Nelson Bay - Night Map

I bit the bullet and dove in head first into the Battlefield Bad Company 2 scene by pre-ordering the limited edition ($49.99) on Steam.  I’ve been playing, and loving, the Battlefield series since 1942 where I exhausted the game and all of its expansions.  From there it was BF:Vietnam (which was AWESOME), BF2+xpacs, and 2142.   I skipped Bad Company because it was console only, which didn’t sit well with me. Having to pre-order to try the game never sits well with me, but since my history with the BF series has been amazing it only took a few days of thinking about it before I realized I couldn’t miss out on the next installment.

Quick Impressions of Features

• Dedicated Servers – BOOYA!
• Destructible Environments – Great for the atmosphere/immersion and strategy, but eventually everything is destroyed.
• Gun play feels looser than MW2 but that’s the BF feel.
• Leveling and unlocking gives something to work towards.
• Maps are going to be great.

The PC Beta for Bad Company 2 is limited to one map and one mode.  The map is called Port Valdez and, like the name alludes to, it takes place on the edge of a harbor.  It’s snowy with buildings and slight terrain barriers.  The mode is called Rush and the goal is for one team to attack and the other to defend.  The attackerss have to destroy points A and B of three different sections of the map in what feels like a “push” mechanic.  The defenders have unlimited lives but the attacking side only has 100.  If the defenders can stop the attackers (by killing them 100 times) before their last 2 points are destroyed then they win.  The mode is fun and the attack/defend style lends itself nicely to the BF series.  I’m aching for some good old fashion BF though.

Laguna Presa - Jungle Map

After playing Modern Warfare 2 for so long it has become really obvious that BF and CoD feel very different.  Battlefield has almost a looser and less realistic feel to it, whereas Call of Duty is tighter and more responsive or realistic.  At first I thought that I liked CoD’s style more but the more I play BF the more I can’t decide if I really like CoD’s more of if they’re just completely different to the point of both being great in their own right.  Where MW2 feels more like staged skirmishes, Battlefield feels like a real war is going on all around me.  The destructible environments are fantastic because it all adds to the strategy and dare I say even the immersion.  The problem with the destructible environments though is that eventually the map you’re playing on is just one pile of smoldering rubble.

BFBC2 has done away with going prone.  Damn you dolphin divers!  Not being able to lay down sucks when you have a tank trying to shell you out of hiding or snipers looking for any sign of movement.   I don’t know if this was in other BF games, but ‘Hardcore’ mode is a mode that we can play in the beta where there is no minimap and several of the HUD elements are gone such as the notification medics get to revive teammates.  It takes less bullets to kill people and you need to use your iron sights/scopes.  It feels like it is somewhere between MW2’s Hardcore mode and BF’s normal mode which is actually very comfortable.

Squad play is probably one of the best BF features.  There is definitely a benefit of working with your squad and spawning on them.  Working towards to advance with ammo kits, health kits, and team tactics yields real results.  One game in particular during this beta I was working closely with my squad and we infiltrated the enemy base and took out both points.  The key was that we cleared corners, used voice chat with the whole “Clear!” “Go go go!”  “Tango 2nd story left window!” and all that cool stuff I wish happened all the time.

Overall, I really like the beta.  I can’t wait for more modes (not that Rush is bad) and more maps.  I do not regret my decision to pre-order at all.  I’ll let you know how I like the full version of the game when it comes out on March 2nd.  If any other details arise worth mentioning I’ll be sure to let you know.

For anyone who doesn’t know, MAG is an online-only PS3 first person shooter where you can play with up to 255 other people.

I’ve been playing for the past few days and so far I’m really enjoying it. I joined the SVER faction, the others being Valor and Raven, and have raised my character to around level 18 or so.

Surprisingly there seems to be very little lag. I think I might have experienced some slight lag only a couple times, one of which being in the video I took.

Anyways, just figured I’d take a few pictures and record some footage. If I can I might write a more detailed analysis down the line.

I really liked the original game and have been eagerly awaiting the release of ME2 for quite some time. I just finished my first run through the other day and figured I should write up my review before getting wrapped up in something else. Anyways, here we go.

