Sunday, April 04, 2004
EA TOM
I have a confession to make: I not only played Everything or Nothing for more than 5 hours yesterday, but I really enjoyed it. I know, I’m a horrible person for ripping EA constantly, and then turning around and enjoying one of their games. But I can explain, really. First of all, Dan just happens to be the biggest EA whore I know. Every one of his games is made by that evil company – SSX, Lord of the Rings: Two Towers and Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. Well, that might be it, but I’m sure he thinks GTA and Ico were made by them as all. He’s like a baby goat sucking from the teat of Papa Goat. But he doesn’t realize how much better the milk tastes coming out of Mama Goat because he’s so brainwashed by his evil Papa.
Anyway, the other reason I played the game is it actually is quite fun. It’s not the most innovative game, no. In fact, it pretty much goes right along with the very reason I hate EA in the first place – they make good games and are able to sell them because of marketing and name recognition. Even the best of us (me) need to slink back to the lower depths of the video game industry and play what everyone else is playing and enjoying. Five hours later, I’m back to report on what I saw.
First of all, the game looks and feels like a bloody movie. This is both good and bad. It’s good if you love movies. It’s bad if you love games. I love games so all that story crap made me a little antsy. Thankfully, the cut scenes don’t last too long and I was able to play the game. What kind of game is it, you ask? Well, if you’re picturing a next generation Goldeneye, think again. The games only resemblance to that classic is the Bond character. Everything else is completely different.
First of all, for some reason, they decided to put the game in 3rd person. Hey guys, have you ever heard the expression If It Ain’t Broke? The game is fun despite the 3rd person, not because of it. Combat has been stripped of much skill and creativity, forcing the player to manually lock on to enemies with L1 before they can shoot them. This means most fights consist of finding cover behind a wall or box, hitting L1 to target an enemy, and then shooting him dead with R1. Repeat until room is empty. It works well enough most of the time, but the targeting system is a little finicky. Say you want to lock on to that enemy barreling towards you. Uh uh, Ain’t gonna happen unless EA says it can happen. Chances are you’ll lock on to a guy standing in the back of the room with the pistol halfway up his ass. And, it’s also a pain in the ass to get a head shot in combat. After you lock on you’re giving a little red target to move with the right stick. In theory you should be able to shoot them in any part. But, you’ll never have time to do this in the heat of combat. And, if you try to target, say, their feet when they’re hiding behind a wall, the hit won’t actually register. So the actual combat in the game is lacking.
But, the game kept my interest by having a ton of different levels. Most of the time you’re just on foot trying to do one objective or another, but sometimes they give you a car, which is always cool. Or a motorcycle, which can shoot fire from it’s sides. Or a tank, which seems cool but the control of it made me want to pull out my spleen. But, to make up for that lousy level they let you jump off a cliff, with no parachute, to save the hot chick. Now that’s fun.
The game keeps you going because you’re Bond and you never know what cool thing you’ll do next. We got this cool little hidden camera thing at one point. There’s this “tiny” spider, about a foot across, that conspicuously walks ahead of you to check out what the enemy situation is. Obviously, this giant metal spider doesn’t blend it too well, so if an enemy sees it they’ll either be pissed and start to stab you with their gun, or just smash the thing. Clearly, smashing the spider is a punishment too strong to speak rationally about. Q only gives you 4 of those things and they have to last the whole game!
Oh, there’s a 2 player co-op mode in this as well. You don’t get to play the solo missions; you get entirely new missions. These new levels try to make you work together, like one guy has to disarm a bomb while another shoots everyone in the room dead. Pretty cool. It’s a much more arcadey version of the 1 player mode. For instance, you’re not really punished at all by dying, you simply respawn at the beginning of the level. It takes away the challenge somewhat, but it is a cool mode.
