Sorry for the couple updateless days, folks.. I just got promoted Darth Vader style (by attrition) and the transition from my old position to my new one has me busier than a one legged cat trying to bury turds on an asphalt parking lot.
Anyway, here's another great fast-talking ZP Review of the ultra-gorefest Manhunt.
The first expansion for one of the best RTS games ever released has now shipped, called "Opposing Fronts."
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"Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts delivers Relic's best RTS gaming experience to date, weaving together the epic stories of the Battle for Caen and Operation Market Garden with countless advancements in soldier and vehicle AI, environmental strategy, and visual realism," said Tarrnie Williams, general manager, Relic Entertainment. "The addition of two new unique armies opens up many exciting possibilities within the Company of Heroes universe, and we are very proud to deliver the highest level of RTS gameplay to our fans worldwide."
At release, Vista was having some serious problems keeping performance up to par with XP on the same machine. Seems over the last 7 months, both AMD (ATI) and Nvidia have been busy little bees, making improvements to the vista drivers. While still taking a little bit of a hit (most seemed to be somewhere between 5-10%), the performance of each set of cards seem to be a whole lot closer than they used to.
Also, reading between the lines of the conclusion there, it seems that Nvidia imperialism is definitely in full swing... as many of the benchmark games aren't even supported for CrossFire at this point, but SLI is available for pretty much all of them. I hope AMD gets their rears in gear at some point... even though they've treated me pretty badly lately, I still want there to be competition for Nvidia. A monopoly is never good for the consumer. Competition is essential for keeping prices low and features rich.
Up till now, Nintendo Power magazine has been an in-house production of Nintendo of America. Now, it seems a company called Future US, Inc. is taking the reins.
When I was just a little Bandit, I remember first getting the "Nintendo Fun Club Newsletter" which then sort of morphed into Nintendo Power. The first Nintendo Power had Super Mario Brothers 2 on the cover (the second had Castlevania 2, if I recall. I bet I still have both in a box somewhere). Nintendo Power was what clued me in to the Tetris explosion. Nintendo Power was my official monthly periodical until well into Jr. High, and I only stopped reading (and subscribing) then because all the articles were starting to be about SNES games, and I didn't have an SNES.
It kinda tickles me to know it's still around.
Cheapass Games' Plasmaworm is now free to download. If you're looking for a good short-term timewaster, I recommend this one. It's deceptively simple yet gets challenging in a hurry. It's as close to an "A" as I think a free game can get.
I've had high expectations for this title for some time now, as the hype machine has been going non-stop on it since E3. Now it's time to see if it lives up to the hype, or is just another game that spent too much time on marketing and not enough on development.
I got this little devil as soon as I could, after its launch. I've been tracking World in Conflict news for a little while now. So maybe I built myself up a bit much, but hard as it is, I am trying to maintain neutrality in my review.
Overview
World in Conflict is a Real Time Strategy game that really tries to break the mold by completely removing the base-building dynamic. It also uses fully textured 3D models for all solid game assets, so no sprites here (there is quite a bit of particle action however).
Controls
At first the controls are deceptively easy and intuitive. Left click selects, right click performs actions, and so on. However, there are some wrinkles to which I feel they could have called more attention (particularly in the tutorial, where they aren't even mentioned). It took me something like 4 missions before I figured out that to use the keyboard hotkey for a special ability that needs a target you had to HOLD DOWN the hotkey and then click while holding it down, which is largely unstandard.
Of course, once you realize this, it makes enough sense (though it still takes quite a few accidental selections of intended targets to get used to the idea). Additionally, I kept trying to hit tab to cycle through the special abilities of the various different units I had selected (a-la Warcraft 3), which doesn't work in WIC and I never managed to figure out if there was an alternate method of doing this. If there isn't, it's a strike against them because it makes for some aggravating searching for the unit you want to do something, then performing that task. Something of a step backwards. Not gamebreaking, but a little irritating.
Other than that, the control scheme is well thought out and implemented. I especially liked the ability to click either on the unit itself or on its tag/label above it both for selection and for performing actions upon that unit (such as repair). Holding ALT to show the health bars of all onscreen units is an excellent feature, one I can't believe hasn't been thought of before. And I am also pleased to see that they used a similar method as Supreme Commander (E.G., holding shift) to queue up subsequent orders to units so that you can tell something, for example, go HERE, then repair HIM, then go back over HERE where it is safe. Saves so much of the aggravation I felt in C&C3 from engineers standing around and getting themselves dead. Also the standard number/ctrl-number group selection/assignment methods are kept intact. All in all, a pretty solid control scheme, minus a few complaints outlined above.