The story in Mass Effect 2 picks up a couple of months after the events of the first game. Commander Shepard and his crew are ordered to hunt down remaining Geth when they are attacked by a mysterious race called the Collectors. In a few blasts from their ship they destroy the Normandy, killing several of its crew, including Commander Shepard himself. All of this happening in the first few minutes of the game.

Shepard is revived two years later, having been put back together and brought back to life by the organization Cerberus, led by a mysterious person known only as the Illusive Man. He brings bask Shepard and tasks him with discovering the mystery behind the Collector threat and their link to the Reapers. Thus begins the commanders mission to rally together a strong team to complete this suicide mission.

The plot has its cliche moments and a few holes here and there, but for the most part it’s pretty solid and very engaging. Several new characters are introduced that make very welcome additions to the series and more of the galaxy is opened up, letting you explore interesting new cities and locations. If you choose to import a character from the original game you will see some of the choices you made have had an impact on the universe, but for the most part these are minor, resulting in a short conversation or an in-game E-mail. It really isn’t as interesting as most people thought it would be.

The gameplay mechanics have improved a lot since Mass Effect. The gunplay feels tighter and more like a third person shooter. It no longer has that disconnected feeling that existed in the first. Character abilities also seem improved, a lot of them actually being noticeably useful. The cover system, which is similar to Gears if War, doesn’t feel as good as it could, however. Getting from cover to cover can be difficult and accidentally sticking to cover when you don’t mean to can get annoying, but it doesn’t really happen so often.

With the game shifting more over to action elements it loses some of its RPG elements. Your inventory is essentially gone. You will no longer find tons of different weapons and armor lying about. There is actually only a handful of guns in the game, none of which gave visible stats which makes it difficult when trying to figure out which gun is superior. You can buy different pieces if armor to switch around how you look and and slight bonuses, but there aren’t different sets if armor to acquire, unless you count pre-order and collector edition content. Most people find these things to be positive, claiming the inventory system in the original game was horrible. I slightly agree, but why choose to streamline a feature down to non-existence instead of just fixing it and making it better?

Several people, including myself, will be glad to hear that traversing planets in the Mako is a thing if the past. However what replaces it isn’t any better. In order to find resources in the game, which are very important for upgrades, you have to scan planets. This involves dragging a slow-moving reticule around a planet until a graph spikes, indicating the presence of a needed mineral. The task quickly grows tedious and you’ll find yourself dreading the prospect when your resources run low.

The games visuals are pretty nice. Doesn’t seem like much improvement over the first, but everything is pleasing to look at and rarely are you caught off guard by a hideous character model. Being a Bioware game it features a large amount of voice work, which is quality as usual. Unfortunately the music doesn’t seem too different. Maybe its just me, but a lot of it sounds just Like the music in its predecessor. Not that its necessarily bad, but I get kind of sick of listening to a lot of it.

As my mission ended and the credits rolled I found myself satisfied. Mass Effect 2 had been a fun and exciting trip while it lasted, which was around 42 hours for me. I’d highly recommend it.

We give Mass Effect 2 a 4 out of 5.
ME2 vastly improves upon its predecessor in most areas, but is not without its flaws.

To view our scoring system please visit our reviews page.

Stargate Resistance, a shooter being made by the now (probably) canned Stargate MMO developers, is releasing on the 10th of this month.  This weekend was their big “preview weekend” allowing players to gain access to the game and give it a try.  Obviously as a SG fan there was no way that I would pass this one up.  I downloaded the client, got it all installed, and jumped in hoping that the “first Stargate PC shooter ever to come to market” would be a great one.

Unfortunately I wish I had resisted.  I take no pleasure in speaking poorly about this title out of respect for its namesake.  The game feels like a mediocre mod for Half-life.  The only word that can describe how it feels is ‘wonky’.  The graphics are just alright and the maps, while not terrible, were pretty uninspired for what I would expect in a Stargate game.  The sounds were pretty bad and, again, like you’d expect from a mod.   The front-end, such as the menu system and UI, and presentation of the gameare really under par and do not reflect a polished product coming to market.  There are balance issues with classes like the Ashrak and its nearly unstoppable stealth sprinting and knifing.  As a Goa’uld I walked up to a SG-1 infantry soldier and used my hand device on him.  He pops two shots on me with his pistol and I’m dead.  Not. Canon. At. All.

