Archive for the 'Gaming' Category

I completed Crysis yesterday, so I thought I would post a few quick thoughts on my experience:

What I Liked

• As can be expected, the graphics in this game are insane. The jungle atmosphere is spot-on, physics are incredible, lighting is superb, and character modeling is excellent. Visually, this game is a real treat to play.
• The nano-suit which the player wears is an interesting game play mechanic. ‘Health’ is handled via the nano-suit, and the abilities which the suit provides (speed, strength, armor, and cloak) are fun to play with.
• Level design is excellent. All of the locations feel incredibly realistic, and there’s a ton to explore. I’ll probably play through the game once more just to fully explore each map, because I know there’s a ton of stuff I missed.

What I Didn’t Like

• Crysis isn’t near as long as Far Cry, which really disappointed me. Likewise, the maps in Crysis aren’t as large either.
• Crysis has an incredibly weak story line, much like Far Cry did. This comes as no surprise, especially in the FPS genre, but I was hoping for a little more meat than what I was given.
• Again, just like Far Cry, the game turns into a battle against alien forces. I really enjoyed battling the human forces in the early parts of this game, and I wish Crytek had stuck to that theme. The later alien-based levels are, for the most part, not very fun. Why can’t we get a game that uses this style engine and doesn’t devolve into a ’save-the-world-from-alien-attack’ kind of story? Perhaps Far Cry 2 will provide the kind of experience I’m looking for.
• Difficulty is really uneven. I played through on the ‘Normal’ difficulty, and found myself stuck at a few places (though I never got stuck permanently). Some battles are surprisingly easy, while others are incredibly hard to survive.
• Some of the vehicles the player gets to drive are woefully difficult to maneuver, which is frustrating. I’m not entirely sure why this is, because the vehicles in Far Cry were a pleasure to drive.
• This game is a system hog. I played at 1280×1024 on the High setting (no anti-aliasing or anything fancy), and there were still a few moments where things really chugged (entering and exiting buildings especially). Overall my experience was smooth, but these moments of stuttering killed some of the immersion factor.

I’m not sure if I can recommend this game or not. It’s worth playing through for the eye candy, but some of the game’s frustrations cancel out that fun. My final verdict for Crysis? C+

The long-awaited update to Team Fortress 2 was released Tuesday evening, so I’ve only had a brief amount of time to play around with Gold Rush, the map showcasing the new payload game type. In a word, the new game play theme is awesome. Gold Rush is much more enjoyable than Dustbowl (which I love, by the way), and I really hope more maps of this type are released over time.

Here’s how Gold Rush works. A mine cart, carrying a Fat Man style bomb, must be moved from point A to point B through 3 different stages. The attacking team (BLU) moves the cart simply by standing near it; the more team members surround the cart, the faster it moves. If the cart is left unattended for 30 seconds, it begins to move backwards towards the starting point. The map is played just like Dustbowl; there are a total of 3 stages in which BLU attacks and RED defends. Once either BLU successfully attacks all stages, or RED successfully defends a stage, the teams swap sides and the stages are played again.

Gold Rush is definitely a tough map. The defending team almost always has a height advantage, making it difficult to make quick progress. A number of choke points slow things down even more. But like every other map in Team Fortress 2, things are very well balanced.

The other major change to the game comes through the new unlockable weapons and achievements. Medic is the only player class that currently supports these new features, so everyone is inevitably playing as a Medic. A total of 36 new achievements are available, and for every 12 that you unlock, a new weapon option becomes available. First up is “The Blutsauger,” a syringe gun mod that leeches health from each enemy you hit. Next is “The Kritzkrieg,” a medi-gun mod that gives the person you use it on a 100% chance of firing critical damage (instead of the standard Ubercharge). Finally, “The Ubersaw” bone-saw mod provides a 25% charge to your Ubercharge meter for every hit you make on an enemy. I’ve only gotten 4 out of the 36 achievements so far (Surgical Prep, Trauma Queen, Intern, and Group Health), so I’ve got quite a ways to go. Some of the achievements look impossible to get, so I doubt I’ll make it all the way.

