This evening we have blops gameplay from Prof Robot. It was his first match ever on the game and he strangely decided to use the shotgun. It worked out ok though so what do I know.
Watch and listen to my super awesome commentary. I will finish my blops review soon (i’ve been trying since a couple of days after I got it) but doing that gets in the way of playing the game so we’ve got things to overcome.
Black Ops is almost upon us so I thought I’d give a run down of what we know so far. Some of this maybe wrong but I’m pretty confident I’ve got all the facts. I’ll concentrate on the multiplayer here as you pretty much know what to expect with COD single player. Globe trotting Special Forces soldiers doing the jobs no one else wants to do. Unlike previous games though Black Ops will take place across a larger time frame, we’re talking missions from the 60’s all the way up to present day.
So I’ve pretty much milked this Expo for all it was worth. It is now a saggy teat at the business end of a deflated bag of redundant gaming news.
There was a whole bunch there that I did not play, the Zelda queue played a big part in that. *shakes fist impotently*
So I missed out on Fable III which I did want to play because I hated the first, liked what I played of the second and I had a complete 180 on my opinion of Peter Molyneux. I used to think he was just some bullshitter but have since realised that he’s just so excited when talking about his games that can not help blurting out some inaccurate point. It’s endearing really, I have a friend the exact same way. Also I wanted to play it because this picture.
What you are seeing is the player character dressed as a young maiden kissing the ghost of a playwrite trying to complete his production. I have no idea why but I know that this a game I need to play.
I also missed out on Brink because the reps could not organise a fart in a bar and it was getting late. I missed out on Enslaved but I’m downloading the demo now. I avoided Rock Band 3 like your clap riddled sister. I did not play on Kinect because they were not showing any proper games for it. I missed out on Donkey Kong Returns and Kirby’s Epic Yarn which was a mistake.
The Expo itself felt like a great place to be. It was all friendly, the queues were fairly free-form but nobody acted like a prick. The only time there was an actual line (goddammit Zelda) and I called out this one guy who was trying to push past me, he acted cool about it so kudos to the organisers for somehow producing this atmosphere. By all accounts though there was a higher than average douche allotment waiting for Gears of War 3.
Next year I think I’ll have more of a game plan and will definitely pull my thumbs out of my ass when it comes to taking photos. Also Chelios has twelve months notice that we are going instead of the four he had this year which was not long enough to arrange a day off.
Maybe next year I’ll actually be able to score a press pass.
Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010Biggest surprise of the whole expo was right here.
Ass Creed II polished the shit out of the first game and made it utterly enjoyable, even while hunting down those damn feathers for the Platinum Trophy. Despite that I thought that the upcoming Brotherhood was merely a stop-gap measure for keeping the franchise on annual release until they could be bothered to make a direct sequel. A feeling intensified when creative lead Patrice Desilets departed, though it’s since been suggested that he’s only on a break. A deserved one after number 2 released.[Ed's note - Tee hee hee hee]
As it happens it’s not numbered because it’s merely a continuation of Ezio’s saga. Think of it this way. The developers probably had a lot of story ideas with an era as rich as the renaissance and a subject as strangely period and sci-fi that they were unable to fit into Assassin’s Creed II due to time and budget constraints. So some were chipped off to form the DLC episodes and seeing as how the engine and assets were pristine and still had a lot of mileage in them, they opted for a spin-off game to keep the name alive and to produce a fully priced title at much less expense, plus the inevitable DLC and Ubisoft are laughing. Thing is it’s a quality experience so I won’t feel ripped off. Take note Activision.
I’ve only played the multiplayer section but I am impressed, it is simple and devious.
You pick a character and a secondary skill set which may be sprint boost and throwing knives as in the picture above but also there is morphing to appear like a different character, crowd blending to make a small crowd look like you, a hidden gun and so on. You get a target in the top right and a beacon disc bottom center to home in on your quarry. You must kill them but at the same time you are a target to someone else. As I say very simple but implemented with panache.
