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A lot of players seem to be torn on Call Of Juarez - some think it's great while many hate it. GameRankings had it at 75% aggregate from critics which is a pretty decent score, so I went in thinking the game might be a dud. Critics are often wrong. In this case though, Call Of Juarez is quite a decent game. It has some flaws which everyone agrees on, but it's something a little different in a shooter genre over saturated with sci-fi and war themes.
It's been a long time since I played something western themed. Probably Gunman Chronicles from 2000, which started life as a Half-Life mod. That itself was a good, under-rated game. There was another western themed shooter released a few years before Call Of Juarez, but it didn't get a good reception. What makes this game good and enjoyable is the fact that it's fresh and different. Sci-fi, war, fantasy, realistic cities; they've all been done over and over again. But this western theme is a rarity and in this case it actually looks pretty good. The engine and graphics are passable and capable of some very large outdoor areas, which look good. Not at a Crysis level of detail and beauty, but pretty enough. It only starts to struggle when you look across the plains or get in areas quite high so you can far distances - the mountains end up looking extremely plain and under-detailed. Also at times some of the terrain can be a too blocky and unrealistic looking, but that's fairly minor. The game doesn't ALWAYS look good. While the beginning takes place around a little western town and lots of thick bush, you then move to a more open landscape with hills and mineshafts, and it looks bad. Really bad. I guess this engine can't do night time scenes well, but the levels look poorly design with hardly any detail and bland hills everywhere. It's ugly. But the game picks up again as you return to daytime settings. The story is a highlight of Call Of Juarez. You play as two characters, alternating for each of the 15 levels (or episodes). The first is a boy named Billy on the run after being blamed for the murder of his parents, the second is a former outlaw turned reverend named Ray who's on the boys trail to bring him to justice. So the game switches between the Billy who is faster and more agile to the gun slinging bloodthirsty Reverend Ray. Ray's levels are all great - you can play with two guns at once, usually pistols in left and right hands and can fire them both at the same time. Then you get rifles and shotguns at your disposal. Ammunition and health are plentiful but the game is still a good blast as enemies can take you down quickly if they're carrying good weapons. You need to make shots accurate and it's very satisfying when you headshots. Without a headshot you can shoot an enemy up to several times before you get a deadly hit. Unfortunately, Billy's stealth levels aren't nearly as fun, and the game got a hounding in reviews because of this. It's a little surprising because Thief and Splinter Cell were so popular, even Chronicles of Riddick which started off with stealth then went to action in the second half. So why does everyone rubbish Call Of Juarez's stealth sections so much? They were boring as hell, but most stealth games are to me so it's nothing new. Billy does get to do some gun slinging or bow & arrow killing-fun, but it's mostly about creeping around or climbing things for him. This brings me to a major problem in the version I had of this game; the rope climbing is extremely buggy. There was once section where I needed to use my whip as a rope to climb a tree. Due to some bug in the game this wouldn't work at all. It just wouldn't allow me to attach my whip to the tree. I was completely stuck and it was a game ender, without getting a level unlock cheat so I could skip to the next level. Sadly this was probably the longest level in the game. Furthermore the updates wouldn't work so I couldn't apply any fixes. There's also a DirectX 10 upgrade which improves the game, but this wouldn't work for me as it's only available for US versions of the game. But everything still looks fine even without the upgrade. So overall I think Call Of Juarez is worthy of a play through the once, at least for it's action parts. Even though the stealthy, jumping Billy sections are a bit of a drag. The game looks good, the action is fun, it's not in the elite shooters of 2007, but for a bargain bin price I'd recommend it. Copy of email I sent to Microsoft and EA...
