Long time no post, I could blame my computer having broken down a bit and I just recently got it fixed, but I do have a laptop as well, so it's no valid excuse.
Anyhow, I'm back in business again, with my gaming rig all patched up with some new and hopefully more reliable hardware.
After having installed all drivers and such for my new mainboard, I decided to scavenge the news on Steam to see if there were any interesting discount offers or upcoming, fresh titles. While peeking around, I took notice of an action FPS called ARMA II, whose page on the store had been decorated with the line "...one of the most ambitious videogames ever made.", appearently borrowed directly off of an article on Eurogamer. It seemed promising at first sight, as would any game with that braggy review tagline, lest it would've been a game out of EA's many sports series, then I'd just take it as being the very peak of sarcasm mountain.
I decided I'd give the demo a try, since treading the sands in Far Cry 2 was getting a bit boring (I'm at no more than 65%, and I've been playing it for a total of nearly 22 hours!)
The first thing that struck me about the game (prior to playing it) was the double roman numerals at the end of its title. Where the hell is the first game? How come I've heard nothing of it?
Obviously, the sequel's getting a bit more publicity since it's distributed through Steam and all.
So, after waiting for the two gigabytes or so to get ready, I fired the game up.
First impression was a bit awkward. Usual corporate logo's, ESRB/PEGI-rating flashes by. Then there's a bunch of screenshots out of nowhere, or rather collage of shots that you usually see at the end of a demo. Their appearance didn't seem to serve any concrete purpose, thankfully one could skip over them.
So, finally at the menu and having adjusted graphics settings and resolution to my liking (which was painless and quick, so a plus there), I decided to go for the boot camp first and see if there were any unusual controls that needed to be mastered before going into war.
It seemed a bit more complex than your average FPS, not just complex as in having leaning sideways and prone position available, there were several courses used for training, amongst those were an obstacle course (looked more kindergarten than military to me), a shooting range, medical training area and so on, so forth.
It didn't end there, though. There were several levels for the whole training segment of the game as well, of which I only tried another one (after having fired a bullet into my fellow soldier in lack of proper instructions on how to lift him as I was told to do in the boot camp level.)
I tried parachuting as well, which didn't go very well at first. I landed a fair 300 metres from my designated landing zone. So, deciding it wasn't good enough, I had another go. This time though, I could actually control myself while I was drifting down with the chute out, and I made a perfect landing right on the spot. During my first try, I just fell straight down from where I had first released my big white blanket. I don't know if it was the mouse's signal not reaching to the receiver properly or if it was a bug in the game, though.
While checking the controls for the game, I was startled to see what was probably enough lines to fill at least four sheets of paper. It seemed that though the controls for operating vehicles and such were similar to the ordinary controls, they had all been listed seperately.
After the parachute episode, I decided to just get to the real deal. So far, the game hadn't really impressed me much. Aside from somewhat neat visuals, my experience thus far had not been living up to the review tagline. Movement is a bit jerky, and the controls seem somewhat unresponsive. While I ducked to get some ammo for my rifle, I went through the ammo box instead of sitting beside it like I did with the other interactive boxes before it. Another concern of mine is the terrible voice acting. Though not all of them were terrible, the general quality was poor, in particular a pre-pubertal comrade sitting with me in the helicopter. It kind of kills the feel to hear an assumed macho gunman sounding like a twelve year old.
One of the game's major flaws; the motion blur. Saying that the effect is overused is an understatement, it's more than that, it's horrible. It's a nice effect if used properly, much like another part of the shader family, bloom. If used too much, it kills the effect's ability to enhance the feel of added realism in the game.
Still, I had decided to go with my fellow boys/men into the heat of battle, with added hard rock ambience music to further kill the mood. Don't get me wrong, I love hard rock, but when it's used in a commercial title in a similar manner that it's used by WoW-nerds for their horrible shit videos, it doesn't impress me. Anyhow, this mission was the games last chance to catch my interest, and it failed.
Why so quickly, you might ask? Well, after getting out of the helicopter, shooting a few rounds, then and running up to some wooden fence to take cover, I received one bullet in the gut and was already down for the count, panting and moaning for a medic to help. This was on regular difficulty, with two higher difficulties available than the one I played on. One shot, down, regular difficulty. No thanks, mr. Game, I won't put up with this if it's just the start of the very first mission. ARMA II had been given enough chances already, so I removed the demo from my hard drive again. Bless the demo's, it spared me the possible angst of having paid for this shit.
Ah well, what do I know, perhaps I'm just too dumb for it. Perhaps I'm too dumb to adjust myself to jerky movement and 'realistic' damage limits. Hopefully, the final release is a bit more polished. All negative comments aside, it does show a bit of promise and, as mentioned, a lot of ambition. It could very well have become one of the better games this summer, but I'm disappointed to say that it probably isn't.
