lost in games

Just in case you are wondering what i will be doing over the weekend…..

I am listening to AC/DC’s latest album. If you are a fan then you will love this, as they stick to what they do best. Classic Rock sound. The second song on the album, Skies on Fire, is my favourite so far.

Sometimes no change is REALLY good.

For the past few weeks i have not been able to take my friday afternoons off due to seminars. These have been eating away some precious free, quality time. What has “helped” is my absence from exercising - blame the stiff neck. Given me some much needed extra mins.

I have been allocating time to some really good stuff though.

Podcast

Yes! I have been working with my Gaming Soul mate Mardas this past week on making our first audio podcast at forevergamers. It will  be mostly about videogames in the beginning but we will try and incorporate more media like tv/film, books and comics as we go along.

It will be available to download on our site and hopedully itunes too. I will update you on this later on.

Book - The Great Crash 1929. 

I will write more about this book, but let me just say that most of the behaviours exhibited in this book remind me of the Cyprus Stock market crash and the current financial crisis. Awesome book.

Deadwood - Season 2

Still early days to decide whether it’s better than the first one.

Gaming

Hotel Dusk: Room 215
World of Goo
FIFA 09
The Club

All of them fantastic games.

Not bad right? I NEED MORE TIME!

I just stumbled across a series of projects on specific games from Penny Arcade. This one was on Fallout and i have to say it’s good.

Now they are working on the new Prince of Persia.

I have a stiff neck since Monday which has prevented me from doing my runs this week. But the flood of releases did not prevent some major announcements being made at this time.

Bioware and Lucasarts have revealed that they are working on the mmo Star Wars: Old Republic. EA’s acquisition of Bioware has been all about entering the highly profitable mmo business to compete head on with Blizzard’s WoW. With Lucasarts massive intellectual property and Bioware’s talent this game has the promise to be a big player in the mmo marker.

link

An air of satisfaction filled my empty brain on Sunday morning as I completed BIA:HH’s last mission. Alas, it was not because I had successfully overcome insurmountable challenges in the game and not because I had played one my most anticipated games of 2008. No. It was because It gave me the freedom to move on to better things.

BIA: HH is not a bad game, it is just mediocre. There are some moments which lift the game above that to remind you what made the first 2 versions so great but these are few and far between. I don’t want to do a review of the game as I agree with most of the reviews I have read (bar Gamespot’s) so you can check those out.

Instead, I would like to talk about a few things that I would like to see in the series’ next game (as emphasized by the game’s ending cut scenes) which might help the developers bring the series back on the right track. It might be presumptuous of me to think that I can possibly have any valuable input seeing that I am not a professional developer but just a gamer. But consider it my input to a series that I love.

1. Skip the solo missions

These were possibly the worst missions in the game as they exposed the it’s weaknesses. BIA is not a COD fps. It cannot compete and nor should it want to. It’s the thinking man’s FPS and it’s about tactics. My greatest sense of achievement was maneuvering my men successfully in the battlefield and not when i managed head-shots. If Gearbox feels the need to have these missions, especially in indoor gunfights, then they should give you command of a couple of squad-mates. The only difference is that you should be given the option to control them on an individual level instead of the usual squad level. This will allow tight spaced combat and also increase the “bonding” between you and the men.

2. Germans’ cover

Stop making the enemies behaving stupidly. Having Germans hiding behind cover only for their limbs to be fully exposed is ridiculous. This is made more evident when you are shooting them and they are still not moving to shield themselves completely. Soldiers would never act this way on the battlefield. Granting the player opportunities to shoot enemies is one thing and making him feel stupid while he is doing it is another.

3. Cover system

Change the cover system from the third person view to first person or just don’t have one. It will make the game more difficult but at the same time increase immersion and realism. The first two games didn’t have this cover system and were better games for it. Stick to the first person view throughout the game.

4. Tactics

You should be able to designate where you want your squads to go in 2 ways:

(i) Same as always during battles with your left trigger.

(ii) The only time the game should go into a top down view of men gathered around a map. Then you can give instructions to the men which are located near you by pointing on the map where you want them to go, or via radio if the squad is not near you. I found it tedious to have to travel from one squad to the next to get a better angle of where to send them.

