Impressions,Xbox 360 1 June 2010

Last week, Epic officially released the sixth title update for Gears of War 2. For those who don’t play, yes, it has taken this long for them to stop the game from being a complete mess, but I applaud the fact that they’ve stuck with it for this much time after release. When it came out over a year and a half ago, Gears of War 2’s multiplayer component was everything Gears of War 1 fans didn’t want – a completely different game. Not only did they change the overall speed of the multiplayer, but they also changed the gun mechanics so much that any tactic you learned in the original Gears of War didn’t work. The biggest of these problems was the shotgun, which at first shot directly into the ground if you blindfired it.

So is it fixed?

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 Impressions 1 April 2010

I am one of the few who really liked Prince of Persia 360/PS3. I don’t think anybody is arguing that the art style is one of the most beautiful we’ve ever seen in the industry, but more so that the game was boring and uninspired. I believe the complete opposite. I think the game was a great evolution from where it came from, even though it did abandon a lot of the older gimmicks. I was a huge fan of Sands of Time, liked Warrior Within, and got bored with Two Thrones. The revamped battle system in PoP next-gen was an amazing addition, only hindered by the reoccurring boss fights that really brought the game down. I thought the platforming was top-notch though, and I loved exploring the game world.

Now, I guess the mentality behind Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands was to scrap any advancements they made, and to try again to make those enhancements with the Sands of Time style. After playing the demo at PAX East I can say that they’ve failed and succeed at the same time.

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 Impressions 31 March 2010

Rememeber when I said that Red Dead Redemption was my game of the show (PAX East)?

I lied.

I know it’s like comparing apples and oranges to most people, but I view video games differently. I don’t care about how flashy they are, and I don’t care about how perfect the character animations are. The only thing I care about is how fun it is, and this is the single biggest reason I am usually disappointed with games that come out nowadays.

Well, having only seen the early videos of Bit Trip Runner, I had no real expectations. I played Bit Trip Beat and thought it was fun and it didn’t have enough songs, but I guess you get what you pay for. The only thing I knew about Runner was that it was a musical platformer. What that meant I had no idea, but man am I glad I found out.

The concept of the game is simple. Your character automatically moves from left to right, and you have to make him slide, kick, and jump to the beat of the chiptunes in the background. The levels are set up so that the obstacles are in sync with the beat, and the game’s controls are simple, but excellent. Holding your Wii controller sideways, the buttons are: 2 is jump, 1 is kick, and down on the d-pad is slide. It’s as easy as it sounds, but the entire game is all about timing… it’s just presented in a completely new way.

The demo levels I got to run through had different obstacles in the way and gave a good idea of what to expect in the final version. The first level involved having to kick through purple crystals to start out, while jumping gaps and sliding under UFO’s. This is all done while you collect gold bars, and collection all of the gold bars gives you a “retro” bonus level. In this, the graphics and sound get even more nostalgic than they were and the difficulty increases the farther you make it. It’s a neat little addition and made me feel like I HAD to get every gold bar. High scores really are an evil thing.

The second level was a bit harder, where I had to kick and jump in much quicker succession, all while sliding under block monsters from the background. This can get nerve-wracking, but the more you practice the better you get. Don’t worry, though, you’ll get plenty of practice. If you mess up at any point in the level, you are immediately sent back to the start. This can be rage inducing (as it is in any game), but here the levels are no longer then a minute and a half/two minutes, so it did nothing but make me determined to finish it.

While I was impressed with many games at the show, there wasn’t any except Bit Trip Runner that I went to play for a second time. It was easily the best game I played on a “fun” scale and once I was told there was over 50 levels… I was sold!

In the video below you’ll see me mess up a few times, but know that I did this on purpose to show the readers what happens if you do mess up. lol. Charis will agree!

 Impressions 29 March 2010

I really really love racing games.

Well, I should restate that as “most” racing games. I’m one of the few fans of Fatal Inertia that you’ll find, and I believe Diddy Kong Racing to be better than Mario Kart 64. I could keep going with this, but I’m sure my taste is already being questioned, so on to Split/Second I go.

Split/Second is racing game that focuses just as much on “combat” as the actual passing of other cars. I put combat in quotes, because this isn’t your typical weapon pick-up fest. Instead of having weapons built on the car, or picking them up as you go, you earn what are called “power-plays”. You earn them by racing well – passing others, drifting, avoiding crashes and so on. Power-plays allow you to alter the environment to crash other players. For example: I was in second place trailing just a bit behind first. I had saved up a power-play and we came to a bridge. An icon popped up for me to use it, and instantly the bridge above him exploded. It then fell on top of him and crashed him, as I had to swerve off to the side to avoid it falling on me. From what I saw, almost every power-play causes a crazy explosion. It also works against you if you are in first.

