The Christmas market for gaming is a funny one. First of all, Consoles are an expensive gift, especially the market as it is at the moment. £300 for a Playstation 3, just the 40 gig console, no games, £250 for a premium Xbox 360 and, even though it's very good value, £180 for a Wii. Mind you, if you ever find a Wii, most shops will smack it in a massive bundle for about £300.
Nintendo have done extremely well for themselves. They have held the number 1 spot for the must-have Christmas toy two years in a row. This, in my opinion is down to tactical releases and even more tactical play on supply and demand. First of all, most of the big guns have been released in a staggered fashion throughout the year. There aren't that many games for the Wii but they've made it sound like there are hundreds. The second is the release of their consoles. I might not be the first to admit that I'm suspicious about the number of Wiis that are being released in this country. They have not been readily available since the release, even in the middle of the year when not everyone wanted one. This lack of supply creates more demand because people who would think twice are buying them when presented with that rare chance. This rise in demand in itself creates more demand because the press talk about it and people hear about it. Also, thanks to the great marketing and the link to the already popular DS, you've got yourself a winner. But I still think that Nintendo has tonnes in a shed somewhere.
PS3 will have taken the second spot I think (by the way these aren't accurate in a any way) being it's first Christmas. I don't know that it will have done especially well, thanks to the Wii and the high price; something for Mum's to buy their kids (ain't gonna happen. sorry Jimmy). Also, I don't know that the games are best for Mums to buy their kids. There are a few racing games and a few sports games but this isn't enough. This will hit the teenage market of rich parents and that's not the biggest of markets. It's big, but not as wide as the Wiis.
Xbox has its second Christmas but its never going to be bleak. More and more gamers look to the wide range of games and the success of the console for the place to put their first steps into the next gen (or the current gen). Xbox 360 will have been fine this Christmas.
As for games, CoD4, Mario Galaxy, Assassin's Creed, Halo 3, Fifa 08/PES 08; Need I say more?
There's a little round-up for you, Merry Christmas.
Friday, 28 December 2007
Sunday, 23 December 2007
Where's the multiplayer gone?
I've had a little bit of a revelation recently. I had a few mates round for a bit of a lads night, beer and Xbox, like old times. I was reminiscing back to days of Mario Kart and Golden Eye, four player madness, laughing like never before and frantic shouts, basically getting carried away. These memories are my fondest of gaming. I hadn't had a night like that in ages so I arranged it. There have been a lot of good games out on the 360 lately; Call of Duty 4, Skate, PGR4, all of which I had really enjoyed online (except for Skate, EA can't seem to do online justice) and I was really looking forward to taking a few mates to school. Here's where the disappointment came in. Game developers don't care about offline multiplayer any more.
All three games have severely stripped down versions of the online multiplayer for offline play. CoD4 has allowed you only to choose its pre-set classes, has fewer of the game modes and fewer maps. The classes do not have all of the perks and not all of the weapons. You cannot custom make your own classes. This is very disappointing. The game was still amazing fun, and I really cannot slate the game apart from this (see my review).
Skate, on the other hand, only allows players to play the type of games where you take it in turns. This, to be honest, is fucking shoddy! Their choice to do this might have been to do with not wanting to split the screens but I was really hoping to have competitions of "best trick" or freeskate and such. On the other hand I'm brought modes like "Spot battle" and "S-K-A-T-E". These modes are tedious as they need players to take it in turns. While appreciating your mates tricks is probably the idea, it can incredibly tedious. I certainly wish there could be death races or spot battles, some of the stuff that's on the online multiplayer.
PGR is the worst offender. I don't particularly like the game, I don't like racing games really, but I thought racing against mates would be fun... if I was actually allowed. The game only allows for two players to race against each other. This is SHIT! I'm sorry but when four controllers can be connected to an Xbox and you can probably have 8 players in a race, why the FUCK can't we play four player? This is just fucking stupid!