Gameplay
As mentioned before, the main method by which WIC shakes up the genre is by completely removing bases and base building from the gameplay dynamic. Instead, the flow of the game focuses on taking and holding areas of strategic importance, and as you hold them autonomous defenses (That suspiciously sound like small bases) will start to build themselves around that strategic location, allowing you to move on. You'll never have to worry about what to build first so that you can build "that" so that you can ultimately make "one of those."
The game keeps it simple as far as units types go. Things will seem especially familiar to anyone who has played Company of Heroes. Infantry is squad-based and is broken into familiar subsets (Normal, Anti-armor/air, sniper, paratrooper), Armor falls into light, medium and heavy varieties, same for choppers and so on. The archetypes follow the usual rock-paper-scissors models with some wildcards thrown in. A certain amount of personal attention and micromanagement can see a group of APCs kill heavy tanks that would usually decimate them easily through use of the APC's special abilities (which are on cooldown timers, so you can't constantly spam them, of course), in this case anti-armor rockets. Also, in the open infantry has a really rough time, but there are lots of buildings and heavily wooded areas that can only be entered by infantry, which render your little guys very formidable against all comers if you have cover for them to hide in. The strategy for what beats what in this game starts with a very simple foundation and adds some very good twists that please deskchair generals like me who pride themselves on tactics rather than fast clicking and massed units.
You gain units through the use of "Reinforcement Points." You start out with a large glob of these available to you, which you spend on a menu in a pulldown on-screen, allowing you to configure your initial force upon the map to your liking, and reinforce later according to how the battle progresses. When one of your units is destroyed (or you choose to decommission it), it enters into the "Incoming Reinforcement Points" pool which trickles into your reinforcement points slowly over time. You can choose the point at which your new units are air-dropped to you, though the available locations are usually limited according to what areas of the map over which you have undisputed control.
Then you add into this another pool of a separate set of points you accrue as you take objectives and blow up enemies, and you can use these to call in air strikes, artillery barrages, all sorts of nifty deus-ex-machina (or as I like to call them, "Exquisitely Timed Boulders," from that one Mario Kart track where the huge boulder that smashes into you is always exquisitely timed to smush you no matter how fast or slow you are going) that can turn the tide of a battle instantly in your favor. Most of combat, for me, consisted of setting up formations of meatgrinders to give me a steady stream of these points which I then used to bombard the rest of the bad guys off the map. They range from single laser guided bombs all the way up to carpet bombings and tactical nuclear missiles, each with their own costs, times to deploy and cooldown timers.
There's a little more micromanagement than I like, but I suppose not having to worry about a base makes up for that mostly.
Story
The plot of the single player campaign is that World War 3 broke out between Nato and the Soviet Union in the late 80s, and you fill the role of the predictably anonymous field commander who never speaks any lines and whose face is never directly shown on camera yet the lion's share of "saving the world" falls directly on his shoulders. And if that sounds formulaic to you, I have some more bad news.
The characters in the single player campaign take the term cliché to a whole new level. Not only are you the stock faceless, voiceless wundercommander, but your boss is the oft-used cranky-growly been-there-done-that-impossible-to-surprise jaded colonel who the bureaucrats malign yet run crying to for help when they dig themselves something they can't get out of. Your peers are the off-the-shelf token minority who is the only other competent one besides you, and the off-the-shelf cocky dumbass glory-hound who spends his entire career screwing up everything for everyone, only to redeem himself via the ultimate sacrifice at a crucial later juncture. Oh, sorry, did I spoil that for you? Don't worry, you would have known it was coming by the second or third mission anyway. Throw in two comedy-relief national guardsmen who spend the whole game gushing over this amazing device called a "portable CD player" with a Bon Jovi (or is it Def Leppard?) CD in it, an adulterous American-disliking French Nato commander, and one cameo from a stereotypical singing (AH!) black (AH!) Rev-er-end-DAH! and you've got your full cast without a single shred of new ground broken between them.
The plot, too, is so cheesily, cornballishly familiar that the whole mess just wraps up to make a great big work of ironic satire. In fact, it's when you realize that the whole thing is just one big work of satire that it becomes brilliant and enjoyable. The plot never deviates from the established formula, there are 80's references aplenty (especially in the music department), and you start giggling at each new chestnut as it appears. You can't help it.