The computer gets the same benefit against you if you are winning. Things will explode around you, and it’s up to you to avoid them. Gas tanks will blow up and you’ll have to somehow keep control, and some power-plays will even alter the track, because they cause such massive damage. Any time you’ve even been bored in a racing game will not exist here. You constantly have be on your toes at all times. I’m actually surprised at how much fun everyone in line was having with this game. I didn’t witness anybody who didn’t like it, and most of them were walking away claiming they were going to buy it. It really is as intense as I tried to make it sound.

On top of these things, it looks amazing. I walked away very impressed with Split/Second, enough so that it’s now on my “buy” list.

 Impressions 27 March 2010

To put it simply, Red Dead Redemption is currently my game of the show. I haven’t had a chance to check out Split/Second, Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands, or Crackdown 2. However, I’m fairly confident Red Dead Redemption is going to keep this spot.

The purpose of the demo was the complete a mission that involved invading a mansion – well, after watching three people complete it, I decided that wasn’t my goal. Anybody who’s played a Rockstar developed game knows that most of the fun is had by messing around, so that’s what I did.

The first guy helping me wasn’t a huge fan of me not following instruction, so somebody else ended up coming over to talk to me about the game. I asked him simple questions about the controls so that I could fool around, and I’m glad I did. The first thing I did was call over my horse. After getting on the horse, I rode forward and ran into two other cowboys. I didn’t like the way they were riding their horses, so I took it upon myself to shoot them off promptly. After getting a quick chuckle from that, I think I legit laughed out loud the rest of the time. I had a lot of people staring at me, but it didn’t even matter. I had way too much fun.

First, I ran into another person. I decided to lasso him off his horse and drag him around the desert. This is hilarious, I’m telling you. Then, I jumped off my horse and chased him down, lassoing him again. I went to hog-tie him, but he got up and I got bored so I rode away. While I was riding, I was trying to randomly shoot a tiny bird out of the sky. This was pretty much impossible, until the guy at the booth told me that by clicking in the right stick it put the game in a slow-mo mode. During this slow-mo you aim at people or animals, and it targets the multiple body parts that you cross over. When you pull the trigger, you fire off quick rounds that hits those spots for quick kills.

After obliterating the bird into blood and feathers, I decided to find a bigger prey. I ended up shooting down a horse, followed by being given the option to skin it. During this scene, the main character takes out his knife and stabs it into the animal (you don’t see this), but you do see blood splatter all over the screen. You then receive a hide that you can sell. Awesome!

I walked away after the next part, because I was laughing too hard and it was embarrassing. After skinning the horse, there was a deer directly across from me. I decided to use the slow-mo on the legs and head to see the results. The result was the deer sling-shotting into a boulder in front of me and flipping onto it’s face in the dirt.

This game is going to be awesome.

 Impressions 27 March 2010

I didn’t get much time with Skate 3, so these quick impressions are going to be specific to anyone who played Skate 1/2.

From what I noticed, the game is almost identical. All of the controls are mostly unchanged, with tricks and running around still carried out by the same buttons and stick movements. The only change that I noticed directly was the camera. It somehow seemed worse than in Skate 2, and I’m not quite sure why. For those who don’t know, the camera in Skate is very low. It’s aimed more towards being behind the board/feet than your actual character himself. It could sometimes be a hindrance in the previous versions of Skate, but never enough that you couldn’t work around it.

In Skate 3, however, I had the camera do strange things on many occasions. The first was when I was on one of the smaller half-pipes. The camera got stuck on the side of the half-pipe and just ended up getting stuck so that I couldn’t see what was in front of me. It didn’t fix itself until I got out of the half-pipe (which wasn’t easy because I couldn’t see obviously). The second was after I went up a large hill. The camera stayed low like it normally does, but it was tilted up a bit so that I couldn’t see the ground. Messing with the sticks for my character didn’t reset it, and it took roughly 5-10 seconds for me to be able to see in front of me again.

I have a feeling these issues won’t be in the final product though.

As for the level design, it was well done. There were half-pipes and places to grind almost everywhere you could see, which was great. I didn’t get a vibe for the mission structure, because it wasn’t the focus of the demo. It would have been nice to see booth people helping those that had never played. The controls in Skate take a lot of practice, and watching people play that never had before just turned into them getting frustrated and leaving.

The Skate booth was also holding a contest to see who could get the most points from a jumping off a cliff crash. They were giving out PAX decks, which was pretty cool.

All in all, I’m not too excited for the game, though. I was a large fan of Skate 2, and the camera issues here turned me off to it. I’m sure a demo will come out around the game’s release, and hopefully it’ll fix these issues and interest me again.

 Impressions 27 March 2010

Splinter Cell has one of the bigger booths at PAX, with plenty of stations set up side by side so you can play through a co-op mission. To anyone familiar with Rainbow Six Vegas, the co-op mode is very familiar to the “Terrorist Hunt” game mode found there.

