Ok, I know this isn't exactly gaming, per se, but holy crap on a crap cracker, this "Content-Aware Fill" thing in the upcoming Photoshop CS5 is a freakin' forum goon's wet dream.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Photoshop CS5 - All Too Easy
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Review: Battlefield Bad Company 2
There are some constants in the universe. The sun will move from east to west. The Yankees will be in the playoffs. Even numbered Trek movies don't suck. And, of course, the bots in a Battlefield game will be hilariously buggy.
I never played the first Bad Company game, so it's a new experience to me to have a battlefield game with a narrative other than "here's some guys and flags, shoot them and take them, respectively!" The Bad Company series apparently tries for a more cinematic FPS experience, much like Call of Duty... but it takes itself less seriously. Where Call of Duty games feel like action or war movies, Bad Company is definitely a "buddy flick."
The gist of the game is this - It's an alternate reality world where the russians are invading, and this time they're digging up an old WW2 Japanese superweapon project codenamed "Aurora" to try to use it on their current-day nemesis: The US of A. The secret weapon is what is called a "Scalar" weapon, which if you google, you'll have to spend hours afterward trying to scrub the grease off your skin from all the tinfoil hats you'll rub up against. It's like the holy grail of WMDs - part EMP, part Nuke, with all the heat and electronics frying goodness and none of the pesky fallout. And apparently in the Battlefield universe, it takes a few minutes to power up, and during that time it bugles loudly in the distance, sounding like Godzilla rising from the depths.
Anyway, the russians are digging up this old scalar tech, and the only ones who can stop them are a squad of four stereotypes - A nerd, a redneck, a token gruff black authority figure, and an everyman (played by you, of course). It sounds like the recipe for a really bad movie, but it makes for an entertaining game, actually. The banter between the other 3 members of Bad Company really do a lot to enhance the game.
At least, it would, if not for the fact that 9 times out of 10, the three of them get so bugged they completely stop moving to have their conversation, and then never start moving again until you pass a magic plot point. And some of these banter sessions are astonishingly long, like the "do you believe in God" conversation which lasts a good 7 minutes. But the banter is entertaining enough to stop and listen to. And I had a good laugh at the "What? I can know stuff!" line delivered by the redneck when everybody was shocked that it was him, and not the nerd, who rattled off a name and detailed description (complete with trivia) of the plane they were observing.
And of course, the writers aren't above putting in a few digs at "the other guys." The end showdown felt directly like the end of Modern Warfare 1, where all you have is a pistol and you need to squeeze off a fast headshot or it's all over... only in the name of one-upmanship, here in B:BC2, you have to make that shot AFTER JUMPING OUT OF A PLANE WITH NO PARACHUTE. I have to admit I laughed when the nerd member of the group said "Come on, Sarge, if not us, then who? You know they'll just send a bunch of douchebags with sissy heartbeat monitors out here otherwise!" - a clear dig at Modern Warfare's propensity to make you rely on gun-mounted heartbeat monitors in snowstorms. But at least I didn't have to physically use my body to constantly jostle Gaz or Captain Price toward the next objective, DICE, so careful about the stones you throw.
Sometimes it's just easier to leave them behind, really. When an important plot point comes up, they'll magically warp right next to you, and then it's back to business for a little while until they are once again struck with catatonic amnesia, and stand there in a state of torpor pointing their gun at nothing in particular.
I know I'm harping on that a lot, but you know, it's only annoying sometimes. Most of the time it just elicited a roll of the eyes from me, because honestly they're not that much of a help anyway. If left to their own devices, the bots in this game would shoot at the same entrenched position forever, waiting for you to flank the enemy and dig them out. So really, it only makes it marginally less easy if they aren't there, and only then because they have a chance to draw the enemy's fire while you absolutely murder all 20 of them. In fact, I most got worried when my comrades stopped moving forward because I thought I might miss out on another banter session while I was slogging my way up Hamburger Hill alone. And you wonder how they manage to miss the enemy so much, when you yourself are aim-assisted all to hell and back, where even a casual spray in the enemy's direction will usually headshot them.
What was far more annoying was the massive performance hits I experienced during cutscenes. I don't know what they're doing differently in cutscenes, but almost every cutscene struggled along and desynched the subtitles from the audio, whereas every part of the actual gameplay was pretty much seamless and fast, abarring one or two parts that went completely over the top with fog and lighting effects. They're also doing something wierd with the audio processing, as every house I entered suddenly sounded like I was in the most echo-inducing of tunnels, and even when there were explosions and gunfire all around me, it was somehow quiet enough to hear the sergeant grumble about how he's gettin' too old for this shit.