That's all for ARMA II and this blogpost, I'm afraid. Next post shouldn't take as long, as there's a lot of gaming for me to catch up with, having been unable to use my precious gaming rig for the past five weeks or so.
Until next time!
/Marcus out.
2009-07-04
2009-03-11
Don't F.E.A.R. the Reaper
Welcome back to the blog, myself. Why, thank you, myself!
And welcome to the readers, welcome to another post about gaming and whatever else comes to my mind (not a whole lot else, I must say.)
As you probably get from the obvious reference in the title, this post's gonna be about F.E.A.R. 2, which I recently got a hold of and played through pretty soon after. If I say I'm a usually slow gamer when it comes to finishing them and at the same time mention that I had finished Monolith's most recent bloodfest within two weeks after I got it, you can guess that it's pretty short. It's not rare that a lot of big titles are lacking in length these days, still it's better to end the fun while it's still fun and not have it end with the player loudly shouting in joy that it's finally over.
Anyhow, let's skip on back to the topic. F.E.A.R. 2 : Project Origin is the true sequel to the 2005 title F.E.A.R., which gained wide attention and praise for its intense and fast action, its shiny, sexy graphics and the über amount of gore and blood. Since then the hit FPS has received two expansions, Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate, of which neither I've actually played. From what I've heard, they're pretty much the same as the original game, save for a few new weapons and new levels, of course.
F.E.A.R. 2 differs a lot more from its origin than the expansions seemed to. You no longer play as the anonymous 'point man' from the first installment, instead you play as (the awfully quite) Michael Becket, who's part of a special ops team sent out to find Genevieve Aristide before the Armachan black ops kill her (she's seen too much, basically.) It proves a bit trickier than expected, but your team deals with it nice and smooth. Soon after having retrieved Aristide, the event from the ending in F.E.A.R. occurs. The majority of the remainder of the game takes place in the ruins left behind by the operation at the Armacham facility and that's when the story really takes off.
The game engine has had a pretty nice overhaul, showcasing some very interesting visual effects such as the more common motion blur effects as well as some new ghost effects. Monolith have also become better at using the physics engine to produce some eerie atmospherical effects.
The enemies are pretty much the same as they are in F.E.A.R. You've got the usual cop-like-dressed forces that try to stop everyone who's seen anything related to Armacham's experiments and, of course, the replicated soldiers. The gameplay has been expanded with the addition of the occasional (and actually not-so-annoying) quick time events and a bad-ass power armor that you get into every now and then and literally blow the shit out of everything in sight.
Overall, I liked the game and found it a worthy addition to the F.E.A.R.-universe. It had the elements that I liked about its predecessor and added some nifty little details and things to enhance what was feeling a bit aged in the original in comparsion to today's standards. Though, it was unfortunately rather short and it wasn't exactly as spectacular graphically as the first one was when it came, not that I think graphics matter much though, but you get the picture. One thing that comes to mind that I thought would've been improved was the shadows. It becomes more common that games use soft shadows instead of the hard-edged, unfiltered stencil shadows, which F.E.A.R. 2 still uses, but it's not exactly a huge atmosphere-killer.
I'd recommand any fan of the first game to go and grab this worthy sequel, despite its lack of length and mere surface depth in terms of the storyline and how it's told. It's a fun and bloody action shooter with a cool gameplay twist (the slo-mo effect/reflex implant) and an interesting continuation to its elder sibling. For those who haven't tried the first one out either, I'd recommend getting F.E.A.R. 2's collector's edition. Not only do you get the sequel in a fancy case, you also get the first game as a bonus. Yay!
Well, I guess that's all for now. Sorry I kept it strictly to the review, but I'm way too unfocused to type some random rambling right now. Stay tuned till next month or so, for another oh-so-exciting (sarcasm much?) addition to the blog. Thanks for reading!
Until next time...
/Marcus out.
And welcome to the readers, welcome to another post about gaming and whatever else comes to my mind (not a whole lot else, I must say.)
As you probably get from the obvious reference in the title, this post's gonna be about F.E.A.R. 2, which I recently got a hold of and played through pretty soon after. If I say I'm a usually slow gamer when it comes to finishing them and at the same time mention that I had finished Monolith's most recent bloodfest within two weeks after I got it, you can guess that it's pretty short. It's not rare that a lot of big titles are lacking in length these days, still it's better to end the fun while it's still fun and not have it end with the player loudly shouting in joy that it's finally over.
Anyhow, let's skip on back to the topic. F.E.A.R. 2 : Project Origin is the true sequel to the 2005 title F.E.A.R., which gained wide attention and praise for its intense and fast action, its shiny, sexy graphics and the über amount of gore and blood. Since then the hit FPS has received two expansions, Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate, of which neither I've actually played. From what I've heard, they're pretty much the same as the original game, save for a few new weapons and new levels, of course.
