Mini Reviews
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Dr. kitteny berk
- Morbo
- Posts: 19676
- Joined: December 10th, 2004, 21:53
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Farcry 2
Quick review of everything but the game after 5-6 hours of play.
Graphics/Sound/Performance
Graphics are pretty good, not as shiny as crysis, but damn fine nonetheless, nothing has really bothered me so far, that's a good thing. 2xAA is enough at 1920x1200 (I've not tried any higher).
Sounds are special, seems like a lot of work has gone into them, really makes the atmosphere work.
Performance is fine on my fairly modest backup machine (E2180, 2GB ram, 8800GTX, 500gb HDD) at maximum settings, 2xAA, 1920x1200.
The Good
Sights, sounds, performance.
Running at someone with a machete and stabbing the crap out of them.
Weapons that jam.
The critically injured self repair animations.
Fire.
The Bad
No autosave, not so easy to implement in such an open game, but pretty required.
Sometimes one mission will half override a previous one, that needs completing for the new one to start, but no information telling you this.
The Miscellaneous
There's a lot of travel, mostly by car, which is broken up by checkpoints that shoot at you, you can usually ignore them though. still, that could get old fast for some people.
(Possibly) no way to look at info about current missions, It may have told me at the start, but if it did, I forgot.
So far it doesn't seem that open, lots of roads and a few open spaces, but I'm really not that far into the game, hopefully later on there'll be bigger open spaces like we've seen in some videos.
Vague endy kinda of bit.
I've not said much about the gameplay itself because it'll be difficult to get far without spoilers, but I'm enjoying it. a lot. even more than clear sky (and I'm a retarded drooling fanboy for that game)
There's a lot of missions in the game, it guides you along nicely, but obviously you can ignore a great deal of the missions and just fuck off to kill stuff.
It's hard to give this game any kind of rating, I suspect opinions will be divided on this one.
Quick review of everything but the game after 5-6 hours of play.
Graphics/Sound/Performance
Graphics are pretty good, not as shiny as crysis, but damn fine nonetheless, nothing has really bothered me so far, that's a good thing. 2xAA is enough at 1920x1200 (I've not tried any higher).
Sounds are special, seems like a lot of work has gone into them, really makes the atmosphere work.
Performance is fine on my fairly modest backup machine (E2180, 2GB ram, 8800GTX, 500gb HDD) at maximum settings, 2xAA, 1920x1200.
The Good
Sights, sounds, performance.
Running at someone with a machete and stabbing the crap out of them.
Weapons that jam.
The critically injured self repair animations.
Fire.
The Bad
No autosave, not so easy to implement in such an open game, but pretty required.
Sometimes one mission will half override a previous one, that needs completing for the new one to start, but no information telling you this.
The Miscellaneous
There's a lot of travel, mostly by car, which is broken up by checkpoints that shoot at you, you can usually ignore them though. still, that could get old fast for some people.
(Possibly) no way to look at info about current missions, It may have told me at the start, but if it did, I forgot.
So far it doesn't seem that open, lots of roads and a few open spaces, but I'm really not that far into the game, hopefully later on there'll be bigger open spaces like we've seen in some videos.
Vague endy kinda of bit.
I've not said much about the gameplay itself because it'll be difficult to get far without spoilers, but I'm enjoying it. a lot. even more than clear sky (and I'm a retarded drooling fanboy for that game)
There's a lot of missions in the game, it guides you along nicely, but obviously you can ignore a great deal of the missions and just fuck off to kill stuff.
It's hard to give this game any kind of rating, I suspect opinions will be divided on this one.
