphical lag, but with hand to hand combat and even projectiles like archery and spears, it is a serious game killer. 

The second worst part of the game is the audience, being predominantly online (although it does have a fun 'bot' mode) the game is riddled with what I would normally refer to as 'Xbox-kids', now don't get me wrong, I love a good moan, and it's likely I probably have had sexual intercourse with your mother at least once this week, but seriously, the amount of snobbery encouraged by the 'vote to kick' feature is infuriating. At one time or another, no matter how long you've been playing games, you were and will be new to it; and Chivalry requires a level of finesse you will only learn from trial and error, practice most definitely making perfect. Now I agree completely that it is very annoying to be killed by a team mate you trust to protect you, but when 12 Axes are all swinging in a space no bigger than your Nan's biscuit tin, and 48 arrows are all fired at your general location to boot, it's likely friendly kills are going to occur. This happens frequently in Chivalry, and I think it should. That's right. I said it. It is an occupational hazard of being a medieval badass mofo. 

'Tactical plays are rare sadly...'

Please don't confuse this with purposeful, often vengeful, attacks on a same team player. Again, sadly, a common occurrence.

The game overall is good fun with a variety of play modes, including classic Team Death Match, Free for All and Team Objectives (my personal favourite) It is a working model of it's potential future brilliance shall we say, but sadly let down by clearly inexperienced programmers. The concept is there however, and they are clearly working on delivering more and more. And as it's been in the Steam Sales twice, including a free weekend to play recently, I don't know why you haven't already snapped it up (unless you have, in which case see you on the battlefield) 

Take it or leave it, I'm out.