Archive for March, 2008
So for the last weeks Audiosurf has made some heads turn around. As always I am late to the party so that it took me until yesterday that I finally bought the game… on Steam, where else? My buddy Phil called it an interactive equalizer. What you do is actually riding your music. You point the game to an MP3 you want to play and the racetrack is developed according to the song structure. Now I am really bad at explaining such things. So why don’t you just watch the video I made. The song is Immortal - My Kingdom Cold. The song misses the last 45 seconds but I was to lazy to merge the first 4GB movie file with the last bit.
Click here to see the video
By the way I am not creative enough to come up with the idea of those gameplay videos. All the credits go to fellow shacker Matt Burris with his blog on MattPlays.com.
A couple of days ago I fell for Shackhype and purchased Titan Quest Gold off of steam. You can’t do that much wrong for 12 Euros. It’s fun clone of Diablo. But I wrote this post actually only to test the video capabilities of this blog. Tell me what you think.
Click here for the video!
Almost two years after it’s release Episode 1 felt a little shallow. It was not bad but I could feel how Valve was thinking more about episodic content and digital distribution than the game itself. But my hopes were high for Episode 2. Fortunately, Valve did deliver and made Episode 2 a memorable experience.
The game starts off were Episode 1 left. The Citadel exploded and the shockwave hit the train I was on. The train crashed and Alyx and I are going on by foot to White Forest, where Eli Vance and the other scientists are waiting on us to deliver the information gathered in the Citadel to launch a rocket that shall destroy the portal that connects the world of the Combine with the earth.
The first minutes included the only minor annoyance of the game. Why in hell do I start without all the weapons I had at the end of Episode 1? From a gameplay perspective this is clear to me. But this is supposed to be episodic gaming, similar to TV series. So consistency from episode to episode is very important. I should start completely as I have left off in the episode before. Stripping you from all your gear without any explanation just destroys the illusion.
However, this thought lasted only for a couple of minutes as Episode 2 is so good over all. I critized Episode 1 for rehashing older content, throwing only known enemies against the player. Valve did better this time and used a new unit called Hunter to lay the tracks for the game as a hunter hurts Alyx badly. A Vortigaunt steps in to heal her. Since Alyx’ wound is too bad, he needs the help of other Vortigaunts and a certain extract. With my help Alyx can be rescued and the journey to White Forest can be finished.
The levels are very varied this time and have a perfect mix of shooting and puzzle solving. The bridge puzzle is fine example of physics enhancing the game experience. You’re tasked to retrieve a car that is standing on the other side of a bridge. To get there you have to cross a river of toxic waste. Once you are at the car, the bridge starts to crumble and break at certain points. The middle part of the bridge stands askew with the near end elevated. Just driving over the bridge is impossible now. So you have jump on the middle of the bridge, get the car wrecks there on the elevated side so that it all evens out and you can drive to the other end. To be honest, it took me a while to figure that out. But it was fun.
Still the main focus is on shooting and there are a lot of very challenging and rewarding skirmishes in the game. And obviously no annoying “the battery of my flashlight is low” parts. The hunters are hard to fight and close the gap between the normal grunts and zombies and enemies like the striders. I bitched about the final fight in Episode 1, this time it is hell of a ride against a lot of striders and hunters which I have to stop from destroying the rocket before launch.
Story wise Eposide 2 is much for fulfilling. But I don’t want to spoil anything here. Just so much: G-Man is back again and his absence from Episode 1 is explained and his role gets a little bit clearer. The ending is sad and a huge cliffhanger that makes me want to play Episode 3 as soon as possible. So Valve, would you kindly finish Episode 3 for me?
I mentioned it before, Mass Effect devours time. But I had no regret yet. I left the huge space station on my mission to fight the alien race Geth which is terrorizing the known universe. The first main quest led me to the planet Ferros. A human colony was attacked by the Geth and the goal was to find out what they were looking for. So in best RPG tradition a lot of talking and fighting had to be done. Again some short but rewarding side quests were included.