Anyway, I was very disappointed. I hate being disappointed. I know that it must be difficult for game devs to make a complete game in little time these days. There's the extra side to gaming these days, online gaming, which must take a lot more programming than before. I understand that this must make the work load double but these are just excuses to me because in my opinion they have taken a half arsed approach to one essential part of any game.
There's another thing. Wii has no problem making great offline multiplayer games, in fact, some may argue that all it has is great party games but for some reason it can't seem to get the online right. Is this the choice I'm going to have to put up with in future, one or the other? It makes me feel quite annoyed that I may never be able to play Warioware offline or that I might never play Skate with mates in a way that it was meant to be played.
Maybe I'm being silly. Maybe I should get with the times. Maybe I should just realise the facts that I have argued here. I just can't help but feel slightly cheated.
All three games have severely stripped down versions of the online multiplayer for offline play. CoD4 has allowed you only to choose its pre-set classes, has fewer of the game modes and fewer maps. The classes do not have all of the perks and not all of the weapons. You cannot custom make your own classes. This is very disappointing. The game was still amazing fun, and I really cannot slate the game apart from this (see my review).
Skate, on the other hand, only allows players to play the type of games where you take it in turns. This, to be honest, is fucking shoddy! Their choice to do this might have been to do with not wanting to split the screens but I was really hoping to have competitions of "best trick" or freeskate and such. On the other hand I'm brought modes like "Spot battle" and "S-K-A-T-E". These modes are tedious as they need players to take it in turns. While appreciating your mates tricks is probably the idea, it can incredibly tedious. I certainly wish there could be death races or spot battles, some of the stuff that's on the online multiplayer.
PGR is the worst offender. I don't particularly like the game, I don't like racing games really, but I thought racing against mates would be fun... if I was actually allowed. The game only allows for two players to race against each other. This is SHIT! I'm sorry but when four controllers can be connected to an Xbox and you can probably have 8 players in a race, why the FUCK can't we play four player? This is just fucking stupid!
Anyway, I was very disappointed. I hate being disappointed. I know that it must be difficult for game devs to make a complete game in little time these days. There's the extra side to gaming these days, online gaming, which must take a lot more programming than before. I understand that this must make the work load double but these are just excuses to me because in my opinion they have taken a half arsed approach to one essential part of any game.
There's another thing. Wii has no problem making great offline multiplayer games, in fact, some may argue that all it has is great party games but for some reason it can't seem to get the online right. Is this the choice I'm going to have to put up with in future, one or the other? It makes me feel quite annoyed that I may never be able to play Warioware offline or that I might never play Skate with mates in a way that it was meant to be played.
Maybe I'm being silly. Maybe I should get with the times. Maybe I should just realise the facts that I have argued here. I just can't help but feel slightly cheated.
Friday, 7 December 2007
Assassin's Creed Review
With so many popular franchises dominating the Xbox 360's release lists this Christmas, it was a wonder that such an unheard of, new title was getting so much hype. They had all of the right criteria for the game; an distinguishably cool lead character, an extremely original setting, beautiful looking visuals and a great concept. What could go wrong?
Throughout the game you play as a man who has been caught by police and who is being run through a machine, called the Animus, that allows him to act out his ancestors life story. This, in turn, is supposed to implicate him to some crime or other that he has commit. His ancestor is a man named Altair, a member of the assassins creed in the time of the third crusade. He has gone on a mission and broken the rules and as such has lost all of his privileges as an assassin and has to start from the bottom again. To repay his sins he is asked to assassinate 9 evil men. This is where the game begins.
The control system relies on two levels of control. The first being low-profile; it involves things like blending into a crowd, moving through a crowd inconspicuously and basically moving around in a manner that does not arise suspicion. The second is high-profile and this is activated by holding down the left trigger. This changes the actions of all of the face buttons. It also makes you run instead of walking. This is where the fun stuff comes in. Here you can attack guards and you can run through crowds and knock people out of the way. It also opens up the climbing and free running that makes this game special. Altair's greatest ability is his manoeuvrability. This allows him to escape the chase of the city guards. The way this works is that everything is scalable. The architecture of buildings has been designed in such a way that they are perfect for climbing, given the agility of Altair. Creases, cracks and other features allows him to climb pretty much any wall and when atop the buildings it allows him to leap from building to building. It is a very easy control system, worked by holding two buttons and guiding a direction. Altair does all the hard work of actually climbing and jumping himself but this allows you to look further into the distance to see where you need to be going. It's a fantastic system and it really makes for exciting play.
