Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Call of the 360

It's funny, Call of Duty 2 was one of the most boring-looking games at E3. Every day I walked by the 360 section hoping to see something new (specifically PDZ) in it's place, only to see some faux-excited Microsoft rep playing through the level, pretending it was thrillsville while searching desperately for things to say about it that differentiated it whatsoever from other war games. And I have to say, it's a tricky sub-genre. EA really stepped it up (bear with me) with the first Medal of Honor in terms of presentation. It felt intense, it looked great and it sounded spectacular. There aren't really too many areas to innovate in when you're dealing with a strict recreation, but graphics, realism and AI can always be improved. It was nominal again for a number of years until the first Call of Duty, which threw more of everything into the mix. It wasn't the same step forward as the first MOH, but a step of any sort is always appreciated. Back to E3, things were looking lame. It certainly wasn't showing off the game, nevermind the system. So I'm quite pleased to say things seem to have dramatically improved since then. Maybe it was just the alpha kits, or maybe they just had to throw something together; no matter the case, things are looking wonderful now, and it's become the first war game I've ever looked forward to (well, besides Brothers in Arms, which I wasn't really excited about until I played it). Check it:



And watch this huge, fantastic video, which for some reason hasn't been officially released yet. If you want to get people pumped about the 360, Microsoft, you can start here.

P.S. Thanks to Gamespy for the pic.

The year is 1981

As Tim's majestic keyboard concerto wafts through the apartment, I finally decide to end my forty-six day long sabbatical from my dear site. Notice how I used the word sabbatical to shield me from the hurtful barbs my extended leave of absence could have conjured from my readers had they been aware of the true reason for the lack of updates. For you see, I haven't taken the time to express my opinions on all that is gaming because I haven't been partaking in my favorite pastime since I returned from L.A. almost two months ago. Now that the truth has come out how do I plan to rehabilitate my love for gaming and with it bring forth the random opinions and nonsensical rantings I am known for? I honestly have no idea, but I have a sneaking suspicion Nintendo will be behind it.

Aside from a few trips down memory lane kicking my poor roommate's rump in Freeway and Maze Craze, I have pretty much stayed away from console gaming in any capacity. For those salivating for some glimpse into my console gaming habits allow me to chronicle the butt whooping I administered in these simple but oh so delicious classics. Freeway is like Frogger except not quite as good. Oh, and you control a dog or a goat instead of a frog. And the river that Frogger calls home has been replaced by a rancid inner city street. Other than that it's the same freaking game. Gotta love old school, eh? The ridiculously simple goal is to coax your animal friend across the street without getting hit by cars. Iwata would be proud of this game - you don't even need a single button to play. Though I more than doubled Tim's score every time we played (pretty much... I assume he'll jump in and defend his Atari 2600 honor) I had a shocking advantage: I received no punishment for getting run over. I don't know how the Atari works since I never owned one (I didn't say it was my memory lane, just a memory lane), but apparently the second player is allowed to do just about anything he chooses and the game will simply turn the other cheek. While Tim was banished to the depths of the near side of the street when an out-of-control car flattened his fur-lined tookus I merely shrugged off the ton of American made steel and continued unharmed to what I can only imagine is some sort of doggy nirvana-land. Why else would an animal risk life and limb to cross a street unless there was a darn good reason for needing to get to that other side? I feel a bad chicken joke coming on so I should just end this already too long paragraph before I burn myself out and require another sabbatical.

Maze Craze, the last game I feel like talking about today, is not nearly as memorable as Freeway. I really should have started with Maze Craze and made my way into Freeway. Save the best for last, you know? Go out on top. Leave the audience wanting more. What's done is done, however, so I better make this the best darn Maze Craze right up G-Pinions has ever seen. Maze Craze looks like the place mat for a small child at a cheap roadside restaurant. The graphics are merely lines, which connect to form a rudimentary maze, and four different colored balls - two black and two white. You may think your rods and cones fell out but, trust me, that is not the case. This is actually a black and white game. I guess color wasn't quite the rage it currently is back when Maze Craze came out. I could picture Donna Reed playing this bad boy after spending twelve hours in the kitchen. Anyway, you just have to get to the end of a maze before one of the two evil balls touches you. Once again, the game requires neither an A nor B button to enjoy and every game takes less than thirty seconds to complete. It's no surprise there was a huge outbreak of Attention Deficit Disorder in the early 90s with games like this around.