If you mow through the streets you make it easy for your pursuer to spot you, so you must walk and hide in plain sight and try to identify the person you’re sending to the afterlife. It builds a wonderful tension because you’re fighting for the higher kill score so you want to go quickly but you also want to avoid being seen. You may see your target but then be killed because your pursuer spotted you. You may see your target but then he begins to chase his target so you must decide whether to chase him and risk being eyeballed or wait it out. You may chase him but he may notice so he may start to evade you. If you get to assassinate him without him making you, your pursuer may see you take the kill and go right for you.
Sometimes a warning flashes up on screen telling you to run. I’m not sure yet if this is when your would-be killer enters your area and goes loud, or whether it’s when you do that in the same area as them. Either way, running is the order of the day. So you can evade then hide, flat outrun or lead them past gates which shut after you and ledges which break the second time they’re stepped on.
It is a fine balancing act in which you are constantly alert and leads to laughter and swearing as some fucker nails you before a kill without you noticing them behind you. And it can be the split second before a kill. And it can make you uproariously triumphant when you chase a scumbag across rooves, he bails but you get the jump on him and pop out on a strut right above his head, and pounce at him, two blades in the chest.
Whereas say Medal of Honour was all staring intensely at the screen, the line of players here usually included someone laughing with mirth at them killing or being killed because it wrenches the tension up fast and high then lets it all out in succession. You’re riding this tense-release-tense-release ethos throughout the match. It’s refreshing and great to see the idea of online multiplayer being expanded and really pushing things along.
I love GoldenEye on N64. It is to this day the best FPS in existence. I was better at GoldenEye than anyone I knew was. At a sleep over two people made me stay up until past 3am trying to beat me at it, and failing. I knew the single player game backwards. I knew all the routines not from trying to memorize them but simply through playing it so much that they became ingrained. I love that game.
It is odd that they should choose to remake it. That it is updated with Daniel Craig bothers me not a jot. It may be that they want to spin out a few bucks based on nostalgia alone. I may buy it, but I will rarely have a chance to play multiplayer with other humans in person, and my Wii’s wi-fi connection is quite simply bollocks.
At the expo this was hidden right in the middle of Nintendo’s stand, between Kirby and Donkey Kong, with no branding and no notification this was GoldenEye, the greatest FPS of all time. Only a piddly little 19″screen. The rep told me it was displaying via AV lead and not composite. And it showed. It was jaggy, and ugly. It was multiplayer only and took me right back to the glory days. Partly because the character models don’t seem to have advanced at all.
It looked horrible. To play, it was standard. I beat the other two players 10 – 3 – 2. I can’t say I was disappointed because it was just one round and I didn’t see any of the game proper. I can’t decide whether to buy it for old times’ sake and possibly be disappointed, or just leave the memory untainted and roll out the N64 occasionally.
So those arcade racers I mentioned in the previous post? This is exactly what I mean, it’s a laugh a minute thrill ride that you dive into for short bursts. It’s fine and has its place but is it really worth 40 of your hard earned pounds? The only sound that escapes my lips when I try to answer that question is “euuuuuuuuuuuuuyyyyrrrrrrr”.
A couple years ago I bought Midnight Club: Los Angeles. It was good I suppose but after a while, you know. Euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuyyyyyyrrrrrr.
Visually it was great and the track took you all over the place with buildings collapsing on your head and whatnot, so the first playthrough will be fun. Subsequent plays will probably get 20% less fun each time.
3D
The vehicles looked pretty much the same as in 2D but they are not such a focus as they are in GT5. They handled the environments much better though. It doesn’t flicker when you’re at high speed, which is all the time, and just whips on by like you’d expect. Except for the gimmick of debris kicking toward the screen there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to it.
That said, the demo was from a pre-alpha build so it’s all to play for and people on the whole will enjoy it. There’s no reason not to, but also no reason to love it yet either.
Expectations are high. After more than 4 years in development Polyphony Digital need to produce the gaming equivalent of finger banging the audience to a post orgasmic climax. I like to think of it as a sexual finishing move.