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HereComesPete
- Throbbing Cupcake
- Posts: 10249
- Joined: February 17th, 2007, 23:05
- Location: The maleboge
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FatherJack
- Site Owner
- Posts: 9597
- Joined: May 16th, 2005, 15:31
- Location: Coventry, UK
- Contact:
Brief review of this weeks games I have bought:
Far Cry 2 - PC
Nice-looking but not jaw-dropping. Bit lonely - it seems like it's outposts of people with nothing in-between - I was hoping to be like Bear Grylls and kill some wild animals for no reason. Fire is pretty, but makes the game crash if I get too carried away. The map/monocular thing is a bit clumsy, but the driving is way better than the first game (so a million times better than Crysis) but the view is a bit restricted in the jeeps.
Dead Space - PC
Can't remap the controls to my preference. The view is a rather nasty drunken-over-the-shoulder one and your character is drawn so large it's really hard to look around. I didn't play long enough to judge how scary the monsters and stuff are, because if I struggle to follow some people down a corridor and open a fucking door, I don't need shit jumping out on me. Graphically it looks quite nice, but they ruined it with spastic controls and your stupid fat immersion-breaking head covering up where you want to look.
Fable II - 360
Totally a remake of the first game*, but the setting is new and people like/dislike you in different increments with better visual indicators.
If you've watched the dev videos that've been on XBL for a while, there's a bunch of shit they put into the AI, particularly to do with NPCs falling in love with you that they said they couldn't do on the first one - maybe you'll notice it, but the first game did an ok job of fooling me.
The camera controls are a bit fiddly, but combat is fine. It does feel a little bit like 'follow the sparkly yellow line game', but you can deviate more as you open up the world.
While it seems like nothing massively new, I suspect it'll be like the first one and be more than the sum of its parts - I had thought I hadn't played the first one that much, but when I loaded up an old save game I discovered I'd bought all the houses and got married, so I must have put a few hours in.
*
Far Cry 2 - PC
Nice-looking but not jaw-dropping. Bit lonely - it seems like it's outposts of people with nothing in-between - I was hoping to be like Bear Grylls and kill some wild animals for no reason. Fire is pretty, but makes the game crash if I get too carried away. The map/monocular thing is a bit clumsy, but the driving is way better than the first game (so a million times better than Crysis) but the view is a bit restricted in the jeeps.
Dead Space - PC
Can't remap the controls to my preference. The view is a rather nasty drunken-over-the-shoulder one and your character is drawn so large it's really hard to look around. I didn't play long enough to judge how scary the monsters and stuff are, because if I struggle to follow some people down a corridor and open a fucking door, I don't need shit jumping out on me. Graphically it looks quite nice, but they ruined it with spastic controls and your stupid fat immersion-breaking head covering up where you want to look.
Fable II - 360
Totally a remake of the first game*, but the setting is new and people like/dislike you in different increments with better visual indicators.
If you've watched the dev videos that've been on XBL for a while, there's a bunch of shit they put into the AI, particularly to do with NPCs falling in love with you that they said they couldn't do on the first one - maybe you'll notice it, but the first game did an ok job of fooling me.
The camera controls are a bit fiddly, but combat is fine. It does feel a little bit like 'follow the sparkly yellow line game', but you can deviate more as you open up the world.
While it seems like nothing massively new, I suspect it'll be like the first one and be more than the sum of its parts - I had thought I hadn't played the first one that much, but when I loaded up an old save game I discovered I'd bought all the houses and got married, so I must have put a few hours in.
*
Spoiler:
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Anhamgrimmar
- Ninja Pirate
- Posts: 1517
- Joined: July 17th, 2005, 13:29
- Location: Saaaarfampton
FatherJack wrote: Dead Space - PC
Can't remap the controls to my preference. The view is a rather nasty drunken-over-the-shoulder one and your character is drawn so large it's really hard to look around. I didn't play long enough to judge how scary the monsters and stuff are, because if I struggle to follow some people down a corridor and open a fucking door, I don't need shit jumping out on me. Graphically it looks quite nice, but they ruined it with spastic controls and your stupid fat immersion-breaking head covering up where you want to look.