All in all, though, the game was an enjoyable playthrough, even if it was only 6 hours long. I can honestly say I'm just as likely to go back and replay B:BC2 as I am COD:MW2. I like that you don't HAVE to have your eye jammed against the butt of your gun to stand a chance at hitting something. I like the convenient supply drops that let you change weapons loadouts at convenient intervals. I REALLY like how damn near every structure in the game is completely destructible, which is the real selling point of this engine as I understand it. And, of course, I like the dialogue, and the cheesy, goofy plot. It goes a long way to making up for the AI bugs and other minor annoyances... and the one major annoyance of having no LAN hosting mode for multiplayer. I mean, I know it's a console port and everything, but that should have been a no-brainer for PC, guys. Bad call. Also, I would have liked a co-op mode for the SP campaign.
Verdict: B-.
And that's the word from Bandit Camp.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Review: Supreme Commander 2
I can't remember the last time I was so pumped over a game coming out. Supreme Commander 2. The sequel to, hands down, the best RTS game ever made. It had some pretty enormous shoes to fill. All these high expectations, though, are probably why I find myself disappointed in the direction they took with the game.
Supreme Commander 2 takes place 20 years after the defeat of the Seraphim in the Forged Alliance expansion for Supreme Commander 1. In the absence of a greater external threat, the various races have found one thinly plausable reason or another to start shooting each other again, if only on a small scale. But nobody really cares about the plot, right? The Supreme Commander franchise attracts those who value complex strategy without micromanagement, right?
Well, that may not be the case any more. While still mercifully devoid of micromanagment, the game has been stripped of the vast majority of its complexity. Why would they do this, you might wonder? Well, here's another travesty the blame for which we can lay at the feet of a developer's desire to dumb things down for the console tards. Since SC2 is being released on both PC and XB360, the lowest common denominator of both man and machine had to be pandered to.
So what did they do? Sheesh, where to begin... The very first thing I noticed was that they bolloxed up the "right click and hold" formation command, which irritated me all the way through my time in the game. They also removed the tech tier system, and now instead of building and upgrading structures and units in this method, they've added a third "resource" to the game called "research" which is generated by combat and by "Research Lab" buildings which constantly generate it akin to mass extractors. You can then spend these resource points to buy new unit types and upgrades to existing ones, and the effects immediately propogate to all your existing forces. This means there's no such thing as a "tech 2 tank" or a "tech 3 gunship" or anything like that. You never have to ramp up to the higher tech generators nor upgrade your mass extractors. There is only 1 kind of point defense gun per faction, and one kind of air defense turret, just to irritate more those of us who liked the old paradigm. Additionally, the bonuses you used to get from placing resource structures next to other structures is gone. There's also no cap on resources anymore (or rather, every resource is capped at 99,999 and that cap doesn't change ever), so no need to build storage structures. As the company promised, there are more experimental units... but they do less. Take the good ol' UEF "Fatboy." For some reason, the Fatboy 2 is *weaker* than the first incarnation - its guns are less devastating, and it is no longer a self-contained factory. It's gone from the must-have unit of the UEF to a unit I only use if nothing stronger is available, a pale shadow of its former glory. Cybran fans take heart though, your precious experimental gunship is just as overpowered as it ever was... which I guess is a good thing because the rest of the cybran military seems to be paper mache and terminally nearsighted, but I'm getting off track. The tradeoff for simpler (and in some cases weaker) experimental units is that experimentals now cost much less to build in both time and resources. The longest build time is 2 minutes and 30 seconds. I remember in SC1 having to use every engineer at my disposal to get certain experimentals done in as short as 20 minutes. That reminds me - engineers can no longer assist each other in building or repairing. What this means is that instead of grouping 3 or 4 engineers to build things more quickly, you have to get used to using 1-engineer-1-project concepts and strategies. They've also dumbed down how resources are spent. Instead of using the resource cost over time as in the first games, and slowing production (or stopping it) if and when resources run out, you now have to pay the full resource cost up front like every other RTS in the genre. Way to stop standing out from the crowd, GPG. Energy management is also practically a non-issue because energy generators are now the cheapest structure in the game, and are fast to build and take up little room, so if you're ever actually low on energy, you're a goddamned idiot who needs to be kept on a leash to stop you from wandering into traffic.
