Recent posts on my favorite games blog (besides this one) have brought me back to that sess pool of tragic hilarity, Deep Shadows. They have a new section up for their upcoming project, 'The Precursors', which I have quoted at length here.

Please note, any wayward? ?question ? marks?, mipslelings, or poor implements of grammar-ness are in the source material!

From http://www.deep-shadows.com/en/projects.php

Precursors. The Creators. The Legend of the Galaxy. We can only guess who of the existing races carry the genes of the Progenitors? The Worlds are endless? Beautiful, unique and dangerous. Some of them are inhabited, the others serve only as the shifting bases for the smugglers. Some worlds are in the infancy of their development evolution, while others have already collapsed.

Only when you yourself travel through these worlds, you will see burning seas and frozen skies, then you will realize the power of nature. Only then you will see corrupted politicians, unselfish patrons of the arts and brutal despots, then you will realize the truth of the society. Only then you will deep into unknown sectors of the Galaxy, face the unknown abnormalities, fly in the comet?s tail and plunge into some accidental portal ? then you will realize the endless depth of the Space.

But this is just the future. And it?s still unknown what will this journey be like ? but we can say it for sure ? such journeys will be unforgettable.

That about sums it up for me.

Only then you will deep into unknown sectors of the Galaxy, face the unknown abnormalities, fly in the comet?s tail and plunge into some accidental portal ? then you will realize the endless depth of the Space.

It’s those ‘unknown abnormalities’, and ‘accidental portal’s that make deep shadows games worth their weight in gold. or maybe potassium.

then you will realize the endless depth of the Space

So deep, the space. that no person can hear you to scream into it.

Tags: games

Where to start.

I wasn't expecting much from hellgate, so I shouldn't really be disappointed by the impressions I got from the demo, and yet I am. It's just depressing, to see yet another example of a game that could have been incredible, amazing, fabulous – ruined seemingly by a lack of effort or common-sense on the part of the developers.

I start my game, plagued by tooltips despite having checked the 'disable tooltips' option on the character creation screen. First thing that happens is I get a 'video' message from some lost guy called murmur. This video comprises of a picture of him, and some text appearing on my screen detailing his predicament. "Thank goodness your're here!" he seems to cry "I'm stranded!" and "Maybe we can make it to holborn station together!"

I find Murmur about 100ft in front of me, past some ambling zombies who never seem to bother me and are easily side-stepped. Stranded indeed. When I talk to the scared, frightened murmur, he looks non-chalant, waves at me every five seconds, and seems to come on to me saying things like "its a big universe – if it doesnt work out maybe we could relocate" or "well aren't we just full of questions!". Not exactly terrified behaviour, but we'll forgive that. Also his lips don't move when he talks.

He's been on a critically important mission with some templar who were butchered. He suggests we go and retrieve the information they died to obtain, about some guy called fawkes. Murmur has now stopped waving and has begun to bow ceremoniously ever five seconds.

I notice as I run down the streets that fragments of windows reflect a street which bears no resemblance to the one we're on. More zombies are on the streets, walking like John Cleese in the python silly walks sketch. No, Really.

We find a half dead templar knight. "The mission!" he cries "it must not fail!" "the doctor – fawkes. dr fawkes" "listen, his device…" "you must bring word to lann" "give him fawkes communique! he must find the device" "go to covent garden station, give fawkes communique to lann" "he'll understand. He'll find the doctor …use the device" "there's still hope. always hope… always ho…"

He Dies.

I am filled with questions. Who is fawkes! Could he be a doctor of some kind? Might he have some kind of device on him by any chance? And was I supposed to bring anything to anyone?

I try to ask murmur to see if he can clarify any of this. He won't let me look directly at him, and keeps side stepping around me like he's trying to hide.

We go to holborn station. Inside I find murmur, even though he's supposedly following me. Now he's leaning against a wall, beside a big ad for nVidia, picking his nose repeatedly. When i talk to him he lurchs forward, and gesticulates wildly while saying "wanted to talk didja mate?"

I swear to myself thats the last time i'll converse with that irritating twat.

I walk further into the station, find various guard types, a camp shopkeep, a boy called 'joey' with a wooden leg (really) and a woman with the BIGGEST breasts I have ever seen in a computer game. In that statement I'm including lara croft, all the female characters from dead or alive, tekken, tao feng, everything.

Seriously. As the old adage goes, when in doubt, include a female character with boobs bigger than basketballs. I talk to the top heavy heroine and discover she has the voice of a 60 year old woman.