I do like the Stargate feel.  Deja vu.  Seeing the Jaffa and their staff weapons, the SG uniforms, the P90’s, the Goa’uld, and many other SG related things was all a real pleasure.  However, like Star Trek Online, my love for an IP is not enough to keep me playing when the game itself just isn’t up to snuff.  The sad part is that I can tell this would have made a good MMO.  Perhaps the wonky feel comes from translating a MMO to a FPS.  The scale of Stargate is not being represented in this game, or at least not in the preview.  I want big maps, vehicles, and big battles like something in BF2142 or even BF2.  The IP is capable of supporting that type of gameplay tenfold.   My advice for them is to take it further and do more with the game.

Maybe this game will earn them the money they need to continue with Stargate World.  If so, I regret that I’ll be benefiting at the expense of others but I can’t deny that part of me hopes it all works out for them and they continue with the game that should have been made instead of plan B.

Being the sequel to one of my all time favorite console games is a blessing and a curse.  On one hand I’m already excited about the game and know that I like the general idea, and on the other hand I’m expecting it to be as good as or live up to its predecessor.   We finished playing through the Campaign on Contractor (the hardest difficult) yesterday with mixed feelings.  Army of Two had a great story that was driving the game the whole way through.  The original established these two characters as best friends and gave us an understanding of why we are doing the things the game is having us do.  The 40th Day, however, goes in a different direction.

It appears to be all about the choices you make this time around.  As you progress through the levels, Rios and Salem are presented with scenarios where they can save hostages, kill hostages, or simply be indifferent and just go in guns blazing.  You’re also presented with opportunities to kill enemies or simply restrain them.  These choices give you +/- morality and have consequences — many are played out in comic book-like cutscenes to show what happens in the future.  Choosing to save someone might mean they give you access to their weapons locker or it may mean that you give up weapons in order to save them.  These choices you make are presented on-screen in the form of “press A to tie down or B to shoot” or in some cases simply by your actions.   Keeping with choices, Rios and Salem have a friendship status to watch.  Shooting your buddy too many times or being stingy with the nugs might spell disaster for you at the end of the game when you’re wanting certain achievements.

Tie down enemies to get a bonus to your morality

The actual gameplay in The 40th Day does not disappoint.  Guns feel great and can be customized with all the great Army of Two goodies like better scopes and mixed parts.  There are plenty of opportunities to play with the aggro mechanics and utilize the new HUD inside the masks for target marking.  Temporary weapons picked up from the dead, a new cover mechanic, and decent AI make the game feel natural.   We would have liked to see more back-to-back, coop snipe, partner moves, and other coop elements though.  Throughout the game you’ll encounter several amazing stand-offs and big gun fights but the game lacks the degree of cooperative play that made the original so unique among the competition.

Storytelling is what really dragged the game down a few pegs for us.  It was never quite clear what was going on.  You start the game in China on what seems to be a standard mission given to your private military contracting company (TWO).  Suddenly the city starts to explode all around you.  Uhh..how did that happen? Surely planting two beacons couldn’t hvae done all of that.  Something much bigger is going on.  Ultimately you’ll piece together that another PMC is wreaking havoc on the city and there’s some big master mind behind it all.  I’d warn you about spoilers but this doesn’t really spoil anything at all… it’s really that generic.  Ultimately it appears that the developers wanted this to be more about what happens to two people trying to survive in a situation like this and the choices they make rather than giving you a fleshed our narrative.  Toss in the ending, which has been extremely controversial among fans, and you’re sure to walk away muttering “WTF was that about…”

The atmosphere in the game changed a great deal in this sequel.  The original was very lighthearted and full of comic appeal.  Salem and Rios did a lot more talking in the original and would hassle each other more.  The 40th Day has taken a much more serious tone. The banter and sarcasm that filled the first game is missing almost entirely.   There are still a few great moments such as Rios mentioning a time he violated a panda, but we miss having those moments multiple times in every level.