The one thing I can say that HAS improved since the first game is engineer AI. Engineers will now, by default, repair any damage within their range and salvage any wreckage in range without being told to do so. This means an idle engineer or two amidst a cluster of defensive structure dramatically increase its longevity, and therefore utility. So they did find a way to improve something.
But there's also some things they made worse that can't even be explained by the console factor - when building shields, the radius of the shield generator no longer is displayed during placement, so you have to sort of "guess" where the furthest extent of the shield will be. None of the defensive structures are particularly long range, so the few units that DO have range longer than your basic tech 1 point defense cannon are suddenly a whole lot better at tearing apart a base from outside the range of its defenses (hello, Megalith). Most of the maps are smaller (so small in fact that I wonder if Demigod slept with Supreme Commander 1's wife), and even on the ones that aren't tiny, it doesn't particularly matter. There are new "cheese factor" experimentals that let you put units right smack into the middle of an enemy base with absolutely no countermeasure other than to keep a huge number of units or defensive structures built throughout the entirety of your base at all times. Because if there's any part of your base not defended like fort knox, that's where the opponent's "noah unit cannon" or "Space temple" or whatever is going to drop a bajillion units that will rip out your guts through your back door and leave them steaming gently on the pavement. The funny thing is, the AI never thinks to do this, but once YOU do, you can pretty much beat any level pretty quick. And you DO think of this strategy soon, because there's a mission in the early part of the single player campaign that SPOON FEEDS YOU THIS STRATEGY. Then, in case you're dense, there's ANOTHER level later that has you do it again! At this point, even the console kids who other console kids think are slow, the ones who only have a brain stem, will be thinking "gee, this 'teleport into the enemy base' tactic sure makes this easy. I should do that all the time, huh?'"
Ok, all snarkiness aside, you know what? It's a passable RTS. If there was a world where SC1 didn't exist, and this came out, I'd call it a pretty, somewhat bland RTS that doesn't really stand out from the pack all that much. But you know what? This is supposed to be Supreme Frickin' Commander. I expect better from you, Gas Powered Games. Shame on you. Shame. On. You.
Grade: C. And that's the word from Bandit Camp.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Review: Borderlands
The fourth and final chapter of the "why the hell hasn't Gas Bandit reviewed a game in 4 months" quartet. Next week or so I'll start reviewing much more recent games. Borderlands is a genre-spanning titan of a game, blending RPG elements with FPS action, with the campaign being both single and multiplayer friendly. It had a lot of hype leading up to it, and rightly so, as it was such an ambitious endeavor. I must admit that the hype biased me against it a little, as is usually the case in overhyped games, but I have to admit: The hype was there for a reason.
Borderlands is the story of (up to) four mercenaries of varying origin and motivation, none of which makes absolutely any impact on the progression of events whatsoever. What was Roland's reason for leaving the Crimson Lance? Who is the woman Lilith came to this planet to find? Does Brick do steroids? Who knows? Who cares? The game certainly doesn't, because on a bus ride across the garbage-strewn dystopian planet of Pandora, they have a vision of an ethereal woman calling herself their guide, their guardian angel, and that she will help them find the Vault. The Vault is, apparently, something every child on Pandora heard about growing up - a hidden cache of treasure and alien technology guaranteed to make whoever finds it stupidly wealthy. So, they all completely shed their backstories and motivations, never to be mentioned again, to take up hunting for the Vault.
Pandora is a pretty desolate place, but I'm convinced that half the mass of the planet is made up in firearms. There's so many firearms the local wildlife seems to often attempt to ingest them as food (of course, they spill out for you to pick up once you kill the critter). There's a lot of shooting, a lot of dodging, a lot of reloading, and a WHOLE lot of deciding whether gun A is better than gun B. Most often it will not be, as despite the fact that it was ripping you a new one 10 seconds ago, as soon as you put it in your hand it suddenly devolves into an airsoft pistol.
There are those around the 'net that will tell you that Borderlands is "the next Diablo." In many ways, primarily the good ways, they are correct. The items you get are randomly generated, and the flow of time seems rather arbitrary because at any given time (depending on who is hosting the game) you could be entering the plot either near the beginning or the end of the story. But, like Diablo, Borderlands is a game best experienced with friends, and a diverse group will fare better because the classes compliment each other. Having more people in your game makes the enemies tougher, but also makes them give more experience and better loot.