I stop playing hellgate, decide not to buy the game and begin writing this post.

Tags: games

I've been looking forward to Crysis for a long time. As the spiritual sequel to Far Cry, one of my all time fave games, it's obviously and exciting prospect. But now, with all my attention focussed on Crysis, I've been totally blind-sided by FarCry 2, the ACTUAL sequel to FarCry.

First off, a little history. Crytek and Ubisoft parted after farCry, for whatever reason (i'm going to go with endless cheap knock-off sequels to far-cry that sucked). Ubisoft kept the brand name, and Crytek took their engine and redeveloped it for another tropical shooter, Crysis. Meanwhile, ubisoft seemingly continued with the trend of cheap knock-off sequels, announcing FarCry 2 to very little fanfare and a bit of skepticism.

However, it seems now that the team put together for FarCry 2 took a good long look at everything that made the first far cry great, ignored all the shitty sequels, and threw away all the stuff that made FarCry a bit stupid at times.  

At the Leipzig Games Show (which I'm SO going to next year – if i can get in) They demoed FC2 behind closed doors, with no video equipment allowed. Here's some of the sexy details, via Joystiq. 

• They've chucked all the stupid stuff – namely the Mutants – And they've kept what made it a great game, (at least up to about the third or fourth level).
• Immersive Gameplay, Realism and Exotic Settings.
• This time around, it's set in the african savannah rather than on a tropical island (because everyone's doing tropical islands now).
• The world is 50 sq. km, unrestricted (go anywhere) with no load times.
• Jungles are all procedurally generated, interactive, and full of destructible trees (all the rage these days).
• The player's map is in-world so when you pull it out you need to find good light to read it.
• The map shows 1 sq. km, or 1% of the world. 1%!.
• No health packs, instead they'll have 60+ first aid techniques you can do (more on that later)
• Full Day / Night cycle and weather system. Wind will affect fire, windmills, and trees but probably not bullets.
• Weapons : You buy weapons in the game from arms dealers. There are about thirty weapons in the game.

Some stuff that happened in the demo.

In short, this game sounds like it's building up to be as revolutionary as the original, even without the original team.

Tags: games

Valve's Gabe Newell has only good things to say about EA. "Everybody always tells us what a horrible monster EA is supposed to be and we keep waiting for the hair to sprout out and the fangs to grow." Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli is of a similar disposition praising EA for the freedom they've given.
             
Newsflash : EA is a big bad monster for the way it treats its employees, not the way it treats established studios which will provide it with lots of profit and original IP to make money off.
                
That's the equivalent of a professional athelete saying he keep's hearing that Nike treat their workers like dirt, but it can't be true because whenever he does ads for them they always pay him well.

Tags: games

id CEO Todd Hollenshead revelaed the following details about rage, the new game from Id Software.

[From Gamespot:]

Its gameplay will be “60 percent shooting and 40 percent driving” between villages in a postapocalyptic wasteland. Its setting will be a far future that has seen civilization decimated after a comet smashes into the Earth. Players will aid the villages’ inhabitants in fighting both an oppressive regime and various mutants and monsters roaming the wasteland.

Rage will have open-world elements, allowing players to exit their vehicles and explore caves and other parts of the landscape. The game will feature a single-player campaign that will clock in around 20 hours, but will allow individual missions to be played in co-op mode. No other multiplayer details were announced.

Typical. You wait your whole life for a decent, free-roaming post-apocalyptic FPS/RPG Hybrid and then three come along at once.

Ever since I played Daggerfall, I’ve been waiting for someone to make a dungeon exploring, abandoned ruins rummaging, corpse searching role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic world. The closest anyone’s got so far in my book, is STALKER, but i’d hardly call it free roaming, given that all the levels are divided.

Now, Bethesda’s Fallout 3, Id’s Rage and Gearbox’s Borderlands are all stepping up to the challege. Rage is looking like the winner already, because of the sexy visuals and groovy details.

Also, Rage will be a multi-platform title, coming out on Xbox360, PS3, PC and Mac. What separates it from other multi-platform titles is that id have developed a multi-platform engine which uses the same assets for each version. The result of this is that the PC, Mac and possibly xbox360 versions will all be on the same disc.

Since it’s coming out on the mac, it also means it’ll use openGL, which means that ‘PC’ could mean both Windows and Linux…

Tags: games

Here’s a review I did of Boiling Point – The Road To Hell when it came out first. I’ve decided to port all the games related articles from old blogs to this one, since its all about games.

