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So yeah, with Rainbow Six Vegas 1+2 on Unreal Engine 3, that outta look real fkn good. Look forward to them.
What's the gameplay in the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon series like? Any tactics or pretty similar to Lockdown? PS... I don't want tactics at all. The less I have to think during a game, the better. I do enough thinking for work. I did get a couple from the Splinter Cell series, but the trailers/reviews look a little too much like Thief (ala creeping around in fkn shadows) which, unless the design is fantastic like Thief 3 was, then it's not worth trudging through. rainbox six was tactical/strategic because you had to lay waypoints for your other teams before you played the missions.
easily the worst in the series (that I have played anyway). For a start, its very short, there's 6 maps that are admittedly gigantic and very open but I'm sure better players than me could knock this off in 4-5 hours (it took me double that).
Secondly, its ridiculously frustrating, you will be trotting along merrily with full health and some sniper will take you out instantly or you will get ripped to shreds by someone with a heavy machinegun. I died a lot. Now the game does have a reasonable quicksave system that is checkpoint orientated and any objectives you complete stay completed upon death, but it repopulates enemies to keep it challenging. The problem is a lot of those repopulated enemies ensure that you pretty much have to play most the map again even though some objectives have been completed as otherwise they ambush you. So it gets annoying very quickly. As for the looks, I wasnt that impressed in that department either. There's a shift to the UE3 engine and while the maps are gigantic, very open ended, and very detailed, they are not memorable at all and look pretty generic. Overall, maybe 6/10. Painkiller is a game where you either love it, or hate it. Developed by a new studio from Poland, People Can Fly, Painkiller is one hell of a debut. I'm reviewing both Painkiller and the expansion pack Battle Out Of Hell, which is basically more of the original game.
It features the same kind of gameplay as Serious Sam, but it looks a lot better than not only 2001's Serious Sam, but also 2005's Serious Sam II. Although not by much, as Serious Sam II was a spectacular looking game. The difference is Painkiller is much darker with levels taking place in cemeteries, cathedrals, asylums, castles, palaces, monasteries, an orphanase and even a very twisted and unique version of hell. In fact the entire game takes place in Purgatory (though why there is a funpark or Leningrad in purgatory I don't understand). This is where Painkiller really shines; the levels look fantastic. Released early 2004, Painkiller hails above just about everything from 2004 and previous. With the exception of perhaps Farcry and Halflife II (neither of which I've played so I can't confirm), Painkiller is the best looking first person shooter up until 2005. This mostly comes down to a great looking engine, great gaming effects and flawless textures. The set-peices and architecture is all fantastic, however the game is let down slightly by its lack of vertical gameplay. The same problem Serious Sam had, the levels are all too flat. There's very little vertical variation (apart from the insanely vertical climb that was Stone Pit in the mission pack). Which means all the gameplay is in huge flat areas. The other major flaw in the gameplay is it's focus on checkpoint type gameplay. You enter a room, a door behind you appears out of nowhere trapping you in, and you fight through hordes of enemies until the doors open. Enter the next area and the same tactic applies. The entire game runs like this, and it becomes one mindless battle after another. Fortunately, after battling through way too many realistic shooters lately, I was eager for some high-paced gaming action. But this can get old after a while. It also doesn't help that just about every enemy in the game requires 1-2 hits from the shotty and seems like the same enemy as the last just with a slightly different close-range weapon or projectile. There's very little enemy variation. Even so, there's more variation here compared to a realistic shooter that features the same human enemies throughout the entire game. The models all look great. While some are a little silly (puking or burping at you as an attack), they aren't as cartoony and out of place as Serious Sam's enemies. There were plenty of great weapons to use, absolutely tonnes of ammo for them all. The game on normal difficulty really wasn't that hard at all, but does force you to replay at higher difficulties in order to unlock the secret levels (bad idea People Can fly!). Alternatively you can download Powermad and unlock them anyway, but all three hidden levels were pretty short. The BOOH hidden level was just a poor boss fight. A lot of players won't like the repetitive arena style horde combat, but I enjoyed it. With fantastic design which is completely different on every single level (there are 24 in Painkiller and 10 in BOOH) makes Painkiller one of my favourite games. Pity about the sequels... Think I'll hold off on playing Far Cry next as I've got a few duds on my list to play for a while...
Although Republic Commando got a decent IGN score, in the video reviews I've looked at the game design look like ass. Apart from Quake 4 and Prey, the fps games from 2005 and 2006 all look a bit average. Star Wars - Republic Commando (2005) - 79% Vietcong 2 (2005) - 60% Project: Snowblind (2005) - 7.7 Second Sight (2005) - 71% Area 51 (2005) - 6.9 Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005) Pariah (2005) - 6.3 Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) - 84% was quite fun actually. Not a fps though.
And if you have low expectations, Unreal 2 is quite fun too. Mostly. yeah i played unreal 2 when it came out (one of the only games i played between 2002-2007). i actually thought it was pretty good, couldn't really understand all the bad press it got.
what's next on your list nitin? you seem to be playing catchup like me. and then CoD 4. That's all I have left I think before I can go restocking :)
oh and Splinter Cell - Double Agent. Picked this up last week on pc. If your in the UK, then know that Tesco is selling it for �30 not the stupid price of �40 almost everywhere else...