5. Enemy behaviour should be more proactive

One of the things that is noticeable with BIA is that during a particular battle you usually, like 90% (arbitrary statistic) of the time, you are not worried about what the Germans are doing while you are thinking of how to flank them. They are just sitting there, firing away. Their only movement might be to fall back to a new position at a certain stage to avoid being flanked. and that’s it. I would expect that in real battles the enemies are indeed entrenched in their positions. At the same time however, especially if you sustain losses, they would counterattack to take back the initiative. I would like to see that happening more often. The battles must feel real, not some only some set piece or puzzle that you just need to decipher.

This is not an exhaustive list of the issues. There are more of course, especially with regards to destructible cover, but all the above involve tweaking the game-play section of the game. The game’s story and presentation also did not live up to my expectations but i believe it’s in the game-play that Gearbox should focus on. It was after all what attracted me and i suspect most other fans to the series in the first place.

Oh yes. That time of the year has come. The monsoon of games. The satellites have picked up this phenomenon heading to gamers all over the world. We just need to make the decide to which game(s?) we should seek refuge. I would be hard pressed to pick just one game this week but if i had a gun to my head forcing me to make that choice then it would have to be LittleBigPlanet. The promise of what this title can bring to videogaming is just too great to ignore. I can’t wait to try building my own level and uploading it so that the world can laugh at my efforts. At the same time i want to travel through some users’ geniously built worlds.

At the same one cannot forget Peter Molyneux’s Fable II, the non-gamer’s RPG. Or how about EA’s new IP (oxymoron), Dead Space, which is receiving great reviews especially from American reviewers. Last but not least it’s Far Cry 2 for the FPS fans. There is something great for everyone. Even Wii cooks can try Order up which has been well reviewed.

The season is upon us. It’s raining games.

Fable II (360)
LittleBigPlanet (PS3)
Far Cry 2 (PS3, 360, PC)
Dead Space (PS3, 360, PC)
Moto GP (PS3, PS3, PC)
Midnight Club: Los Angeles (PS3, 360)
Spiderman: Web of Shadows (PS3, 360)
Monopoly (Wii, 360, PS3)
Order up (Wii)
Star Ocean: First Departure (PSP)

There I was, minding my own business determined to devote gaming time to FIFA09, BIA:HH and Hotel Dusk. No more games until one of them is finished (that excludes FIFA of course). That’s my decision and I am sticking to it.

But there is only so much a man like me, a respectable professional,  can endure. Eurogamer’s reviewer gave it and 9 and in his final paragraph says

“If there’s any justice, World of Goo will set the internet aflame and earn its creators a million dollars.”

Fine. But I will not be contributing to making these people millionaires. I have a plan and I am sticking to it. That’s what I said over and over again to myself. I almost succeeded until found this temptation on Brainygamer blog urging me to read the review at Rock, Paper, Shotgun review.

It was too much. I was pushing my luck. As I was watching my luck falling over the abyss together with my carefully drafted plan of “no more games until 1 is finished” the World of Goo was being downloaded on my PC*.

It’s not my fault. I am a respectable, addicted professional in the World of Goo and loving it.

Note* - the game is also available on WiiWare

Downloading now………

It’s not a slow week by any means but compared to what’s coming up in the following weeks and months one could call it just that especially non-football fans. This Friday will see the battle of the footies. With FIFA 2009 already released and having received good to great reviews and comments it is now the turn of PES, once the undisputed king. Is there room for 2 top football games in our hearts? You bet!

Then there is the “GTA wannabe” as some people like to call Saints Row 2. It has a cool limited edition version by the way.  Bioshock also sees its availability on the PS3 (a game that is near the top of my pile of shame) and last but not least is Persona 3 FES for the PS2. That’s one title i will end up getting at some point in time.

The complete list of releases (after ignoring several garbage titles for the Wii and DS):

PES 2009 (360, PS3, Wii)
Saints Row 2 (360, PS3)
Golden Axe: Beast Rider (PS3 360)
Rapala Fishing Frenzy (PS3, 360)
Order Up (Wii)
Bioshock (PS3)
Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Exit (DS)