I wanted to like this game. I really did. I tried to see past all the negative aspects to the true heart of the game, the original intent of the developers, but alas, I could not.

I read a review of this in the sunday times games column – a place from which I have gleaned some honest and accurate game reviews in the past. It got a good review. However, upon playing this festering turd pile, I can safely say the person who wrote that review NEVER PLAYED THE GAME. Whoever you are, you should be sacked.

Now, before I go any further, let me outline the good points of this game, for there are some.
1) At 25 Square Kilometers, its got to be one of the biggest game areas I’ve ever played in.
2) You can search the bodies of people you kill for stuff, instead of it just floating beside them. I Like that.
3) When your car ditches in a river, you have to manually get out, and swim to the surface, rather than being popped out the side door like a zit.

That concludes the positive portion of the review. Do not read on if:
a) you have already bought the game at some expense
b) you’re an idiot, and intend to buy it regardless of what people tell you.

Let’s start balancing those positive points.

1) 25 square kilometers is an awful distance for a game that sucks this much. One of the first mission involves driving to a prison, which takes TEN BLOODY MINUTES, assuming you go the right way first time which is difficult since the map is rubbish and the compass doesn’t help much. This is also assuming you don’t jam your truck between two trees and get permanently stuck, which can also happen.

2) You CAN search the bodies of dead people, but there are about five generic people in the whole town, and they only have three things each. A gun, ammo for that gun, and a bottle of tequila. Yes, its a horrible stereotype, but its in there. Also, people still shoot at you while you search, which is needlessly complex, and involves dragging and dropping items from the corpse’s inventory, then clicking a ‘confirm’ popup for each item you select, then an overall ‘confirm’ popup. I guess this would be useful if you tend to accidentally click on corpses, and accidentally click and drag their tequila into your inventory and then realise that you really really wish you were never carrying that bottle of tequila to begin with, and don’t want to just drop it on the street lest some troubled teen pick it up. However, when someones firing an Ak-47 at you, and your trying to grab ammunition for your empty revolver from a street corpse, and the inventory system keeps asking you are you completely certain that you want to take these bullets and put them in your pocket, its as helpful as a kick in the nads.

3) If and when your car ditches in the river, you might aswell be on land, because its pretty much the same scenery. It’s very difficult to tell you’re actually underwater.

Now. Negative things in general. The first impressions.

The very first thing that hits you is the dreadful loading times. It takes two minutes to load the menu (yes the MENU) on my machine, an athlon64 3400+, with 1gb of ram and an x800XL card in the slot. Then, once you click on ‘start new game’, it takes another minute or two to load the game. So what the hell is it loading the first time? Its a complete mystery.

Next there’s a stupid cutscene showing the set up, Saul Meyers daughter being kidnapped. Basically, she runs down a corridor with enormous boobs (apparently made from wood since they don’t bounce), and then saul meyers gets a phone call, frowns at the camera and his head explodes. I laughed at least halfway through the two minute load bar which followed. then I realised the joke was on me.

You land, after an in-game cutscene that’s somewhat better than the rendered bird droppings at the beginning. The textured model actually looks like the star Arnold Vosloo (the bad guy from the mummy), and the voice-over sounds half decent. Although subtitles do pop-up and tick you off, and the only way to disable them involves skipping the whole cutscene anyway.

Then you take over – and someone else must’ve stepped in to do the rest of the voice acting because your character suddenly goes from sounding like a hard edged mercenary to a squeaky computer programmer. When you run, your view jumps up and down like the original doom. Not a good thing in this day and age.

You’ll notice, even on a high end machine, that the game is a bit stuttery. But try to turn down the graphic settings and you’ll find about 20 different texture honing settings, and two different resolutions. Yes Two. 1024x768x32, or 800x600x16.

The bustling town in which you reside, has two cars, and about 11 people, despite being bigger than the entire blood gulch map from Halo. People on the street talk at an inaudible level, unless you stand right next to them. And there are only about five people types. A tough guy, a guy in a sombrero, and old woman, a guy with a suitcase, and a midget.

The control system is the most counter-intuitive piece of bollocks I’ve had to use in years. I think typing DOS commands would have been easier. To converse with someone, you right-click on them. Then you have to use the F1-F8 keys to choose dialogue options, and hit escape when you’re finished talking. Also, you can’t move when you talk.