F.E.A.R. 2 differs a lot more from its origin than the expansions seemed to. You no longer play as the anonymous 'point man' from the first installment, instead you play as (the awfully quite) Michael Becket, who's part of a special ops team sent out to find Genevieve Aristide before the Armachan black ops kill her (she's seen too much, basically.) It proves a bit trickier than expected, but your team deals with it nice and smooth. Soon after having retrieved Aristide, the event from the ending in F.E.A.R. occurs. The majority of the remainder of the game takes place in the ruins left behind by the operation at the Armacham facility and that's when the story really takes off.
The game engine has had a pretty nice overhaul, showcasing some very interesting visual effects such as the more common motion blur effects as well as some new ghost effects. Monolith have also become better at using the physics engine to produce some eerie atmospherical effects.
The enemies are pretty much the same as they are in F.E.A.R. You've got the usual cop-like-dressed forces that try to stop everyone who's seen anything related to Armacham's experiments and, of course, the replicated soldiers. The gameplay has been expanded with the addition of the occasional (and actually not-so-annoying) quick time events and a bad-ass power armor that you get into every now and then and literally blow the shit out of everything in sight.
Overall, I liked the game and found it a worthy addition to the F.E.A.R.-universe. It had the elements that I liked about its predecessor and added some nifty little details and things to enhance what was feeling a bit aged in the original in comparsion to today's standards. Though, it was unfortunately rather short and it wasn't exactly as spectacular graphically as the first one was when it came, not that I think graphics matter much though, but you get the picture. One thing that comes to mind that I thought would've been improved was the shadows. It becomes more common that games use soft shadows instead of the hard-edged, unfiltered stencil shadows, which F.E.A.R. 2 still uses, but it's not exactly a huge atmosphere-killer.
I'd recommand any fan of the first game to go and grab this worthy sequel, despite its lack of length and mere surface depth in terms of the storyline and how it's told. It's a fun and bloody action shooter with a cool gameplay twist (the slo-mo effect/reflex implant) and an interesting continuation to its elder sibling. For those who haven't tried the first one out either, I'd recommend getting F.E.A.R. 2's collector's edition. Not only do you get the sequel in a fancy case, you also get the first game as a bonus. Yay!
Well, I guess that's all for now. Sorry I kept it strictly to the review, but I'm way too unfocused to type some random rambling right now. Stay tuned till next month or so, for another oh-so-exciting (sarcasm much?) addition to the blog. Thanks for reading!
Until next time...
/Marcus out.
2009-02-16
The Dead Will Walk the Earth
If anyone one of you frequents the main page of the Steam store, you'll probably have noticed that they had a weekend (now extended til' tuesday) sale on Left 4 Dead, the zombie outbreak/survival/shootfest of the century. If not for all time, there haven't been too many zombie shooter games before that I know of.
I decided that this would be the time to take the full version out for a spin, and I definetly don't regret the purchase. Though I haven't even played the campaign online with friends yet, it's so worth the money. I tried co-op briefly at my brother's though, and it was great fun.
And it's actually sort of creepy, especially the witches. Somehow, I always manage to startle them, and they hunt me down and nearly beat the shit out of my ass. Fucking witches.
I also got ahold of FEAR 2. Hell yeah! Being the collectorist-whore that I am (whoa-hey, a new word!), I purchased the Limited Edition, of course. Comes in a nice, fancy steelbook case. And the game is great as well, of course. It hasn't managed to properly scare me yet, but the feeling of suspense and mystery is great. It's so well-made that it almost annoys me, in a good way, of course.
Ah well, that's all for now. I guess the next post will be in around next month. If I continue this monthly posting, I'm just two posts away from the blog's first anniversary. Not that anyone cares, but I just noticed.
Until next time; get smarter, game more!
P.S. Oh yeah, new logo design. Just temporary, but the color scheme is a bit more neutral to ye olde eyeballs now. Hope you like it!
/Marcus out.
I decided that this would be the time to take the full version out for a spin, and I definetly don't regret the purchase. Though I haven't even played the campaign online with friends yet, it's so worth the money. I tried co-op briefly at my brother's though, and it was great fun.
And it's actually sort of creepy, especially the witches. Somehow, I always manage to startle them, and they hunt me down and nearly beat the shit out of my ass. Fucking witches.
I also got ahold of FEAR 2. Hell yeah! Being the collectorist-whore that I am (whoa-hey, a new word!), I purchased the Limited Edition, of course. Comes in a nice, fancy steelbook case. And the game is great as well, of course. It hasn't managed to properly scare me yet, but the feeling of suspense and mystery is great. It's so well-made that it almost annoys me, in a good way, of course.
Ah well, that's all for now. I guess the next post will be in around next month. If I continue this monthly posting, I'm just two posts away from the blog's first anniversary. Not that anyone cares, but I just noticed.
Until next time; get smarter, game more!
P.S. Oh yeah, new logo design. Just temporary, but the color scheme is a bit more neutral to ye olde eyeballs now. Hope you like it!
/Marcus out.
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