One major complaint is the lack of a multiplayer mode right away. Apparently, you have to actually unlock the 4 player mode for some reason, and, after playing for 5 hours, it was still locked. Stupid jerks, who thought it was a good idea to lock the 4 player mode anyway?
So that’s it. I played an EA game, it wasn’t bad at all. That’s the best praise you’ll hear me say about an EA game… unless it’s Beetle Adventure Racing. I should probably write a whole post about that.
Anyway, the other reason I played the game is it actually is quite fun. It’s not the most innovative game, no. In fact, it pretty much goes right along with the very reason I hate EA in the first place – they make good games and are able to sell them because of marketing and name recognition. Even the best of us (me) need to slink back to the lower depths of the video game industry and play what everyone else is playing and enjoying. Five hours later, I’m back to report on what I saw.
First of all, the game looks and feels like a bloody movie. This is both good and bad. It’s good if you love movies. It’s bad if you love games. I love games so all that story crap made me a little antsy. Thankfully, the cut scenes don’t last too long and I was able to play the game. What kind of game is it, you ask? Well, if you’re picturing a next generation Goldeneye, think again. The games only resemblance to that classic is the Bond character. Everything else is completely different.
First of all, for some reason, they decided to put the game in 3rd person. Hey guys, have you ever heard the expression If It Ain’t Broke? The game is fun despite the 3rd person, not because of it. Combat has been stripped of much skill and creativity, forcing the player to manually lock on to enemies with L1 before they can shoot them. This means most fights consist of finding cover behind a wall or box, hitting L1 to target an enemy, and then shooting him dead with R1. Repeat until room is empty. It works well enough most of the time, but the targeting system is a little finicky. Say you want to lock on to that enemy barreling towards you. Uh uh, Ain’t gonna happen unless EA says it can happen. Chances are you’ll lock on to a guy standing in the back of the room with the pistol halfway up his ass. And, it’s also a pain in the ass to get a head shot in combat. After you lock on you’re giving a little red target to move with the right stick. In theory you should be able to shoot them in any part. But, you’ll never have time to do this in the heat of combat. And, if you try to target, say, their feet when they’re hiding behind a wall, the hit won’t actually register. So the actual combat in the game is lacking.
But, the game kept my interest by having a ton of different levels. Most of the time you’re just on foot trying to do one objective or another, but sometimes they give you a car, which is always cool. Or a motorcycle, which can shoot fire from it’s sides. Or a tank, which seems cool but the control of it made me want to pull out my spleen. But, to make up for that lousy level they let you jump off a cliff, with no parachute, to save the hot chick. Now that’s fun.
The game keeps you going because you’re Bond and you never know what cool thing you’ll do next. We got this cool little hidden camera thing at one point. There’s this “tiny” spider, about a foot across, that conspicuously walks ahead of you to check out what the enemy situation is. Obviously, this giant metal spider doesn’t blend it too well, so if an enemy sees it they’ll either be pissed and start to stab you with their gun, or just smash the thing. Clearly, smashing the spider is a punishment too strong to speak rationally about. Q only gives you 4 of those things and they have to last the whole game!
Oh, there’s a 2 player co-op mode in this as well. You don’t get to play the solo missions; you get entirely new missions. These new levels try to make you work together, like one guy has to disarm a bomb while another shoots everyone in the room dead. Pretty cool. It’s a much more arcadey version of the 1 player mode. For instance, you’re not really punished at all by dying, you simply respawn at the beginning of the level. It takes away the challenge somewhat, but it is a cool mode.
One major complaint is the lack of a multiplayer mode right away. Apparently, you have to actually unlock the 4 player mode for some reason, and, after playing for 5 hours, it was still locked. Stupid jerks, who thought it was a good idea to lock the 4 player mode anyway?
So that’s it. I played an EA game, it wasn’t bad at all. That’s the best praise you’ll hear me say about an EA game… unless it’s Beetle Adventure Racing. I should probably write a whole post about that.
// posted by Tom @ 11:55 PM 
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