Cars are even worse. You click on a car or press enter when beside it to use it. It immediately switches to the inside view, and if there was a view change key, I couldn’t find it. I tried all the standards – v, c, F1, F2, 1,2,3,4 the numpad. Nothing worked. Why did I want to change views? I could only see directly ahead. Because the Mouse controls the steering aswell as the A & D and arrow keys. So you can’t look behind, or to your left or right.

But before I even got a car, I was sent to find a gun shop. I walked for what felt like an hour, and found the gun shop, and bought some guns, one of which used a type of ammo you couldn’t buy. When I shot at people it felt like I was pointing a stapler at them. Not to mention that the loading screen seemed to advertise the availability of a Steyr TMP, but when you go to the gun shop, and select the steyr TMP icon, it gives you some sort of a cross between an uzi and a mac-10.

The only thing I cannot fault with this game is the title. Boiling Point : The Road To Hell, suits this game as a title on so many levels. It’s interesting to time yourself and see how long you can play along with the stupid ‘talk to this guy, go over there’ missions before reaching boiling point, and just killing everyone in sight.

It astonishes me that a game like this can make it through every level of QA testing of a company, no matter how bad they are, and still be released. Its just shocking. Aside from all the drawbacks and shortcomings of the design, graphics, sound, control system etc., there are loads of very obvious bugs. The game is set in the fictional country of Realia, but there are numerous lines of dialogue mentioning that you’re in Bolivia. The sound regularly cuts out, leaving you in a completely silent town. You can’t draw a weapon indoors, even if people are standing in front of you, firing at you. You sometimes get stuck at the edge of the footpath, and you have to hit the jump key which propels you a good six feet into the air, in order to overcome this behemoth 2cm obstacle. I met a guy in the town square who’s briefcase floated beside his head as he walked. A CIA operative told me not to shoot, while intently pointing an invisible gun at me.

It really is amazing. I know I have a tendency to bash games’ shortcomings, but in this case, I am literally taken aback by how bad this game is, how many people failed to do their jobs for it to be this bad, and furthermore that it could actually manage to get a good review in an otherwise reputable games column. The games industry, press included, is in a sorry state if this heap of shit can be produced, released and reviewed and on its way to the consumer without so much as a head scratch.

So whatever you do, avoid Boiling Point : The Road To Hell like the plague. It’s unplayably bad and filled with bugs. As the great Jay Sherman would say, It STINKS!

Tags: games

You could not make this shit up.

Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.

A lot of games sites have jumped on this quote, making jokes about azeroth and such. As well they should, because its fucking ridiculous. The rest of the quotes from the article are less hilarious, but make about the same amount of sense. They revolve around the concept of using second life as a 'training ground' for bomb makers, or terrorists.

….streaming video can be uploaded into SL and a scenario can easily be constructed whereby an experienced bomb-maker could demonstrate how to assemble bombs using his avatar to answer questions as he plays the video.

Slow down! The interweb can send video tapes now? Oh Noes!

Seriously, these guys get paid to think of ways terrorists can get the upper hand and this is the best they can come up with? I bet they think internet piracy funds terrorism aswell.

Tags: games

After a brief scare yesterday it looks like Infinity Ward WILL be releasing the CoD4 beta over here.

Phew.

Tags: games

This morning, Activision has overtaken EA as the worlds largest game publisher!

The reign of terror is coming to an end.

Tags: games

Last week i posted about Gears of war coming to the mac, and I wondered what was going on behind the scenes between epic and microsoft.

Well it turns out theres not a lot going on between those two.

However, Silicon Knights have a big bone to pick with Epic, apparently. SK have licensed UE3 (Unreal Engine 3) for their much-delayed and sometimes ridiculed game, Too Human. Now it turns out that they're blaming all the delays on Epic, and not without some grounds it seems.

SK have basically accused Epic of taking the licencees' money and pouring it into Gears of War instead of engine development, failing to provide support or deliver builds of UE3 as agreed. They cite examples of several other UE3 games in the works by other developers which have also been heavily delayed.

Its interesting to say the least. Just a month ago I was reading an interview with Cliffy B about middleware and UE3, and he said that he believed that epic's philosophy of having employees fulfill the dual role of engine support and game development was the only way they'd succeeded. However, its now that very philosophy that SK is attacking, claiming that epic was unable or unwilling to provide support for the engine due to commitments to developing Gears.

Hmmm…

Microsoft have refused to comment, stating that the argument does not involve them. Meanwhile, Microsofts "games for windows – Live" platform, which gears will use for online play, could come under threat. Valve has announced an upgrade for steam, called steam community, which will essentially be a free equivalent for steam games and possibly even some non-steam games.

interesting….

Tags: games