Single Player Mode : I loved it, much better than the 1st Modern Warfare, which I also enjoyed very much. Dunno what all the fuss is about the airport level, I thought it was very well done and setup the story excellently! Some of the set pieces are jaw dropping and is great fun all the way through. I love how Infinity ward manages to sneak in some sets from popular war movies all over the place, a few that I noticed were the alcatraz shower room from The Rock, The insurgent desert base from Iron Man, and the suburban street with a crashed plane in it from the War of the Worlds remake. Im sure there are others but I cant recall them at this time. It is short though, It took me around 6-7 hours to complete the game, and that was usually pausing to take in the sights and sounds of each set piece. Special mention must go to the music which was done by Hanz Zimmer (gladiator, black hawk down etc), its epic. wtb OST! Multiplayer : I've been addicted since I first loaded it up to "take a brief look" which ended up as a huge 6 hour marathon =) Its brilliant fun running around shooting people in team deathmatch, and unlocking all the different attachments and camo patterns for the various guns (of which there are tons!). The new killstreaks and deathstreaks are great too, my favourites are the placeable minigun turret and pilotable ac-130 gunship. A lot of complaining was made about the lack of dedicated servers and the matchmaking system. Honestly the matchmaking system is actually very good, not perfect and has a few niggles attached to it, but it does all the hard work for you and gets you into a game in less than 10 seconds usually. A few problems do arise from having the multiplayer p2p based, such as if the host has a crap connection things can get a little laggy, but the game will pause and find a better host if this is serious. Special Ops Mode : This is 2-player coop mode on specially designed maps, I haven't actually played any in 2-player mode yet, but in single player mode they are short but fun maps that award you more stars the better you do, with more stars you unlock more and more chapters and maps, etc etc. Looking forward to playing them in 2 player! It's ok for a COD game, I guess. Looks great and impressive motion capturing. In the long shot, gameplay seems kind of dull, though. On rails and stuff. The airport mission wasn't such a big deal really - how is shooting civilians more disturbing than killing hundreds of armed enemies?
Lol at the Russians. Always waging wars... Played night vision mode, it's pretty cool, and less headachening.
Another game down for the holidays, this one relatively a mystery to me. My little expectations were pointing towards another bland Star Wars game with the same old setting, mixed in with more of this 'tactical strategy' I explored in Rainbow Six.
The game ended up, in fact, being quite a good looking shooter with enjoyable gameplay; but not without its flaws. The highest points for SWRC go to the level design. You battle through three episodes - Geonosis, Assault Ship and Kashyyyk. I won't pretend to be familiar with these places, or the entire Star Wars story for that matter, as I'm definitely not a Star Wars fan (and yes I've seen all six). Geonosis is some desert world, while the Assault Ship episode all takes place within a ship that you must regain control of, and is ultimately the dullest of the episodes. Kashyyyk is a world inhabited by Wookies, as you attempt to rescue a Wookie leader. The highlights were the rooms built out of huge wooden trees. It wasn't as good as Serious Sam II's attempt on the giant tree village, but everything still looked good as there was a decent mix of outdoor terrain and indoors. Design was packed with detail and the Unreal Engine 2 was put to good use. The only niggle with design is that some of the levels and rooms became a little repetitive. Overall it reminded me of Halo. Similar design settings; only looking much, much better. The gameplay was a mixed bag. Overall it was fun with your three team members improving the experience. They weren't stupid, but certainly lacked the skill of a multiplayer bot. They worked best when placed behind a structure and instructed to use grenades or the sniper rifle. The tactics with your soldiers were all fairly easy. Tell them to charge in, hold back, open a door, sit behind something and snipe. When they die you or another soldier can revive them, and when your own player dies you can also be revived. I found this to be much more enjoyable than having to reload. Your ultimate death comes when you're all killed and there's no one left to revive any of the team. A lot of the enemies in SWRC can take some firepower, so you definitely need all of your team members. Unfortunately the gameplay can be frustrating at times. There's one particular enemy that flies overhead which is far too hard and can take your entire team out in 30 seconds, while some of the other enemies such as the Super Droid or Spider Boss become a real bore as your all blasting away for an eternity. The Droids, which are weak and hopeless, end up being the most enjoyable enemy. But overall most of them aren't that fun to fight and there's not a huge variety in enemies as it is. What is there, has fairly average AI. A few times the gameplay suddenly got extremely difficult with just too much thrown at you at once alongside endless replicating machines which you need to shut down. This is the other major problem with gameplay. Throughout the game your tasked with turning off these endlessly enemy-spawning replicators. It takes 20 seconds to shut one down, and after doing it 50 times it just gets mind-numbing. I can understand their inclusion to spice up gameplay a little, but in the end they became tedious and annoying. The final problem which spoiled gameplay, was the abysmal collection of weapons. You get the Quake2-cloned blaster, a machine gun which annoyingly shoots sideways and takes quite a few levels before you get used to it. The sniper rifle aka Quake 2 railgun which never has enough ammo. Your fourth weapon is a grenade launcher I think; but I'm unsure since I only used it a couple of times due to it only carrying four grenades at once and not wanting to waste them. The fifth weapon varies depending on what episode your in. The shotgun in episode 2 is decent, but all your alternatives in the final episode are junk. Even worse, the final level didn't seem to have ammo for any of the weapons I had. If a mod was created that removed most of the replicators and gave us much improved weapons and perhaps tweaked some of the monsters, then STRC would become a great game. As it is, it's just a good game; thumbs up but little re-playability. But since I was expecting much worse, I'm fairly satisfied.
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