Graphics
The immersive 3D nature of this game cannot be overstressed. There's a lot of stuff, and you have full 3D camera control to look at all of it in an intuitive and fast way. Not quite as grand as Supreme Commander's, but still an excellent use of camera freedom. The models are well done, the textures (especially for the "actors") are detailed and realistic, and all in all it would be an area of high praise if not for this next thing I'm going to mention.
The bugs. Oh my god, the bugs. It's been a long time since I played a game as buggy as this one. I lost count at the number of times I had to reload a saved game (and because of this issue, I found myself saving every time 3 bug-free minutes had passed) because some graphical glitch had made buildings or bridges disappear, ground suddenly go untextured, sound cues cut out, or my personal favorite, when the view fades to black to switch to a cutscene but never fades back in, leaving you with a black screen you can't get out of without forcibly crashing your way back to desktop. Listening around on the various forums that discuss such things, I am led to believe that the majority of my graphical bug woes stem from good old NVidia imperialism. Nvidia's trademark motto may be "The way it's meant to be played" but they may soon be changing it to "the only way we'll allow things to be played." From what I've read these bugs may only happen on computers with ATI video cards. Now, granted, I've already declared myself for Nvidia for my next computer, but it's still highly unprofessional for a game dev house to (allegedly) not do any ATI testing or bug fixing despite beta testers trying to frantically warn them about said bugs existing. Big minus here.
Another interesting side note is that the game, at least in DX9 mode, isn't as taxing on your computer as it thinks it is. The "benchmark" utility in setting the detail options is 15 times heavier and more complex than any part of actual gameplay I ever came across, so even if WIC is warning you in dire terms that your computer might not be up to the task of your current settings, and even if the "benchmark" runs at a slideshow-esque 5 frames per second, don't be shy about cranking up the detail, because the actual game performed well even with them on, aside from the aforementioned bugs.
Sound
While the sound effects themselves are stock/standard, the voice acting is superb and the musical score is an interesting mix of orchestral fare with period poprock and the occasional contemporary song (there was one Audioslave song during a cutscene that made me raise an eyebrow, since in 1989, the year this game purports to take place, Chris Cornell would still have been with Soundgarden and wouldn't have cut this song for another 17 years). There is one recurring bug I found where voice stops working, but I think it's tied in to a graphical glitch.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer game differs slightly from the single player campaign, in that you must declare yourself a certain type of commander at the start of the round (Infantry, Armor, Air or Support). This adds an interesting layer to the game if you have a lot of friends to play with, because each "type" of commander cannot build units that the other types can... Armor commanders can't build infantry units, helicopters, artillery or repair vehicles, etc. This means the game was clearly designed with multiple players cooperating with each other in mind, and the game does claim 16 player multiplayer 2-sided conflict. You can fill in for players with as many bots as you want, even to the point of playing by yourself with and against various AI-controlled commanders. However, it lacks what C&C used to call a "skirmish" mode, that is, a true custom-generated single player experience outside the campaign. With the single player campaign clocking in at around 10 hours to beat, it's a little disappointing that the replayability of the game must suffer for their being no single player options other than relying on bots to repair your tanks or replaying old campaign scenarios.
The Final Word -
I think this has been the longest review I've written for a game yet, and it stems from my internal conflicting feelings about this title. World in Conflict is a great game. It is within grasping distance of being the best RTS title to date, yet it falls short due to a few control quirks, my personal distaste for micromanagement, a lack of single player replayability, and particularly due to the numerous gamebreaking bugs I was forced to endure (and reload past saved games after) over the course of my playing it. However, the game itself is an impressive solid title and an evolutionary step in every area that is considered part of an RTS-genre game. Thus, I must make a very firm pronouncement of a B- for a game that should have been an A+, sorry as I am to say it. Massive Entertainment, see me after class. You're lucky it wasn't a C.
And that's the word from Bandit Camp.
I was browsing over this interview on Warhammer Online over at GamersInfo.net, and it was the usual stuff we've been getting all along until I got to this one little new nugget of information -
So, how are you preventing the higher level players from assisting or griefing in the low level areas?Read Full Article
"We turn you into a chicken," was Eric's dead-pan response.
Serious?
"Serious!" All three responded with grins on there faces
I discovered in my youth that bicycles are nefarious instruments of torture and murder. This video does nothing to convince me otherwise.