The game gives you a pretty linear string of quests, along with a multitude of optional side quests. Most of the missions are pretty straightforward - go here and kill this, or go here, kill these until you collect x of those and bring them back. There's also the occasional scavenger hunt. Of course, the main drive of all these missions and rewards is to level up and get better gear. The health bar paradigm is in use here, and healing can often get pretty cumbersome - unless you have a special shield to enable you to do so, you won't heal on your own, and health kits take up precious backpack space and are cumbersome to use in a pinch. Fortunately, you get a personal force field that will take the brunt of the damage, and if you can stop taking damage for a few seconds it will start rapidly recharging itself.
As you level up you will also be able to spend points to get new passive abilities added on to your character, such as rapidly healing or repairing your shield every time you kill someone, better accuracy or more damage with certain weapons, decreased cooldowns for your class-defining ability, and so on. There are also special items called "Class Mods" which are only useable by certain classes and drastically alter how your character performs - it may boost damage by 40% on a certain type of weapon for example, or grant you and all your allies ammo regeneration, etc.
In addition to regular guns, there are many guns all throughout the game that do "elemental" damage - that is, they do damage based on fire, electricity, corrosion or explosion. This damage is considered different from regular bullet damage, and usually these guns have a chance to cause a special damage type, such as setting your target on fire to burn for damage over time, electrocuting to stun, exploding for area damage or corroding to cause damage over time plus take more damage while corroding. Different shields also can have added resistance to these 4 elemental damage types, though electricity always seems to do the most damage to shields and fire always does the most damage to bare flesh. When you start out, you have a small backpack, limited resources, and a sucky gun. As you level up and complete quests, you'll make money, find better weapons, be able to keep up to 4 ready for use and also increase how much you can carry. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that elemental weapons are definitely the way to go - no normal gun, no matter what its stats say, can compete with a similar level elemental weapon of roughly equivalent quality.
The game's graphics are pretty good. I'm sure its performance is augmented by the simple textures used - as the game is going for a "comic book" artistic vibe we've seen in other games such as Champions Online. The textures are a bit on the cartoony side and post processing adds a thick black line to the outline of every model. Even so, there are times (especially toward the end of the game) where framerate does start to suffer a bit, but you can quickly remedy this by killing off some enemies. There's lots of voice acting of good quality, and the game's auditory experience is very pleasing.
In addition to running around on foot, the game provides you an unlimited supply of vehicles (after a few quests enable you to get to them) which let you traverse the areas of the game faster, although the mounted weapons soon become nigh-useless because their damage doesn't scale appropriately with level. In fact, neither does the vehicle's structural integrity (though it looks like it is trying), so that toward the end of the game they're more prone to explosion than a Ford Pinto.
Borderlands blends RPG elements into FPS action, which is a fun way to game, but it also makes for some audaciously dischordant situations... for instance, enemy humans will take more damage if you shoot them in the head rather than the body, but there are some humans so tough that they can take multiple dozens of bullets to the face before they die, despite wearing no visible armor. This is, of course, part and parcel of RPG fare and those familiar with RPGs primarily won't even consider it odd, but FPS diehards might consider it a bit odd, or in some cases, outright BS.
Once you beat the game, which you will do long before you reach maximum level, you are then permitted to go through again from the start on a more difficult setting. Believe it or not, this is funner than it sounds. Also, two expansions have been made available via DLC: The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned, and Mad Moxxy's Underdome Riot. What these two DLC packs do is introduce new areas to the game that aren't connected in any way with any other event going on in Borderlands. As the name suggests, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is a horror-movie type setting with zombies and werewolves and whatnot, with more quests and such to do. Mad Moxxy's Underdome Riot is an expanded arena system where you (and your friends, if you want to get anywhere in the second tier) take on wave after wave of multiple enemy badguys, culminating in repeat appearances of many of the bosses from the Borderlands campaign proper - all level adjusted for challenge, of course. While the loot isn't as good and no experience is gained on your character, you will get the opportunity to get extra skill points, basically letting you spend more points than you would otherwise have gotten at maximum level. All-in-all, however, I'd say the DLC is primarily for those who absolutely can't get enough of playing Borderlands, because the experience of playing them is supposed to be its own reward.
In summary, this is an excellent multiplayer co-op game. The campaign is designed around it from the ground up, the writing includes a lot of silliness and grim humor, and the dialogue is often hilarious ("He's my friend, and by friend, I mean 'asshole what messed up my mama's girl parts.' You may want to get what you can from him while he's still alive from me not having killed him yet and whatnot.") While I can't say I'll still come back to play it years down the road, for a brief period there was a time where Borderlands was king of the roost, and it wouldn't let me go till I had played it to death 3 times over.