It turned out that a herbal life form was living on the planet that had the ability to control the minds of people. The goal of the Geth and Saren was to obtain it. The quest led me to fight the life form in the end because it took already the control of parts of the colony’s people. This was the first time that I wasn’t happy with the fighting system and the squad AI. In the boss fight I had to kill a lot of zombie type enemies in narrow rooms. The fight system though is too slow for fast indoor fights. This led to many frustrating moments. The squad AI was annoying at times, too, because the squad mates often shot each other and didn’t want to do a thing about it. It happened often that I entered a fight and my shields were down before the enemy made a shot at me.
But besides that the mission was fun. Before I started the next main quest, which is to find the daughter of the matriach that is helping Saren, I flew to some other planets to finish side quest. I am already 16 hours into the game and I feel I haven’t seen 10% of the game. Great!
See, when I read all those rave comments about Portal, they sounded suspicious to me. How could a small bonus game to a huge franchise be even better than the rest? I couldn’t believe the praise it got. But boy I was wrong. Initially I expected the gameplay to be the main factor. While it truly is new, a puzzle game in a first person shooter environment, it was the presentation that really struck me.
Usually, good puzzle games work because they are addictive in one way or the other. While the possbility of the portals is a very unique element, it became at least for me trivial to the end of the game. It took me 5 minutes to inherit the concept so that even the later levels didn’t pose any problems for me. But never had a puzzle game more charm like Portal.
Turrets softly whispering “No hard feelings” or “I don’t blame you” when you take them out makes you want to give them a hug. The remarks of the AI make you laugh often. The companion cube with the heart at it’s middle is just lovely. So much love in game that is essentially full of traps to kill you. A very interesting contrast. And somehow I had the feeling that the credit screen with the now famous Portal Song is a statement for nerd culture.
Hopefully Portal 2 will be a little more of a challenge. I love cake.
Mass Effect is the perfect game to lose a lot of time. After the initial mission the game really starts off on a huge space station called Citadel. So many people to talk to, a lot of side quests which are fun and rewarding. The pace and narration is spot on. I am over 10 hours into the game and have just left the station on my quest to fight the Geth.
I love the presentation of the game. Usually I get bored pretty fast with the dialog in RPGs. Not this time. I am talking to everyone I can talk to. The facial expressions and the voice over correspond perfectly. The fight system is great so far, not too easy but also not too hard. The only thing that frustrated me in the beginning was the lack of explanation on the upgrade and skill system. There should’ve been some in the manual for a game with so many possibilities. But that is just a minor flaw in a great game so far.
Remember how I told you that I took just a quick peek at HL2: Episode 1? I finished it already. I had some free time on Friday night, not enough time to dive into the vast world of Mass Effect, but just enough to have another look at EP1. And all of a sudden I saw the credits. What a short experience. That’s episodic gaming now, huh?
The game begins where the original HL2 left off and starts in the ruins outside of the citadel. After stopping that from happening, it is all about escaping City17 as the the combine leads the reactor to explode again. The problem is that Episode 1 isn’t new. The levels are mostly rehashed from the main game, the enemies are the same ase are the weapons and the gameplay elements. This would all be okay if it at least gives more hints on the story. But other than the information that humanity has more success at fighting the combine and the speach of the doctor no further hints are given. Which sucks. I didn’t like some of the levels, too. Especially when the game leads into old buildings and multi-storey car parks. Those are dark so you are running around in Doom 3 style holding your flashlight up all the time. This is just too oldschool for a game like HL2 that can do better.
The boss at the end of Episode 1 is also a little uninspired. You fight against a strider, one of the enemies that you fought a lot of times in the original HL2, in a train station and to effectively beat him you have to go through some sort of jump and run section to get to the other side of the station where ammunition for the rocket launcher is hidden. It is too easy for a boss fight. The game ends with you standing at the rear end of a train watching the citadel explode and the screen going all white.
For all the flaws Episode 1 has, it is still on a very high level, technically and artistically. It is also a game that has to be seen in context. it was an experiment on digital distribution. To see, if episodic content could be a concept to bring games in a shorter form directly to the player. So when the game came out this played into the valuation. This novelty has worn of today and leaves a good, but not extraordinay game. It is a solid 8/10 and Episode 2, which I will play in the coming days, will probably smooth the flaws out.