For about ten minutes...
The problem with this game lies in its layout. For each of the 9 men you have been asked to kill, you have to complete three tasks before you know where and how to kill him. These involve four different missions; Eavesdropping (sitting on a bench and listening), Pickpocketing (walking up behind a designated person and holding B), Interrogation (beating someone up) and performing tasks for an informant (either killing someone or collecting flags). These mini-games, if you can even call them mini-games, are the thing that really destroys these games. These become more of a tedious chore than anything merely because they are easy and pointless. They provide you with information but it never feels like this information is important enough to listen to because you know you are going to be told where to go afterwards anyway.
After performing these tasks, you are to go and assassinate the man, which is another disappointing moment. Some are extremely easy but quite satisfying; you stalk your man until his back is turned and then deliver one swift blow, or they involve a basic sword fight. Which is difficult and boring. After this, you have to run from the scene and escape the guards which somehow is turned from a fun and exciting prospect into extreme frustration. The tactic I would have most often adopted would be to fight a few of them off and then turn and run when there are less to run from. This is nigh on impossible as the targeting system won't let you stop fighting half the time, meanwhile you are getting hacked to pieces. It does not allow for the free flowing game that I thought this was going to be. The game goes on like this all the way through and it gets very repetitive.
Because of the stories set-up, you are trying to follow two stories and because of this, I found that I couldn't care less about either. I stopped listening to the dialogue and lost track but I still didn't really care much. The whole idea of having a secondary universe in the modern day feels like a stupid and pointless idea which only slows the game down. In this mode, you can't run or perform any action, you can only do things when told to. It makes the entire game feel fake when they could have just set it in Altair's time and be done with it.
The good thing about this game is that the visuals are stunning. You spend your time in one of three cities; Acre, Jerusalem and Damascus, all of which have great architectural presence and look great. People walking through the streets make for a busy atmosphere and this adds to the mentality of the city and the general feel of the game. Outside the cities, the scenery is beautiful, it looks realistic but at the same time dreamlike. The costumes of the characters adds to the drama and when you're sitting atop one of the many tall towers that help you get your bearings, the detail in the scenery is amazing.
Assassin's Creed is not a bad game by any means. It lacks depth. How the designers could comprehend that people wouldn't get bored, though, is beyond me. For a game with such promise and originality, its a shame to see it go this way. Some varied missions and a bit more work on the fighting would have gone a very long way.
68%
Throughout the game you play as a man who has been caught by police and who is being run through a machine, called the Animus, that allows him to act out his ancestors life story. This, in turn, is supposed to implicate him to some crime or other that he has commit. His ancestor is a man named Altair, a member of the assassins creed in the time of the third crusade. He has gone on a mission and broken the rules and as such has lost all of his privileges as an assassin and has to start from the bottom again. To repay his sins he is asked to assassinate 9 evil men. This is where the game begins.
The control system relies on two levels of control. The first being low-profile; it involves things like blending into a crowd, moving through a crowd inconspicuously and basically moving around in a manner that does not arise suspicion. The second is high-profile and this is activated by holding down the left trigger. This changes the actions of all of the face buttons. It also makes you run instead of walking. This is where the fun stuff comes in. Here you can attack guards and you can run through crowds and knock people out of the way. It also opens up the climbing and free running that makes this game special. Altair's greatest ability is his manoeuvrability. This allows him to escape the chase of the city guards. The way this works is that everything is scalable. The architecture of buildings has been designed in such a way that they are perfect for climbing, given the agility of Altair. Creases, cracks and other features allows him to climb pretty much any wall and when atop the buildings it allows him to leap from building to building. It is a very easy control system, worked by holding two buttons and guiding a direction. Altair does all the hard work of actually climbing and jumping himself but this allows you to look further into the distance to see where you need to be going. It's a fantastic system and it really makes for exciting play.