Verdict: B+. And that's the word from Bandit Camp...
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Another Good Game on Good Old Games
I love the guys over at GOG.COM. You should head over there. This week, they've added Interstate 76 (with the Nitro Pack addon) for only 6 bucks. This was the best vehicle combat game of the 90s (though the Carmageddon series was a close second), and now you can have an updated and compatibilimitatimized version of it for less than it costs you to eat lunch! Go! GO NAAAOOWWW!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
God exists: he hates us.
Two pieces of evidence: The two worst video games in history, Necrovision and Darkest of Days, are getting a prequel and a movie deal respectively.
Excuse me while I go cover my front door with lamb's blood.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Monday, February 08, 2010
Rise of the Triad for iPhone
I don't have an iPhone and I don't really want one... but I hope this comes out for android, too...
Review: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Here's the third installment in the "Games I should have reviewed 3 months ago but the day job has been a bitch" series. This time we're looking at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the sequel to the impossibly awesome Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It's and understatement to say that the sequel had some damn big shoes to fill, and the hype around it was commensurate.
Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: MW2's single player campaign is short. REALLY short. Yes, shorter than the first Modern Warfare was, and THAT was pretty damn short. We're talking maybe 3 hours here. It feels to me like Infinity Ward was trying to outdo all the characteristics of the first MW by cranking each one up, including the brevity.
For another example, one of the big things about MW1 was the poignant death of one of the protagonist characters, experienced in first person. Well, they tried to outdo themselves here by making that happen THREE times. By the time the third time it happens, you're basically going "Oh gee, I die as part of the plot yet again, huh? Haven't we run out of protagonists yet?"
They also try to outdo the awe-inspiring shock of MW1's hitting you with a nuke in the middle east by having you defend Washington DC from a full-on Russian invasion which culminates in a nuke AND an airstrike AND nuking the International Space Station. By this point, your suspension of disbelief has been stretched so far they're using it to lay cable across the Atlantic ocean. With all this other stuff going on, the NOLF2-esque snowmobile level that has you jump over a hundred foot chasm doesn't even show up on the radar, it just seems naturally in keeping with the other stuff that's going on. Frankly, I'm surprised the game didn't climax with you having to personally disarm a nuclear bomb with wirecutters and then kill the Big Bad Guy by shoving the whole mess in his mouth and hurling him out of an airplane or off a cliff or bridge or something.
So what I'm trying to say is that maybe they got a little overzealous trying to make the plot "teh AWESOEM!"... but, fortunately, the action and gameplay is still solid. They've also added new wrinkles to it, such as in several missions you'll have the option to remote control predator drones to help you take out bad guys, and there's a wide variety of new weapons for you to try out, such as full auto shotguns, surprisingly useful riot shields, grenade launchers and such all in addition to the previous arsenal of combat rifles and heavy ordinance you were used to from before. 
I am a bit disappointed they didn't take a cue from Call of Duty: World at War and make the campaign playable in co-op, but all the "that part where you..." parts of the campaign are available in a separate gameplay mode which has co-op play available. So, for instance if you really liked the "stealthing through tall grass" part of the game, you can play it again and again, trying to improve your score, possibly even with a friend. Personally, my favorite scenario was "the part where" you have to defend your position in the snowbound sub pen with sniper rifles, claymore mines and predator drones. It really pleases me that, now having beaten it, I can at any time go back to any part of the game I found entertaining to play without having to sit through exposition or get there in level order or anything.
So, all in all, here's a shorter than normal review for a shorter than normal game. It speaks to the quality of the game that I'm giving it a good grade despite it being so short and over the top. It's not as mindblowingly awesome as the first modern warfare, but it's still a very enjoyable play worth your time. I also wonder if it might not have gotten a better grade if this was the one released first.
Verdict: B+. And that's the word from bandit camp.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
WOW Auction house - now you don't even have to log in
Holy Katzenjammer Kids! Get a load of this.
Coming soon:
You won't even have to be logged in to WoW to buy stuff off the auction house. This is a huge deal. Well, maybe less so for me because I haven't played WoW in years, but it's still a huge deal for the 10 million people who DO, and for the MMO genre in general because you know other companies are going to now feel they have to do this too.