But enough about your mum.
This pretty much needs to be a benchmark for quality. It wont be so great for a party time fun bash like you may think Burnout or Need for Speed is, but let’s be fair, it does have kart racing. What they’ve done with karts is let you know they don’t take themselves too seriously while still not making a popcorn racer, and keeping a game design pedigree.
It is painfully detailed and it pays off. All the little details that you perhaps cannot identify individually without some effort, collude to beam directly into your brain the feeling that you are watching something very realistic.
The lighting, the physics, the reflections, the dirt, the focus blur, the motion blur and the sound.
The sound.
I started off having accidentally chosen a manual gearbox. Now when I start off something like this, the most recent similar game being Forza 3, I like to get the feel of the cars and so put on an automatic gearbox to avoid having something else to think about. On a related side note the most annoying thing about a racing “simulator” is the propensity to completely misjudge your speed and turn into a corner only to oversteer dramatically going, in fact, in a completely straight line and crashing.
So I’m on the start line fully aware that I’m going to have to gear manually, also it’s a new game to get the hang of and I’m supposed to be paying attention so I can hack together some bullshit preview for my un-viewed blog.
Fucking love the R8
I hear the car rev and I nearly shit. I don’t care how prototypically blokey this makes me appear, how adolescently loutish but when I hear a big car engine roar it is heaven. Makes me feel ten years old again with models of Lamborghinis on my windowsill and pictures of Lotuses on the wall. From an intellectual standpoint it is the wonder of the progression of engineering genius that has led to the current range of motors. And personally I’ve almost come to accept the fact that I will probably never own a supercar, so this game is in all likelihood the closest I will ever get it.
So now all my points come together like a bukkakke money shot. (Four Ks in bukkakke, right?)
I’m off the line and I realise I would probably buy this game for the sounds alone. If the game has a soundtrack, and that soundtrack is racing noise I will not be disappointed. In fact I’ll probably play it in my car while I’m driving. Anyway, I clumsily start to get the feel of shifting the gears for which you must rely on engine noise and in the beginning, the briefest of glances at the rev counter. Oh shit there’s a corner so now where I’d usually hammer the breaks, try to gas through the turn and slide into the barrier what happens is I drop shift to a gear below where I need it out of panic pressing, slow right the hell down then advance a gear into the turn, my revs drop and I power out.
Turns out I should always have run a manual game, and you should too and I’ll tell you why. If you want just an arcade experience and that’s all you ever want then you can drive an automatic but to be fair, if that’s what you want there are a ton of other games you should be playing. If you want to be involved and get your teeth into this then play the manual setting from the start. It may be tougher at first but you will get better faster and more comprehensively.
When I was learning to play bass I decided to exclude using my little fingers because it was easier to just leave them out as they are naturally not as dextrous. This was a mistake because when it came time to play more complex licks I really needed to bring them in and re-learning to include them was a bitch. I still don’t use the pinkie of my plucking hand because it is ridiculously, disproportionately small but that’s another matter.
Please enjoy another screen to break up the article
So I’m riding pretty high throughout my lap. I’m taking corners better than I could have ever expected, the scenery is gorgeous, the car is absolutely pristine and the noises primal. The revs, the sound of the road, the bumps (you know, the red and white bits, what the hell are they called again……..?) everything just kind of marries up and satisfies you. Very impressive stuff.
3D
Right so exactly the same set up but in 3D. The 3D demos didn’t last a full lap even but I assume it plays the same.
The car was an image to behold. The way the glass and metal gleamed together with how the rear of the car was very discernibly closer than the back window showed how clear the 3D is. They obviously have put a lot of work into getting the dimensions of the vehicles just right. The environments move to fast to work in 3D though. It’s the same in even the best 3D movie. Quick scenes just don’t cut it, they appear choppy and jittery and it does not work. Which is a shame because the car in 3D looks near as perfect as I can imagine.