Army of Two: The 40th Day may not have advanced the story at all but it’s still the same Army of Two goodness (minus a few needed coop moments and humor).  You’ll spend tons of time customizing your guns, shooting bad guys in a game that has nailed the gun fighting mechanics, and enjoying a game that still does coop better than anyone else.

We give Army of Two: The 40th Day a 3.5 out of 5.
The level of storytelling and coop mechanics were simply not on par with its predecessor and these things greatly overshadowed any minor improvements made to the gameplay.

To view our scoring system please visit our reviews page.

Global Agenda is not a MMO despite the enormous marketing push to make out out to be one.  There are some RPG elements within the game, but anyone who tells you that this is a MMO is either confused or lying to you outright.  I have been playing since Alpha and would like to share my thoughts on the game.

Pros

• Fundamentals are there.
• Combat works and feels fun.
• Teamwork and Strategy puts you leagues above the rest.
• There is always action going on and something to do.

Cons

• Lobby Style Multiplayer – Seems to serve no purpose other than to provide an illusion.
• Massively Instanced – Everything you do, everywhere you go, it’s all instanced.  Nothing is connected – NOTHING.
• Small “battleground” like maps comprise the majority of PvP.
• Repetitive and uninspired PvE – Killing bots on maps that all look the same.  Harder just means the bots do more damage.
• Lack of depth to personal achievement and progression – If they want it to be about persistence with RPG elements, this needs to be fixed.
• Crafting has no depth to the point that it should just be removed.
• Conflict zones are restricted until its time to instance into them for your 10v10 fights – This persistent struggle is nothing more than a picture you look at when you hit the Y key.  There’s no attachment to the conflict.  It’s get in, skirmish, get out and you’re done.

There simply isn’t enough to the game as it stands right now.  The scope of the game is severely damaged by the abundance of instancing creating a sense of playing WoW battlegrounds that feel like little games of Unreal Tournament 2003.  Without any exaggeration, this is the extent of gameplay: Log in, walk to a console, choose which type of game you want to play, enter the queue, go in an play a round, repeat.

Alliance vs. Alliance (AVA) is the game’s only saving grace.  This is a persistent conflict taking place in the “world”.  You’re supposed to perceive that all of this is going on around you, but the only way you even know about it is by hitting the Y key and seeing little hexagons blinking.  The mechanics of AvA are not difficult to grasp.  Your guild places a bid, you win the bid, you get the hex.  This becomes your little place in the world.  When it’s time to defend you form a group and wait to be whisked away to the instance to defend.  The same goes for attacking.  That’s really all there is to it, but at least it creates some sense of depth via competition between guilds and collections of guilds (alliances).

The game lacks that epic feeling.  Nothing about the game is epic in any way.  It’s sitting in between two really good ideas.  I find myself wondering what its trying to be.  Is it trying to be a MMO with persistent action or a Shooter game?  Is the goal to be about little quick instanced 12v12 skirmishes or something more?  If all that HiRez aspires to is the shooter game with different modes to play then they have accomplished that; simply replace a server select screen with a virtual lobby and you have Global Agenda.  However, I think there can be more and should be more based on how they’ve been advertising the game.

I was expecting Tribes meets Planetside with enormous zones representing a persistent conflict, or at least an attempt and creating this feeling. However, they’ve intentionally gone the opposite direction.  I’m okay with some of the game being instanced.  The instancing isn’t necessarily the part that bothers me as much as the way they implemented them.  Little arenas that are dressed up with warehouses and boxes are still arenas.  The instances could have been the size of Tribes maps with bases and air/ground vehicles.  There could have been big battlefields with objectives and all of this could have been connected via quick-travel shuttles to disguise the instancing.    This does not appear to be their goal though and the only reason they’ve given is that “it’s not fun for everyone”.

Go in expecting a deep game with epic battles, dynamic gameplay, achievement, and a successor to the gameplay of Planetside meets Tribes and you’ll be very, very disappointed.  Go in expecting a decent get in and get out action shooter game of Capture the point that you can play with your buddies against others in some steep competition and you’ll be satisfied.  Where the game goes from there is entirely up to HiRez and the mark they want to leave on the industry.  At this point the game they’re making seems fairly forgettable.