Get a load of this. Found it (as I do so much else) on Bluesnews-
Vista Pushes Linux into Primetime
but
Linux Community Issues Push Beginners Back To Windows
Vista's so bad, it's leading people who otherwise would never dream of such to say "well, let's see what this Linux hubbub is all about maybe."
I can only imagine my dear old Dad then trying to compile his own Linux kernel... it makes me sad and want to call him and offer to install XP for him if he'll just buy me the plane ticket.
I had the Pirates mod for BF1942, and it was awesome. I just wish more people played with it. Ship to ship combat was an absolute riot. I hope this one turns out as good. I'll have to try it.
http://www.bfpirates.com/
They've sent out the press release, it's on the way to the store. I'm really curious to see what they have here. There's some serious hype to live up to:
"Sierra Entertainment is extremely proud to have delivered World in Conflict, one of the premier PC games of 2007, the best strategy game of the year and a title that will appeal to fans of all genres," said Martin Tremblay, president of worldwide studios, Sierra Entertainment. "World in Conflict represents the next-generation of PC gaming, effectively blurring the lines between strategy, action and first-person-shooter with amazing DX10 graphics, groundbreaking multiplayer, and a deep, emotional single player game."Read Full Article
World in Conflict emerged from E3 2007 as the clear choice of industry insiders and media as the Best Strategy Game of the show, claiming victory in the category from all major outlets hosting E3 awards. In addition, the game was recognized as one of the top PC games of 2007, earning additional nominations in several "Best PC Game," "Best Graphics," and "Best Multiplayer" categories.
Early reviews from around the world are hailing the game's intense action-packed gameplay and cross-genre appeal. IGN PC called the game "An RTS for the shooter generation" and " ... an action junky's dream," awarding World in Conflict a 9.3 out of 10. Eurogamer.de's 9 out of 10 highlighted the game as "strategy at its finest."
The inevitable star wars Lightsaber-sim title for the Wii.
Little too late to catch me, but I'm sure everybody else is gonna cream their jeans.
A little rundown of some of the ways Vista isn't all we were told it would be. Like I've been telling you for months.
I use it daily, but I also use it with the full knowledge that it's a pre-service pack 1 OS from the boys in Redmond. That necessarily means it will have glitches, bugs, and annoyances. That's a given.
I'm willing to put up with all those headaches, certainly more so than Jim Louderback. But there were several things I was really looking forward to in Vista that are simply missing in action or broken. These are features I'd really hope would improve my productivity and make life a little easier.
HA!
Seems the next one is called Soulstorm, and word has it the new race introduced will be the Dark Eldar. I'm a little nonplussed by that little tidbit, but what the hell... if Chaos isn't "Dark Human" than what is it?
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Alright, so this week's Off Topic Friday isn't entirely off topic. It's still got to do with video games.
I administrate the Video Game Babes Wiki, another part of the GasBanditry.com conglomerate. I'm trying (ok, perhaps trying is a generous description of the amount of effort I've put in lately, but...) to build a visual catalogue of every attractive female in video gaming, ever. I think I've made a pretty good effort thus far, but the reason I made it a Wiki instead of just another page was so that anybody could contribute. Because, of course, there's way too much for one man to do, 'specially when there's video games that need playing.
So anyway, if you want to see what I've got so far, and maybe think you could contribute, just head on over. You'll need to register a login to contribute (which is a fast process, anyway), but not to view what's already there.
If you have any questions about anything there, such as how it works, the method by which it is organized, or just want to spout off at me, my E-mail address is listed at the top-right of this page. Feel free to use it.
The cranky British version of the Micro Machines Man is back again, this time talking about Tomb Raider Anniversary, which I reviewed myself some time ago. He's meaner to it than I was, but I think that may have something to do with him reviewing the PS2 version whereas I reviewed the PC version (which doesn't have many of the issues he talks about). Anyway, without further ado...
A lot of console enthusiasts like to point out how fun it is to get a few friends together and play some Smash Brothers or Mario Party or Mario Kart or Kung Fu Chaos or whatever other multi-multi-player game is available to them and have a Big'ol'Time (tm) yelling and hooting and laughing and playing and whatnot.