See, a lot of my time back when I DID play WoW was actually spent as a commodities trader, instead of an actual... you know... medieval hero or whatnot. To get the money I needed for expensive things, I actually made most of my fortune in the simple buying and selling of such low-grade crafting components as copper, linen, wool, stone and such. True the prices were low, but it was actually relatively simple to corner the market by buying up everything available for 10 silver and then re-auctioning it for 20 silver. That's literally 100% profit right there, and when you pump hundreds of gold though that machine you get hundreds of gold back.
There's no mention made as to whether you'll be able to SELL things on the auctioneer through this external service, but even the buying part can make it that much more easy to do this sort of thing.
Now if only Warhammer Online would do something similar. Actually, wait... that wouldn't matter because Warhammer Online has no player economy to speak of. Never mind.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Review: Left 4 Dead 2
In part 2 of "Gas Bandit's Way-Behind-Schedule" review series, we come to the sequel to one of my hands-down-favorite games of recent years. The original Left 4 Dead is a masterpiece of setting, style, gameplay, character and fun, which I completely flaked out on and only gave a measelly paragraph to describe just over a year ago, when it deserved a glowing review. Now, I take a look at Left 4 Dead 2.
Left 4 Dead 2 was born in a small whirlwind of controversy. There was a badly conceived internet boycott because L4D fans thought that they were being gypped. The original L4D felt a little on the short side, with 4 "movies" that each take about an hour to complete (though with excellent replayability). Expectations had been set (especially by the prolific update precedent set by Team Fortress 2, which continues to receive a meaningful content update every third nanosecond) that to make up for the game's brevity, more updates would be patched in over time. At the time of the controversy, only one such update had occurred, adding the new "survival" game mode (however, close to L4D2's launch, a second update did materialize with a 5th "movie" to play). Also, during this time Australia was really starting to ramp up its "ban everything that's fun" phase (of which they're still in the throes), and declared a ban on L4D2, leading the developers to have to make a special "sissy" version so the delicate flowers of Australia would not be crushed by the very same visual experience you get from a PG-13 movie these days. Throw in a few hurried code patches week of release to fix some crippling glitches.
Well, that's all very informative, I'm sure you're saying, but what about the game itself?
Let me get this out of the way first, because I'm going to be harping on some shortcomings alot after this, and I don't want to lead you the wrong way: L4D2 is a good game. Ok? It's a good game. But... you remember that there have been some ill-advised attempts to relaunch certain intellectual properties as an "EXTREME!" version? Extreme ghostbusters, extreme looney tunes, extreme this, that, and the other? It feels a little bit like what they're trying to do here.
More blood, more zombies, more boss zombies, WAY more blood, more weapons, more danger, more panic events... everything's just trying SO hard to be cranked to 11. "THIS AIN'T YER DADDY'S LEFT 4 DEAD" screams L4D2, "I'm on SUPER EXTREME ELECTRIC STEROIDS!" Never mind that a lot of the new weapons seem entirely rendundant - for example, I found practically no functional difference between the combat shotgun and the chrome autoshotgun, or between the uzi and the autopistol. The differences seemed entirely cosmetic, which I guess can appeal to some people, but it just seems to be a missed opportunity here. Also, you're now given more "fallback" weapon choices.. there's the old dual pistols everybody knows and loves, or you can swap them in for a single desert eagle or a melee weapon.
The big pistol... how can I put this? Something's wrong with it... the model for it, the place in front of the camera where the model is placed... just, it feels artificial. Maybe it's because it feels like your character is holding the pistol level with his or her eyebrows, or something like that. It just seemed a little distracting to me, but it does punch through zombies better than dual pistols, though it holds fewer rounds. But just try a melee weapon and you'll find yourself a convert. It's nice to be able to gun from a distance with no ammo concerns, sure, but a good melee weapon will turn you into some kind of zombie-chopping berzerker ninja juggernaut. There have been times in every L4D player's life where he got surrounded on all sides by a dozen zombies clawing at him and the pistols, or even regular weapons, just couldn't cut the mustard. However, a katana or bat or even a sturdy electric guitar will grant you your freedom if wielded with even mediocre skill. With melee weapon in hand, I managed to fight my way through oncoming hordes of common zombies to an objective (more on that later), and if you do it right, you can even take out a Tank zombie in about 6 seconds with the proper melee weapon (the nightstick, if you're wondering).