For about ten minutes...
The problem with this game lies in its layout. For each of the 9 men you have been asked to kill, you have to complete three tasks before you know where and how to kill him. These involve four different missions; Eavesdropping (sitting on a bench and listening), Pickpocketing (walking up behind a designated person and holding B), Interrogation (beating someone up) and performing tasks for an informant (either killing someone or collecting flags). These mini-games, if you can even call them mini-games, are the thing that really destroys these games. These become more of a tedious chore than anything merely because they are easy and pointless. They provide you with information but it never feels like this information is important enough to listen to because you know you are going to be told where to go afterwards anyway.
After performing these tasks, you are to go and assassinate the man, which is another disappointing moment. Some are extremely easy but quite satisfying; you stalk your man until his back is turned and then deliver one swift blow, or they involve a basic sword fight. Which is difficult and boring. After this, you have to run from the scene and escape the guards which somehow is turned from a fun and exciting prospect into extreme frustration. The tactic I would have most often adopted would be to fight a few of them off and then turn and run when there are less to run from. This is nigh on impossible as the targeting system won't let you stop fighting half the time, meanwhile you are getting hacked to pieces. It does not allow for the free flowing game that I thought this was going to be. The game goes on like this all the way through and it gets very repetitive.
Because of the stories set-up, you are trying to follow two stories and because of this, I found that I couldn't care less about either. I stopped listening to the dialogue and lost track but I still didn't really care much. The whole idea of having a secondary universe in the modern day feels like a stupid and pointless idea which only slows the game down. In this mode, you can't run or perform any action, you can only do things when told to. It makes the entire game feel fake when they could have just set it in Altair's time and be done with it.
The good thing about this game is that the visuals are stunning. You spend your time in one of three cities; Acre, Jerusalem and Damascus, all of which have great architectural presence and look great. People walking through the streets make for a busy atmosphere and this adds to the mentality of the city and the general feel of the game. Outside the cities, the scenery is beautiful, it looks realistic but at the same time dreamlike. The costumes of the characters adds to the drama and when you're sitting atop one of the many tall towers that help you get your bearings, the detail in the scenery is amazing.
Assassin's Creed is not a bad game by any means. It lacks depth. How the designers could comprehend that people wouldn't get bored, though, is beyond me. For a game with such promise and originality, its a shame to see it go this way. Some varied missions and a bit more work on the fighting would have gone a very long way.
68%
Monday, 3 December 2007
Call of Duty 4 Review
With a franchise like Call of Duty, you know what you're getting. All of the main games have been exceptionally good; The original had a tough job to do to beat the renowned EA stomper, Medal of Honour, and from there, CoD2 and CoD3 went on the improve on the series both with its intense single player missions and with its brilliant multi player competition. The one question that was on my mind when CoD4 was announced, how long can a World War 2 FPS keep going?
But that's the catch. This one isn't set in WW2. Alright, its pretty obvious. The subtitle to CoD4 is Modern Warfare. All the trailers showed scenes of SAS style soldiers in Middle-Eastern scenery. This is modern warfare and its Call of Duty. The game is fantastic!