And for a long while, that's kind of been something hard to find in a LAN party atmosphere. I mean, sure you've got your Deathmatches in FPSes, and 8-way clusterhumps in the RTS of your choice, but often enough these were as much excercises in frustration as fun for at least some portion of the attendees. And I know, I spent many a weekend back in high school carting my 486 over to my buddy Adam's basement, along with 4 other friends who were doing the same thing, and spending the next 48 hours in a candy-and-soda fueled frenzy of unbathed nerdery. Yeah, come sunday afternoon we were six tired, smelly, incontinent, frazzled lumps of humanity but overall we had a blast.
But there was always something wrong with each game we played. Somebody was too good at this one. Nobody but guy X liked that other one, but he kept pestering the others so they played it (I raise my hand as the guilty one here). Yet another would not work on somebody's machine.
I think I've found the solution, and only 10 or 15 years too late to help my situation!
The answer is the Serious Sam multiplayer co-op experience.
As I'm sure you are all aware, Serious Sam was a pleasant surprise from previously unknown Croatian dev house Croteam, blasting onto the scene a few years ago, followed by two sequels (Serious Sam: The Second Encounter and the deceptively named Serious Sam II, which is, in fact, the third Serious Sam game). The weapons are over the top, the levels are cleverly made, and the enemies are novel. The whole thing is just a great big funfest, with big guns, big men, big enemies, and enough spent brass to build a life-size statue of Unicron.
I recently got the opportunity to play it multiplayer cooperatively (looking for ANY reason these days not to play WoW). For a good long while, I've been prejudiced against FPSes in Coop mode (abarring, of course, BF1942) due largely thanks to peer pressure exerted upon me back in high school, where friends of mine seemed to hold the opinion that openly expressing a desire to try Co-op play in Doom was analogous to declaring one's self to be homosexual (I'm looking at you, PPMcBiggs). Finally, though, I've conquered my old school insecurities and gave it a shot.
It was a blast. Serious Sam is the perfect Co-op FPS. Everything that was good about Sam singleplayer (Big guns go bang) is better multiplayer, and everything bad (they expect me to kill HOW many giant aliens at once??) is lessened by having friends with you. The difficulty can scale as you see fit, the respawns are adroitly handled and smoothly implemented, ammo and other powerups are all able to be picked up by everybody (so once guy can't bogart all the ammo), and best of all you don't have to sign up for any stupid online big-brother service to set up and run your games because you can all join by IP address with no 3rd party intervention whatsoever. Players can join and leave the game dynamically (which means you don't have to restart the game to let somebody back in if they drop connection or something), and all in all the thing just goes right out of the box without a damned hitch for up to EIGHT players simultaneously.
And one of the things that was impressive about Sam even when it came out was that it delivered superior looking graphics at modest hardware requirements, so even your poorest of computer buddies can probably play this, and your casual buddy with a laptop that sports the generic Intel 3D accelerator can too. And the levels are all bright and colorful, which was a big selling point to me back then, when every other FPS seemed to be engaged in a contest to see who could get their players to stumble around blindly in the dark the most.
So, if you're looking for something different to try at your next LAN party, I heartily recommend the Co-op mode of Serious Sam (and possibly its sequels) by Croteam. Especially if you set the game to the most enemies possible, turn on infinite respawns and infinite ammo (yes those ARE options in game setup, Croteam apparently knew what the hell they were doing), and then just have at it.
And that's the word from Bandit Camp.
You heard right. Guitar Hero 3 will also be ported to PC and Mac. It's tempting. Even with Frets On Fire.
Lord help me.
I may have to turn in my geekery license for this, but I can't drum up any enthusiasm for the latest Star Wars game.
Remember when Lucasarts made more games than just Star Wars games? Remember Monkey Island? Indiana Jones? Maniac Mansion? Zack McCracken? Full Throttle? Grim Fandango? Sam & Max (though they've made a combat, I'll admit)? Thems was fun times, weren't they?
Maybe it's just because I'm tired of witnessing George Lucas, or one of his licensees, take a big stinky shit in a cardboard box, slap a picture of a wookie on the outside, and ship a million units (one of whom goes to me, because it's Star Wars so I have to buy it, right?). I guess I'm just glad that Episode 3 wrapped up on a decent quality note, but it couldn't erase two terrible movies, a bajillion overhyped and overexposed novels, and a smattering of games which, at best, can be described as hit or miss. It's gotten to the point that I don't even think that, if it were rereleased using modern engines and hardware, I'd even want to play what was once my favoritest PC game franchise of all time, the X-Wing/Tie Fighter series. I'm just that tired of it.