Dead Space
Do not play this game on PC, unless you have a xbox pad, cause the mouse controls can suck on occasion. Good game, very atmospheric, i'm only about 4hrs in, and i've alreasy had a couple of 'OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITARRRGHTAKETHATYOUMOTHER!' moments. especially as the bad guys seem to like sidle-ing up behindyou/on the other side of your big stupid head. The only clue they're there, is a slowly crecendo-ing (Is that even a real word?) musical cue. They don't attack until you (slowly) turn round. They just stand there.
Watching
Waiting.
Watching.
OH GOD ITS WATCHING ME HELP HELP HELP ARRRGH!
3/5 soiled pants so far, but i'm not far enough into it for a proper (mini) review. Its good. I do like the way there's no HUD as such, its all linked into the characters armoured suit. I don't like the slight lag on the mouse and keyboard, but i belive its fixable, or you can just use a xbox pad. which also makes sense, because the keybinds are all perfect for playing on a pad[/b]
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FatherJack
- Site Owner
- Posts: 9597
- Joined: May 16th, 2005, 15:31
- Location: Coventry, UK
- Contact:
Brief review of this week's games I have bought:
Fallout 3 - PC
Post-apocalyptic version of the US that got stuck in the 50s culturally, but advanced massively in technology - I haven't played the first two, but I just love that off-kilter setting. The SPECIAL system that defines your underlying stats (Strength etc) is familiar territory, while it's slightly more complex than the standard AD&D ability scores, I've seen (for example) the Luck attribute appear in quite a few JRPGs.
Mostly Oblivion with guns, but with a few significant differences - the biggest being the VATS combat system. This is an optional mode where you can freeze the action and auto-aim at a specific part of a monster, as many times as your Action Points allow. It goes all slo-mo cinematic and your proximity, line of sight, skills (and Luck) take over, with you hitting like it's a turn-based combat game - then it jumps back to real-time so you can dodge any retaliation while your APs regenerate. Non-VATS is just like a normal FPS, and the main reason the PC release shades the console ones, but it would be perfectly playable using only VATS. Since I didn't play the earlier incarnations, I'm gonna continue comparing it to Oblivion.
Other good changes are fully remappable keys (there's a line at the top of the readme about how to map the mouse), a nice range of toys to shoot at stuff, a much-simplified crafting interface and more variety in costumery.
Bad changes would be that each weapon needs very specific ammo, the weapons break very easily and you need identically-described weapons to repair existing ones, so inventory space gets used up pretty quickly. Also, the option to map skills or items to a number key is gone.
Another change is that all skills have to be bought at level-up, so while the enemies get tougher, you should theoretically be getting tougher yourself (rather than only leveling when you improved key class-stats) but you can no longer learn things like stealth simply by creeping around a lot.
What's not changed are instant-travel nodes on the map, the clumsy way the map, inventory and skills are on separate tabs within the same menu and you constantly need to switch between them, the same rather basic compass, characters and monsters seeming to pop out of nowhere and giving you a heart-attack, and the monster NPCs having AI like the red ghost in Pac Man.
Valkyria Chronicles - PS3
It seems like forever since I saw the first examples of this game's artwork. It's anime-style, all cell-shaded with a watercolour-on-pencil effect.
The actual game between the many cut-scenes is turn-based combat on individual battlefields. You start in map view, and decide which character to move, at which point you gain control of them in 3D third-person. As you move, your Action Points decrease and any enemies which spot you are free to shoot at you, then you can select aim, target an enemy and fire upon them. It briefly switches to a cinematic attack view as you fire, the enemy gets to retaliate, and then you end your turn. Oddly you have to do alll this quite quickly as you can continue to take damage if you just stand there. Then you can choose another (or the same) character and repeat until you run out of Command Points and it's the enemies turn to do effectively the same thing - but of course without the dangerous moments of indecision you face as a human player.