If you’d like to try out Team Fortress 2, along with the new updates, Valve is offering a free weekend this weekend (May 5-6). I can’t recommend this game highly enough, and the Steam service is great, so check it out. If you do check it out, look for me; my username is jgbCodeMonkey.

There’s a great article over at ShackNews offering a preview of the new Team Fortress 2 updates coming in the next week or two. In addition to discussing the new Goldrush game type, they also take a look at the brand new unlockable weapons for the Medic class. Some of the new weapons really sound exciting, and I’m really looking forward to this update.

Never before I have felt so connected to a Penny Arcade comic. I recently picked up Professor Layton and the Curious Village, a puzzle-adventure game for the Nintendo DS. After roughly 10 hours of game play, I’ve completed the game, so I thought I’d post some thoughts on it. Before we get to that, however, I’d like to explain how this game works.

Professor Layton is one of those hybrid titles like Puzzle Quest. It is neither an adventure game, nor is it a puzzle game; it’s somewhere right in the middle. Layton himself is a private detective of sorts who is hired to figure out a puzzling will left behind by the late Baron Reinhold. Along with his assistant Luke, Layton quickly finds himself in an ever-increasing mysterious situation. There are twists and turns all over the place, and plenty of mysteries to be solved in the process.

Each person you meet will give you clues to the ever increasing list of mysteries you encounter, but only if you solve a puzzle for them. And by puzzle, I mostly mean ‘brain teaser.’ The puzzle difficulties are all over the place in this game. Some puzzles are easy to solve, while others will have you banging your head against a hard surface in frustration. There’s a hint system in the game that offers you three hints per puzzle, which is often enough to help you figure things out, but sometimes the hints are themselves quite cryptic. Getting a hint costs you a ‘hint coin,’ of which there are a limited amount (though plenty are hidden throughout the game world). When you solve a puzzle successfully, you are awarded a number of ‘picarats’ (essentially points). Each puzzle is worth so many of these picarats, with harder puzzles being worth more. Answer incorrectly and the value awarded goes down. I’m not sure what this point system is good for. At one point you learn that if you get enough of these picarats, something special happens. I never saw anything happen as a result of my score, so I must not have gotten enough. But enough about these details. Let’s jump into my review.

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The long awaited Team Fortress 2 update arrives today! A new gameplay type, gold rush, is headlining this new release. A new control-point map, named “Badlands,” has been released for Team Fortress 2, along with a slew of other new updates. A complete change log details what’s new. In addition to the new map and game type, several other maps have been fixed, most importantly cp_dustbowl (which is still ridiculously hard to win as the BLU team). As always, if you’re into TF2 and want to look out for me, my nickname is ‘jgbCodeMonkey.’ I’ll be on later tonight; hope to see you there!

Update: I was wrong about the game type. It looks like the new badlands map is simply a new control point map (which I’m still excited about trying).

Another game I finished recently is The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS. This game took me quite a while to beat, mainly because there’s so much to do (and I didn’t do everything). I thought I’d write up a few thoughts I had.

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Last weekend I finally finished Metroid Prime 3. Here are some quick thoughts I had on the game:

What I Liked

• The “Morph Ball” mode is incredibly fun. In essence, you become a pinball and get to roll through a number of tracks. There were plenty of puzzles that used this gameplay, and it ended up being my favorite part of the game.
• The Wii-mote and Nunchuck controls work surprisingly well. This is the first FPS experience I’ve had with the Wii, and I was quite pleased.
• Backtracking is well used in the game. There are plenty of areas that are inaccessible until you get certain powerups, forcing you to really explore every nook and cranny of every map.

What I Didn’t Like

• Loading times aren’t what they should be. Levels are loaded in an on-demand fashion, and there are some times when the delay gets in the way.
• The game feels a little too easy. Firefights end up being “how fast can you pull the trigger.” Weapon powerups are obtained in a few places, but they never feel more powerful.

All in all, I highly recommend this game; it’s a strong A in my book.