So that's got some things to the plus, but there's a lot more that L4D2 seems to be doing "just to be different." Of course there's the whole "southern" feel to every level, but it manages to pull that off pretty well. I'm not so sure about most of the levels being set during the day, though. It takes something from the experience... in L4D1, it being dark was part of what built the tension, whereas in daylight's unlimited visibility, they're forced to increase the number and difficulty of the zombies to compensate for the fact that most of the time you'll see them coming hundreds of feet away. They have to give you more zombies to shoot and more bosses to toss you about so that your increased visibility doesn't make the game a turkey shoot, headshotting every zombie with a sniper rifle before you even get close enough to smell them.
This dovetails nicely into my next item - the difficulty. Part of the new EXTREME L4D is that everything is more and harder. Zombies? More and harder. Bosses? More and harder. Panic events? More and harder. Climax events? More and harder. Also, they give you the hardest "movie" first, for some reason. There was a point in the third stage of the first movie (on NORMAL difficulty, mind you) that in the middle of a panic event, the game decided to spawn two tanks, a boomer, a jockey AND a smoker on me AT ONCE. All while the normal zombies were swarming over us like a kicked beehive. Also, where the first game mostly had "push this button and defend it until it's done doing its thing" events, L4D2 favors "push this button which starts a neverending panic event with lots of bosses, and run THROUGH them to push this other button a long way away" events. Anyone can tell you it's much easier to fight a numerically superior horde from an entrenched position of tactical superiority, and much harder to have to move through said horde without any of the advantages that setting up a defensible position grants. It didn't take long for me to decide that "normal" was too frustrating, and I found that "easy" difficulty is actually pretty close to what L4D1 was on "normal." It just confuses me when, why there were already a "hard" and "expert" difficulty level in L4D1, they had to go and bump every level up a difficulty factor AND throw in a new optional "realism" game mode to make it even harder. Are there really people who are so very damn Rambo that they needed the difficulty set 5 orders of magnitude above what a "normal" person finds an enjoyable time? And I'm no slouch when it comes to FPS difficulty. Back in the day, I played Doom on Nightmare frequently. But the harder settings on L4D2 blow that out of the water. There's just no chance. This is also all exacerbated by the strange fact that the bots have gotten dumber since the last game. They're slower to pick up people who get knocked down (especially if that downed character is a human player), they're more likely to get separated, and they aren't as alert to the presence of zombies or as accurate in shooting them as they were in the first game... at least it seemed such to me.
The Left 4 Dead series is big on the "horror movie" angle... each separate campaign is a "movie," complete with movie posters, movie cliches, climaxes and credits. Well, the transition from L4D1 to 2 feels like a genre shift... from horror suspense (a la The Ring, Friday the 13th, or the Amityville Horror) to torture porn (a la the Saw franchise). It's bloodier, more visceral, more frenetic and more action oriented. Remember how the scary thing about Jaws was how you practically never SAW the shark? Well, in L4D2 they try to make up for the fact that you can see the shark by adding 700 more sharks.
Speaking of the characters, that's another gripe I have. In L4D1, the personality of the 4 survivors added a lot to the game. Louis and his "peelz" are a full fledged internet meme. People couldn't get over all the things Francis hates. Zoey practically had a full fledged (and somewhat pathetic) fan club, and Bill managed to pull off the grizzled old vietnam vet very well, even if he didn't stand out particularly. There is one shining star in L4D2, and that star is Ellis. It made me laugh every time he'd start in on a story about how he and his buddy Keith "this one time" would go and do something egregiously stupid and Keith would end up with something "over 90% of his body," only to be cut off by one of the other characters. Coach puts in a lovable big teddybear presence too, although next to Ellis, he's kind of the "Bill" of the group... he's there and in character but that character doesn't particularly stand out. Then there's the other two - Nick "the Gambler" and Rochelle the token female. Nick is practically a non-entity, not even really managing to fill the "asshole" shoes left vacant by Francis... and really, how hard is it to be an entertaining jerk these days? Rochelle is just... well let's put it this way - usually the worst thing you can say about a character in a story is that it is "one dimensional." Rochelle doesn't even seem to have that ONE dimension. She's just there. She's not funny or badass, smart or goofy, helpless or helpful, nothing. If this were a star trek movie, I have no doubt she'd have been the first red-shirt offed by the aliens. She's a cardboard standie with a gun. No personality. I miss the chemistry, the group dynamic of the survivors from the first game.