Let me deal, first of all, with the single player mode. What you get here is the next gen CoD that we were waiting for. That's not to remove anything from Call of Duty 3 but this is really something. The first mission is with the SAS, they take you through training, which is what you'd expect, taking you through all the old stuff and all the new stuff (of which there's plenty). You are then thrown into the most involved mission in the entire game. Your mission is to raid a cargo ship in the middle of a violent storm. There's rain lashing on the deck, storage crates are sliding everywhere and it all looks incredible. You aren't expected to do much in the lower difficulties; the AI takes care of a lot of the hard work but you are kind of glad its there, after all, you are a rookie to this experience. The heart of this mission gives you and even better look at the rest of the game. The ship is hit by a torpedo and starts sinking. In an extremely panicked and frantic turn, you have to run back through the ship to the helicopter that awaits to rescue you. The ship is filling with water, knocking you over as it starts turning on its side, making it very disorientating. As you run through the ship, following your comrades, a wrong turn will end in death and the mood is very tense. It got so tense that as I ran to the helicopter, I actually started to stand up, and as I made the jump into the helicopter, breathed a sigh of relief
This is what you get all the way through the single player campaign. This is something that the CoD games do best and its even better here. I don't know whether its because, being modern day, I felt more in touch with the characters but I genuinely cared for the characters that I was introduced to and that's a hard thing for a game developer to accomplish. The missions are varied in style. There are slow and stealthy missions and there are frantic, shoot anything that moves kind of missions (and I mean anything, the dogs are vicious!). You take control of guns mounted to planes and utilise huge rocket launchers to take down helicopters; every mission is different and exciting because of this variety.
The graphics are stunning and some of the visual effects are very pleasing to watch. There are moments where you just want to stop and appreciate the scenery but can't because there's too much else going on. The sound is good, the voice acting especially, including some very good British voice acting which doesn't sound Americanised at all. The classic whistling in the ears if a grenade goes off near you and foreign cries of enemies mix into the sound of the battlefield which makes for a very impressive soundtrack.
Online, the game goes somewhere different. They've adopted the class based fighting that was used in CoD3 but they've made it customisable, a feature which I welcomed with some glee. This means that you can choose your primary weapon, secondary weapon, grenades and such. The other thing that has changed is that your class has certain attributes, or perks as they're called in the game, that change the way you can play the game. For instance, you can choose to be faster, cause more damage or have more health. You can also have things like martyrdom, which means you drop a grenade after you're killed, or the ability to see enemies c4 and mines. You can call in an air strike after three kills in a row, have a rocket launcher as a third weapon, have more grenades, in fact, the list of possible combinations of weapons and perks is so high that it really makes for an outstanding system. The game types have changed too. While there is still the standard games like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and headquarters, there are many more and these make for a very different gaming experience!
All in all, its safe to say that any game that manages to bring together stunning single player and classic multi player action is going to be a good one but I would go further with CoD4. This isn't just a good game, it sets the bar for all first person shooters out there. This is better than Halo, hell, its probably better than Half Life 2 (did I just say that?). All I know is, this game is fucking brilliant.
97%
But that's the catch. This one isn't set in WW2. Alright, its pretty obvious. The subtitle to CoD4 is Modern Warfare. All the trailers showed scenes of SAS style soldiers in Middle-Eastern scenery. This is modern warfare and its Call of Duty. The game is fantastic!
Let me deal, first of all, with the single player mode. What you get here is the next gen CoD that we were waiting for. That's not to remove anything from Call of Duty 3 but this is really something. The first mission is with the SAS, they take you through training, which is what you'd expect, taking you through all the old stuff and all the new stuff (of which there's plenty). You are then thrown into the most involved mission in the entire game. Your mission is to raid a cargo ship in the middle of a violent storm. There's rain lashing on the deck, storage crates are sliding everywhere and it all looks incredible. You aren't expected to do much in the lower difficulties; the AI takes care of a lot of the hard work but you are kind of glad its there, after all, you are a rookie to this experience. The heart of this mission gives you and even better look at the rest of the game. The ship is hit by a torpedo and starts sinking. In an extremely panicked and frantic turn, you have to run back through the ship to the helicopter that awaits to rescue you. The ship is filling with water, knocking you over as it starts turning on its side, making it very disorientating. As you run through the ship, following your comrades, a wrong turn will end in death and the mood is very tense. It got so tense that as I ran to the helicopter, I actually started to stand up, and as I made the jump into the helicopter, breathed a sigh of relief
This is what you get all the way through the single player campaign. This is something that the CoD games do best and its even better here. I don't know whether its because, being modern day, I felt more in touch with the characters but I genuinely cared for the characters that I was introduced to and that's a hard thing for a game developer to accomplish. The missions are varied in style. There are slow and stealthy missions and there are frantic, shoot anything that moves kind of missions (and I mean anything, the dogs are vicious!). You take control of guns mounted to planes and utilise huge rocket launchers to take down helicopters; every mission is different and exciting because of this variety.