I was teased by Graev a lot this year with lines like “Keen, you’ve only played like 5 games this year!”.  I didn’t think it was really true until I sat down to write this post… I’ve played, and by played I mean more than just poked at it, only a few games.  Out of those games, I can think of only a couple that I would consider truly a “favorite” of the year.  A post going up in a few days will address my gaming regrets this year and I can tell you now it will have more “I wish I played this” than “I wish I hadn’t played this”.  I have some New Years resolutions that will hopefully remedy this year’s problem.  More on those later.

Let’s get to the games!  My favorite games of 2009:

What a fun little game!  Torchlight is one of those games that you can play for an hour one week, not touch it for a month, and then come back to and play an hour and have just as much fun.  While it’s not quite Diablo, it’s a bundle of dungeon-crawling hack’n slash crammed into a $20 price tag.  ($4.99 or something crazy like that today on Steam btw.)  I enjoy the graphics and the atmosphere of each dungeon.   I like the feel of each class but wish there were more to choose from.  I keep waiting for them to announce an expansion or a part two because I want the game to expand out beyond just the one town.

Of course this one is on my list.  The highly controversial Modern Warfare 2 is probably my overall favorite game of 2009.  I absolutely loved the single player experience.  That’s what I think of it:  an experience rather than a game.  The game felt like I was being carried through an experience and the story, although rather convoluted at times, was unfolding around me.   I can’t wait for the next game in the series.

The Multiplayer is where most people take issue.  No dedicated servers is inexcusable.  The IWnet matching system works but it is inferior in every way to a dedicated server model.  Cheating is at times rampant.  The maps are a mixed bag of decent and terrible.  Yet, amidst these horrendous problems, I really enjoy playing.  I love the weapons and there’s just something tremendously fun about how it plays.  It’s so dang polished.   MW2 is definitely on another level.  It’s a step above all the other “modern” shooters we currently have out there.  Hopefully we’ll either see a crack for dedicated servers or IW will get some sense knocked into them.

I enjoy how my friends and I have been able to play together.  This year hasn’t been a good one for community building games and I was worried that we would fall away from each other with nothing to play.  MW2 came to the rescue and actually introduced me to a few new people that I can now consider my friends.

Continue reading ‘more’ for the rest of my favorite games of 2009. (more…)

I still do not like what Valve did with the whole L4D thing, but today I gave in and got Left 4 Dead 2.   It took getting it as a gift though and only if it came through STEAM at a discounted rate during this big sale.  Yes, I’m that stubborn.   As I expected, L4D2 is what the original should have been.  The biggest improvement comes in the number of weapons and the level designs.   It’s great having more options for grenade-like weapons.  Melee weapons are also fun and actually useful.   The first few campaigns are still dark and I like how they feel much more open.

The new special zombies are also a welcome addition.  Playing in vs. mode as a Spitter or a Jockey (especially a Jockey) has me laughing constantly.  There was one match where I was playing a Jockey and grabbed the last guy on the group while the survivors were traversing the roller coaster.  I grabbed him and ran him backwards and his friends didn’t even notice.  Grabbing people and running them off ledges or into witches or a waiting Boomer gives immense pleasure.

Playing online is a mixed bag. Some games are good (ones played mostly with friends or entirely with friends) but ones with pub’s are… mostly horrible.  The community is beginning to resemble DotA.  People rage quit like crazy in this game!  I went to the forums and was actually shocked to see that it was a wide spread problem and not just one that I am being sensitive to.  There’s a very different feel from the TF2 or even MW communities.  This can be traced right to the size of the servers and the matchmaking.  I don’t like the matching system L4D uses at all.  I enabled my console and opened the server list (openserverbrowser) to get around it.  That doesn’t stop the problem of seeing 4/4 and 8/8 servers.  I saw two that were 20/20 and I want to try them out tomorrow to see how people have managed to expand the player limit.

Overall, the game is an improvement over the first.  There is already more content announced where the L4D2 people will meet up and cross paths with the L4D cast.  It should be fun as long as I can continue playing with friends and Graev.  As soon as the people I know stop playing I probably won’t touch the game.