The concept is simple. Many enemies are patrolling an area, and it’s up to your and your teammate to get rid of them without getting caught. Staying in cover and low-key are musts, and you can even turn off lights and such to be more stealth-like in completing your mission. My biggest issue from the start is that the controls are not fine-tuned at all. The aiming and sensitivity are loose, and for a character who is supposed to be a government trained killing machine, I’d expect that he could have near perfect accuracy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, but it’s not a game breaker, so let’s move on.

Reviving is a big part of this mode. It works like most games with the feature, where you have to hold down a button to revive them, while they only have a pistol at their disposal to cover you. Aside from this, there isn’t much to say. The AI was typical; they just stood in place, popping out of cover every couple seconds for when you could take a shot. If you rushed, they tend to be more aggressive and will get a better position on you.

The demo was a bit short to get a complete feel for what the final product will be like, but it’s a decent start. These co-op modes can sometimes be the most fun that games like these have to offer, and I’m hoping this turns out the same. I’m just concerned the controls aren’t good enough to make this game great… but hopefully there are some customization options available to make it better later on.

 Impressions 27 March 2010

One thing I’ve learned at PAX is patience. Waiting in line is entirely too common, but I guess that’s the nature of having over 50,000 people in the same place.

One thing I don’t have patience for? Waiting in line for long periods of time to play a sub-par game.

Being a short demo, you go in blind to the story, aside from the booth assistant catching you up on your mission. The demo starts you in a car, and you have to go get revenge on “the greasers”. I knew the game was going to be bad directly after the first cutscene. With how far we are into this generation of gaming, some things are inexcusable. In this case, mouths barely move during dialogue and it kills the entire atmosphere of the game. After complaining for a few seconds, I was finally able to start shooting.

The combat works much like Gears of War, or any other shooter these days. The “A” button slides you into cover and also gets you back out of cover. Aiming is done with the left trigger, and zooming is done with the right stick… everything else is standard. The first thing I noticed was that the guns are inaccurate and shooting people doesn’t feel very rewarding. However, the worst thing is the speed when aiming. The moving side to side speed literally drops to almost zero. You have no freedom of movement whatsoever, and for me, it made the game almost unplayable.

I tried out a variety of the guns, and none of them made the game any better. From point blank shotgun bullets not connecting, or my bullets disappearing into invisible walls while the enemy was in cover, it just seemed like the game wasn’t ready to be shown.

If this is any indication of the final product, please skip this one. The last thing we need is more bad shooters.

 Impressions,PC,PS3,Xbox 360 1 February 2010

Now that the multi-player demo has been out for a few days, I’ve feel that I’ve given it enough playtime to get an overall feel for it and what’s to come.

Anybody expecting this game to be exactly like Bad Company 1 – it’s not. That’s not to say it doesn’t all feel familiar, though. The shooting mechanics feel roughly the same, maybe a little bit more accurate than before. Sniping feels easier, all grenade numbers have been lowered, and the classes have been changed. The “Specialist” class has been removed altogether, which is the biggest disappointment. This was my main class in the first version, so to have it gone completely was a little bit of a shock. Luckily, it seems like they’ve moved the guns over to the engineer class, but all of the class-specific things have changed, so it’s still not the same.

- The Assault class now has the ability to throw out ammo, which is a neat idea. You can’t just find ammo for your specific gun anymore. Either a teammate needs to drop some for you, or you need to pick up a kit from a dead body in the area. The other special ability for assault players is being able to put a grenade launcher on your gun. From the weapons and gadgets menu, it looks like you’ll be able to get smoke launchers and a shotgun attachment as well. This is the class to under-go the smallest of changes.

- The Engineer class is the biggest change. It’s mostly a combination of the Specialist and Demolition classes in the original Bad Company. The weapons available are the standard sub-machine guns you could find on the Specialist class, but all secondary abilities have been taken from the Demolition class. You start with a rocket launcher, but this is also where you’ll find the vehicle repair kits and anti-tank mines. It’s a strange change, but with the high customization Bad Company 2 offers it should even out in the end.

- The Medic class is mostly the Support class from the last game. High-capacity support weapons are what you’ll find here, and the ability to throw out med kits has stayed the same. The best new upgrade is their ability to revive teammates. Medics are outfitted with defibrillators, and having someone of this class on your team is going to be absolutely necessary.

- The last class is the Recon class. This is still the sniper class, with the only real change being that snipers are now outfitted with C4 (something that was done in BF 1943).

As far as gameplay goes, the Rush mode is still the same. There are two points that the attackers must destroy, and it’s the defenders job to stop them. The level in the demo has an excellent set-up, showcasing high and low points for each class. It looks great as well, with the wind blowing snow across the streets and explosions causing dust to rise into the air.

It’s still the same Bad Company gameplay, it’s all just been tweaked to feel like a different (better?) experience. Once all the unlocks start coming, it looks like it could get even better. The screens of stuff that is locked shows a high level of customization that seems like it could give Call of Duty a run for its money… good thing the gameplay already does.