The graphics are stunning and some of the visual effects are very pleasing to watch. There are moments where you just want to stop and appreciate the scenery but can't because there's too much else going on. The sound is good, the voice acting especially, including some very good British voice acting which doesn't sound Americanised at all. The classic whistling in the ears if a grenade goes off near you and foreign cries of enemies mix into the sound of the battlefield which makes for a very impressive soundtrack.
Online, the game goes somewhere different. They've adopted the class based fighting that was used in CoD3 but they've made it customisable, a feature which I welcomed with some glee. This means that you can choose your primary weapon, secondary weapon, grenades and such. The other thing that has changed is that your class has certain attributes, or perks as they're called in the game, that change the way you can play the game. For instance, you can choose to be faster, cause more damage or have more health. You can also have things like martyrdom, which means you drop a grenade after you're killed, or the ability to see enemies c4 and mines. You can call in an air strike after three kills in a row, have a rocket launcher as a third weapon, have more grenades, in fact, the list of possible combinations of weapons and perks is so high that it really makes for an outstanding system. The game types have changed too. While there is still the standard games like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and headquarters, there are many more and these make for a very different gaming experience!
All in all, its safe to say that any game that manages to bring together stunning single player and classic multi player action is going to be a good one but I would go further with CoD4. This isn't just a good game, it sets the bar for all first person shooters out there. This is better than Halo, hell, its probably better than Half Life 2 (did I just say that?). All I know is, this game is fucking brilliant.
97%
Saturday, 1 December 2007
bio
So this is the first blog and as you might have expected, the first of many. My blogs aren't for me to chat shit about my life though, they are to chat shit about video games and culture. This is a very opinionated view of gaming brought to you by me. I've been playing games all my life and being born in 1986, that means I was brought up in the thick of the gaming craze.
My first games machine was a commodore 64 Amiga which took floppy disks and played games like Monkey Island and Zool. These are truly some of the best games ever made (well, maybe not zool). After that, I played Snes and Megadrive, and since then I've either owned or been in very close contact to every single console released.
At the moment the only console I don't own is a Playstation 3 but I have my reasons for that. Unlike most gamers who are supported by their rich parents and journalists who need to own all the consoles for fear of not getting paid, I simply cannot afford to buy a PS3 at the minute. That's not to say that I won't own one... one day. And that's certainly not to say that I don't keep up with all PS3 releases and news.
The magazine I read is called Edge, its a very high class games magazine, the writers and the features are top notch and the opinions have always been kept intact without selling out. It is my dream to write for them one day.
At the moment I write occasionally for denofgeek.com, a webzine aimed at geek culture.
Thanks for taking time to read my blog, the first post should appear soon.
DG
My first games machine was a commodore 64 Amiga which took floppy disks and played games like Monkey Island and Zool. These are truly some of the best games ever made (well, maybe not zool). After that, I played Snes and Megadrive, and since then I've either owned or been in very close contact to every single console released.
At the moment the only console I don't own is a Playstation 3 but I have my reasons for that. Unlike most gamers who are supported by their rich parents and journalists who need to own all the consoles for fear of not getting paid, I simply cannot afford to buy a PS3 at the minute. That's not to say that I won't own one... one day. And that's certainly not to say that I don't keep up with all PS3 releases and news.
The magazine I read is called Edge, its a very high class games magazine, the writers and the features are top notch and the opinions have always been kept intact without selling out. It is my dream to write for them one day.
At the moment I write occasionally for denofgeek.com, a webzine aimed at geek culture.
Thanks for taking time to read my blog, the first post should appear soon.
DG
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