Now, even with all the above gripes - L4D2 *is* a fun game, and I will play it for many years to come. Albeit, it will be in conjunction with L4D1, because it does not adequately replace L4D1. Sure, I'll wish the first game had melee weapons, but the feel of the game is indispensable. But L4D2 is welcome to share hard drive space with it. Even after all my complaining about it, I like the added action, it's something a little different. But I'll always go back to L4D1 as well for my "dark and creepy suspense" fix. I would also be remiss if I did not extoll the virtues of L4D2's crowning achievement - the Hard Rain movie campaign. The setup is that the boat you're traveling on needs fuel, and you have to go on land and into town to get the diesel, then backtrack to where the boat dropped you to get picked up again... the problem is, just as you get to the fuel...a hurricane hits, adding a new wrinkle - the wind and rain that whips debris around you and periodically makes the aforementioned visibility range shrink to near useless dimensions. It really adds to the tension and challenge, but in a good way - through a clever game mechanic, not through "even more of the same."
Verdict: B+. And that's the word from Bandit Camp.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum
I know I've been remiss in my review duties. Can't be helped, the day job comes first. At any rate, I've got a backlog of games I need to review, and first up to bat (no put intended) is Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Now, I have to say I didn't have high hopes for this game, especially since it was hyped so much and usually hype is an indicator such that the quality of a game is inversely proportional to the quantity of hype it receives. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to see this law broken. Not to jump to the end of the review early or anything, but it's my opinion that Batman: Arkham Asylum is probably the best game of 2009.
It just gets so much right. First, the treatment of the Batman intellectual property is spot on - the mood and atmosphere are just the proper mixture of grimdark and badassery. The graphics are excellent and yet still high framerate, with lots of little artistic touches such as the progressive "roughing up" of the batsuit as the game continues. 
The sound, the music, ambiance and voice acting are absolute aces - especially the voice acting. They've gotten the voice actors from the best and latest iterations of the animated DC universe to voice their characters - Kevin Conroy has been the voice of the Batman since 1993, same with Arleen Sorkin for Harley Quinn, and of course Mark Hamill reprises his role of the Best Joker Ever (though I have to say Heath Ledger did come close). Throw in heavy hitters like Steve Blum (the guy is damn near everywhere, and for good reason), Tom Kane and even Adrienne freakin Barbeau, and you have a real auditory treat.
But most importantly, the game itself is fun as hell. Don't listen to the people who whine about the action being repetitive... these people would complain about a flight simulator being repetitive because you never get out of the plane. The game mostly consists of combinations of stealth and combat sequences with some climbing and jumping mixed in. There's also a secondary "riddler" line of objectives for those who want an added challenge or just have a completionist streak in them.
It's usually the case where good stealth games have bad combat sequences and vice versa, but what makes B:AA really shine is that it does both pretty well. Both stealth and fighting ability are important - you need stealth because Batman, who refuses to use firearms himself of course, would get mown down by multiple bad guys with machine guns, but combat is also important for when there's nowhere to hide and 5 thugs with pipes and chains come charging at you. In many cases if you do it just right, it'll be a movie perfect scene of the bad guys wandering the halls and catwalks with Batman taking out the last one in line again and again, with the remaining baddies getting ever more freaked out as they find their unconscious comrades lying on the floor or suspended from the ceiling. There's also permutations in many areas that make it more challenging. For example, in some areas, the baddies wear special collars that monitor their heart rate so that when they're rendered unconscious the collar makes a lot of noise, bringing everybody else running.
Defeating enemies and completing objectives gets you experience, which then in turn can be used to buy upgrades to Batman's equipment or add special moves to his fighting. You'll end up getting all the upgrades and abilities well before the end of the game, but the progression does add to the playing experience. Examples of such upgrades are better armor in the batsuit (giving you a larger health bar), the ability to throw multiple batarangs, etc.
As you progress through the plot, particularly noteworthy fights and scenarios get added to a "challenge mode" where you can revisit them to try and chase the "perfect run" through them, racking up seamless combos in massive brawls, or eliminating enemies stealthily and in the most entertaining ways the computer can request (such as yanking them off catwalks with the batclaw, or exploding weakened structures around them, etc).
The majority of the rogue's gallery from the batman comics are included, many having their own subsections of the game for you to navigate. The Scarecrow's section is especially well done.
No game is absolutely perfect, but the gripes about this game are small and few. Some of the ragdoll physics look a little stiff and unnatural, some of the "bat-vision" attachments are a little gimmicky, and if you want to collect all of the little trophies and secrets it involves a whole lot of doubling back through areas you've done already, sometimes more than once.
But on the whole, the game is definitely a classic and a keeper, to be revisited often. It's been a long time since I've been firm in giving an A+ to a game, but Batman: Arkham Asylum has definitely earned it.
Verdict: A+.
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