Now that I've resumed updating G-Pinions maybe I'll actually start playing some games again. I just bought Conker: Live and Reloaded last week but have only played about an hour of it so far. I'll give you my opinion after I dive into it a little bit more. I also have a Nintendo DS now and one whole game to talk about. I bet you can't wait for that write-up. See you again in forty-six days!

Or...cyborg dinosaurs

Tycho was right, the new OXM demo disc is fairly impressive. I'm really not sure what to make of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat; I know that they delayed the game a year to add a single-player mode, but at this point why not just go 360, at least on Xbox? It feels like a tech demo for a next-gen game anyways - the draw distance and textures are very impressive, especially while hanging out the side of a helicopter, but the animation for pretty much everything throws off the realism and preciseness of firefights. It's all a bit chaotic too, even with the simple goal of capturing various points of a map and holding them. I guess I can appreciate the relative balance they've achieved between the different vehicles you can commandeer and classes you can play as, but it just makes me yearn for the simpler pleasures of eight vs. eight on foot Socom battles.

Everyone keeps trying to go bigger with online games (see: Battlefield, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down and PDZ), but I think the experience stands to lose a lot once you get past sixteen people. Feeling like you're a small part of a much larger war is always cool, but not when it diminishes the importance of the individual. You should be a small part, but you should also be the hero; you're rarely just a bystander in Halo - you're always a threat, and a single person or action can change the flow of a game. Those things can be true of Battlefield, but by and large you're not much of a threat unless co-operating fully with your team, with a plan on your hands. Most of the time you're just barreling towards a singular point, hoping you don't get shot or shrapnelled in the back for the eighth time in a row. Or maybe I'm just missing the beauty of it.

The Pirates! demo, though nothing more than a very simple boat battle, really makes me want to pick up the final game. I loved the original, and while it hasn't really changed in a decade it's still wonderfully charming and fun. Sailing about with no particular goal in mind was probably the first non-linear game experience I ever had, and from what I understand this new one maintains that open-endedness. And if there's one person I was to wander aimlessly, plunder and pick fights as, it's a Pirate.

As for Darkwatch, after playing three different demos I can officially say I'm not excited about the game. They do a lot of things right - the game looks great, massive floaty double-jumps are fun in an FPS, the environments are fairly destructible, and your vampiric powers are actually cool and useful. Coupled with what I understand to be partial cutscene nudity and horse riding (hopefully they're not one in the same), they theoretically have a good game on their hands. I have two big problems though - the enemies aren't fun, and the controls are badly mapped. Most of your opposition spawns right before your eyes, and keeps doing so until you've killed enough of them. They also do little beyond running right at you, a tactic that went out with Hitler. And when you've a vampire, a COWBOY vampire mind you, you don't want to be fighting zombies, you want to be fighting...samurai pirates, or some equally awesome amalgamation of badassery. And let's get something straight right here - Halo has one of the best control schemes ever, and it IS the standard for FPSes, like it or not. Snowblind gets this wrong too, which I've been playing. B is melee, X is reload, A is jump. Always. Why bother standardizing development with XNA when developers can't even stick to a simple control scheme that works? Clicking the left thumbstick in should not melee, ever. It doesn't feel natural, and it's hard to do when you're relying on it. Anyhow, back on track - there are lots of fun ingredients here, but the way they mix into the game doesn't flow as you'd hope for. I'd still love to review it if I can get my hands on a reviewable copy, but I'm afraid of how mediocre it's turning out. Unfortunate.

Oh, and there's a nice look at Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on the disc, which is currently my #1, I'd-kill-a-bag-of-puppies-to-play-it-now 360 game. Dead Rising looks like a ton of fun too, even if it's little more than a tech demo for fitting a ton of things on screen (though zombies are a good medium to work in).

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