So to summarize, you can keep your fancy third dimension, I’m happy to cream it on the sofa with my two thank you very much
This was strange because inFamous 2 was stuck in an obscure corner of the expo with only two active TVs which were facing away from the show floor. So unless you approached because you were interested in PixelJunk Shooter then chances are you wouldn’t get to see this. When we rolled around to it about halfway through the day barely anyone was loitering. And what a shame because like the first, inFamous 2 is shaping up to be a gem.
You still play Cole only this time in a fictional New Orleans (N’Orleans) city and he is still smashing heads using his electrical powers.
See?
Aside from me being annoyed that they use the word “Vortexes” instead of “Vortices” it plays very well and is a natural extension of inFamous.
First there was a melee sequence where Cole uses his new amp stick to channel his powers into blunt force. The camera pulls right up to him and sticks you in the action, when you deliver the final blow it slows down a little and almost crash zooms. As it does this you are able to maintain your orientation in the space and also instinctively know where the next enemy is. You can switch instantly between melee targets with fluidity and all in all it’s very wholesome.
Next there was a chase where Cole must grind the power lines and use static thrusters to run down a limo. This is one of those games where as a sequel it is leaving the fundamentals of the original unchanged but also adding story and enough new mechanics to feel as if something new is going on. It’s like the second season of a great television show. If you wanted something totally different, you’d change channel and watch something else, but you do want new plotlines.
So I plain forgot to get pictures of this, which is probably a blessing considering my camera skills.
SOCOM 4 seems like a fairly decent and involved third person shooter (Thirps?). You’re some kind of guy and you are required to shoot people and blow things up and so on. In a demo hall all that stuff is kind of by the by.
This was present on regular controlled PS3s but half of those were crashed out all day so I only got to play this on Move. It was both good and bad in this respect.
My only motion control shooter experience is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and that was a damn fine experience. Pin-point accuracy the whole time, fluid and intuitive movements. It played exactly how you would want. PS Move has sub-millimeter accuracy so should be a blast too right? If I had ten minutes to dick around with the settings then yes, conceivably. I would eliminate the bounding box, the free movement zone your reticule has before it moves the viewable screen around, straight away. It moved too slowly horizontally compared to how it moved vertically so when you had to engage combatants on your plane and then shift to those above or below you, it was disorienting.
The targeting was very nice, it pointed exactly where I wanted and you can’t ask more than that. It’s better than auto-aim. The Move controller worked just fine and when a decent enough game can utilise it well I will be happy to buy one.
Make no mistake, I probably will not buy SOCOM 4 because I have better things to be getting on with than another shooter, but if I was given it I wouldn’t be sad about it.
The above calibration screen pops up for each new user so it was set up for my height and reach. I figured that the Move controllers should be able to excel where the Wiimotes so spectacularly failed to capture my exact intended punches.
I know how to throw a decent variety of punches and with good form but The Fight did not know how to translate them. It reacted very slowly and because the virtual hands could not snap forward any punches landed felt more like fist pushes.So when you are trying in earnest to muller your quarry into mush and fine powder he thinks that you are modestly encouraging him with shy machismo by gently placing your clenched mitt on his jaw and shoving slightly.
So you try some slowed down, deliberate moves and the thing just does not get it. It could not read a hook, uppercuts seemed only to go for the body unless the opponent was right in your grill and intended body shots just fell short.
This appeared to be a short sweet tech demo almost, showing just how far motion control has come. A little game which played perfectly and whet your appetite for what could be done.
In the cold light of day though, it is oh so disappointing. Bitterly so.
"I will fist push you into unconsciousness" The red neon reflection is the most exciting thing happening on this screen
So I’ve pretty much milked this Expo for all it was worth. It is now a saggy teat at the business end of a deflated bag of redundant gaming news.
What you are seeing is the player character dressed as a young maiden kissing the ghost of a playwrite trying to complete his production. I have no idea why but I know that this a game I need to play.
Biggest surprise of the whole expo was right here.
Professor-Robot
cheliosgamer