That's pretty much it, it's pure strategy with no exploration in-between, but you do get a big number of characters to choose from later on. Basically it's like any of the [JRPG-series-name] Tactics version with the third-person live-action-move mode added on.
Fallout 3 - PC
Post-apocalyptic version of the US that got stuck in the 50s culturally, but advanced massively in technology - I haven't played the first two, but I just love that off-kilter setting. The SPECIAL system that defines your underlying stats (Strength etc) is familiar territory, while it's slightly more complex than the standard AD&D ability scores, I've seen (for example) the Luck attribute appear in quite a few JRPGs.
Mostly Oblivion with guns, but with a few significant differences - the biggest being the VATS combat system. This is an optional mode where you can freeze the action and auto-aim at a specific part of a monster, as many times as your Action Points allow. It goes all slo-mo cinematic and your proximity, line of sight, skills (and Luck) take over, with you hitting like it's a turn-based combat game - then it jumps back to real-time so you can dodge any retaliation while your APs regenerate. Non-VATS is just like a normal FPS, and the main reason the PC release shades the console ones, but it would be perfectly playable using only VATS. Since I didn't play the earlier incarnations, I'm gonna continue comparing it to Oblivion.
Other good changes are fully remappable keys (there's a line at the top of the readme about how to map the mouse), a nice range of toys to shoot at stuff, a much-simplified crafting interface and more variety in costumery.
Bad changes would be that each weapon needs very specific ammo, the weapons break very easily and you need identically-described weapons to repair existing ones, so inventory space gets used up pretty quickly. Also, the option to map skills or items to a number key is gone.
Another change is that all skills have to be bought at level-up, so while the enemies get tougher, you should theoretically be getting tougher yourself (rather than only leveling when you improved key class-stats) but you can no longer learn things like stealth simply by creeping around a lot.
What's not changed are instant-travel nodes on the map, the clumsy way the map, inventory and skills are on separate tabs within the same menu and you constantly need to switch between them, the same rather basic compass, characters and monsters seeming to pop out of nowhere and giving you a heart-attack, and the monster NPCs having AI like the red ghost in Pac Man.
Valkyria Chronicles - PS3
It seems like forever since I saw the first examples of this game's artwork. It's anime-style, all cell-shaded with a watercolour-on-pencil effect.
The actual game between the many cut-scenes is turn-based combat on individual battlefields. You start in map view, and decide which character to move, at which point you gain control of them in 3D third-person. As you move, your Action Points decrease and any enemies which spot you are free to shoot at you, then you can select aim, target an enemy and fire upon them. It briefly switches to a cinematic attack view as you fire, the enemy gets to retaliate, and then you end your turn. Oddly you have to do alll this quite quickly as you can continue to take damage if you just stand there. Then you can choose another (or the same) character and repeat until you run out of Command Points and it's the enemies turn to do effectively the same thing - but of course without the dangerous moments of indecision you face as a human player.
That's pretty much it, it's pure strategy with no exploration in-between, but you do get a big number of characters to choose from later on. Basically it's like any of the [JRPG-series-name] Tactics version with the third-person live-action-move mode added on.
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Dr. kitteny berk
- Morbo
- Posts: 19676
- Joined: December 10th, 2004, 21:53
- Contact:
This bothers me. lots.FatherJack wrote:fully remappable keys (there's a line at the top of the readme about how to map the mouse)
The way they've done that is really, remarkably and amazingly unintuitive. Just seems like they've cut corners with the engine bodging stuff to work, rather than to work well and in a manner that makes sense.
Like all cross-platform titles, the interface is pants and the inventory management sucks balls. I fucking hate the one button approach, it winds me up something cronic, when a nice and intuitive mouse driven interface would work so well.
It makes comparing kit stats (for example) a pain in the arse.
It makes comparing kit stats (for example) a pain in the arse.
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HereComesPete
- Throbbing Cupcake
- Posts: 10249
- Joined: February 17th, 2007, 23:05
- Location: The maleboge