I recently bought the Bulletstorm game. After I installed it and attempted to play it, I had the following problems: 1. I was given no option to play just single player and was forced to sign into Windows Live DESPITE the first screen saying a Live account was needed for multi player (not single player). 2. Despite Windows Live obviously being somehow fundamental to this game, the game did not pick up that I was already signed in to Windows Live via Messenger, thus forcing a tedious signing in process: 3. It took me a few goes to recall my password, each time I had to wait for it to "download profile" and then return to the start, rather than simply informing me of an invalid password when I typed it. 4. Despite ticking the "log in automatically" tickbox, this was NOT applied so I had to retype my details every log in time, of which there were many: 5. After finally signing in, I was forced to apply an auto-update. After this downloaded, I was told to exit the game to apply it, BUT there was no option to exit the game (only the same start screen about logging in) so I had to Ctrl-Alt-Delete to close it. 6. After the Windows Live update applied (with no pop-up indicating it was complete) I had to restart the game, go through the unskippable splash screens AGAIN and sign in AGAIN. 7. After this the update was VERY slow to apply in game (several minutes). Then I was forced to exit the game via Ctrl-Alt-Delete (again no proper exit option). 8. After the update installing in Windows and having to restart for the 3rd time and log in AGAIN, I was forced to create another profile on the XBox site. Firstly I don't own and will never own an XBox, and secondly this profile sign in came with marketing email options pre-selected. Given all I was trying to do was to play a game I had just purchased, having to avoid getting spam advertising email as part of the whole tedious rigmarole was not welcome. 9. After creating this account (which didn't give any obvious confirmation I'd created it) and thankfully not having to restart a 4th time, I then had to log in / download profile yet again. This meant that a game I bought in 2 minutes, installed in 5 minutes, and should have been able to start playing in 30 seconds, took me 30 minutes to get started. 10. Finally there was no email contact for PC Games with Windows Live on the Xbox Live site nor the main Microsoft site, and the staff on the XBox Live phone support tried to get me to discuss the problem rather than just telling me the email address. In response I want to know the following things: > Why was I forced to sign in to Windows Live for single player?? > Why, if Windows Live was ""necessary"", was there no integration with my current Messenger sign in?? > Why was the signing in / password validation process so slow and cumbersome?? > Why were there no options to exit when I was told to?? > Why was the whole process made so bloody long-winded for a paying customer to play the game they've just purchased?? Ah was fun getting Windows Live working with Dirt 2. Same issue. You have to spend ages loading the game up, watch all their unskippable intro shit, make it update and quit again, MULTIPLE TIMES to fully update it. No single download for microsoft no sir.
And after all this shit it still doesn't save your progress remotely, so when I switched PCs I forgot to copy an up to date save and thus lost about 15 hours of progress. Thankfully doing it all before meant Arkham Asylum wasn't such a pain in the arse. 30mins is a pretty normal install time for me once you've found all the patches to apply and then found actual working no-dvd cracks without getting a cunting virus. i never use steam though. that microsoft signing in process is ridiculous though.
Steam has been good to me, automatic updates, no hassles etc. Only thing that bothers me is the checking and reinstalling of DirectX components every time a new game is installed. Although they explained this a few mths ago, there surely is a betetr option around.
Windlows Live, which I've only had to use for Arkham Asylum, is a pain. AFAIK, it only saves games per user id and has no other function in SP. On one of the live screens you can just scroll down and select an option 'play without logging in'.
The screen itself doesn't look scrollable, and the windows people don't make any mention of which one it is or how to access it, although they allude to its existence. Figured it out with DOW2. by getting a mac. Now just have to solve the no-games-to-play problem. Zwiffle please elaborate on your bees-based murder method, sounds quite pleasant.
The worst of annoying DRM shall happen to Zwiffle for keeping reading and linking to the fucking Gawker media websites.
Last game i recall being true survival horror must be Call of Cthulhu: Dark corners of the Earth, Penumbra series and Amnesia...
I want to say Dead Space 1 and 2, but those have significantly more action in them, to be considered pure survival horror games... Are there any obscure examples out there that should be known Did what it said on the tin. Fun gameplay, good weapons, pretty enviroments. Well, as Yahtzee so aptly put it - pretty skyboxes. Probably the least immersive game I've ever played, what with the neanderthal dialogue, pre-school plot, uber-on-rails-interactive-cartoon progress, lack of jumping, clipped everything. But the controls and weapons and gore and explosions and kicking the shit out of enemy, as juvenile as it was, was pretty good fun (especially with the stupid dickskill notifications turned off). Very limited as a game, but good to dip into for a bit of easy action.
Tried to give Splinter Cell Double Agent a shot. Mouse buttons can't be bound unless through the confusing config files, which then somehow breaks almost all my config even though I only changed 4 keys. I can't even quit the game without ctrl-alt-del. The loading takes forever, i'm forced to put up with a crappy low quality video every time the menu comes up, and the whole menu GUI looks like shit as well. And on top of that the first 30secs of the game looks like ugly shit and far too dark.
I'm skipping this crap game, it's already wasted an hour of my life. see my post, I played it all the way through and found it to be very disappointing.
Conviction looks more action packed (but also more consoley) though. Couldn't see your post on Double Agent, nitin. But anyway I'm now playing MOH Airborne instead, and put it on easy difficulty since you said you died alot and I have no inclination at all to play from checkpoints with repopulated enemies. The checkpoints are way too far apart!
Agree with what you said about it so far, 2 levels completed. I guess i'm 1/3 done already! I'll probably give conviction a try - surely they would have fixed the key config issues by then. must not have posted my comments on Double Agent here. Anyway, found it to be a very annoying game with subpar level design.
Reviewed a Minecraft mod, The Aether, for anyone interested. http://taw.duke4.net/2011/09/minecraft/the-aether/
looks like minecraft has a new shading system? surprisingly, it makes a huge difference, even though it's still just cubes. very cool.
yeah, they seem to have added some sort of ambient occlusion system, i've been seeing it in screenshots for a while now. (still not playing it myself)
... and 1.8 is going to have a newer lighting system, better day and night transitions and coloured lights.
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