Game of the Year? Hmm... tough one. It's been a good year for games. I think if I were to rank my top picks, it'd look something like this:
10) Odin Sphere (PS2) - wonderfully quirky little RPG/brawler combo, with 2d graphics that put some next-gen titles to shame and probably the best game soundtrack of the year.
9) God of War 2 (PS2) - epic in scale, utterly exhilerating to play, the perfect demonstration that you don't need a fancy gimmick controller to make a game's controls immersive. Probably the best looking game that will ever hit the PS2.
8) Call of Duty 4 (PC) - I hated the previous installments in the series, but this one is much, much better. Unlike most other "military" shooters around, this one has a pretty good plot. The combat is probably the most satisfying we've seen from an fps this year. It's too short, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts.
7) Bioshock (PC) - yeah, I know, it wasn't quite the Second Coming of Gaming that some of the early reviews made it out to be. The atmosphere, concept and sheer flexibility of the combat system, however, still mean it was a great game.
6) Command & Conquer 3 (PC) - I went into this prepared to hate it (I loathed C&C2 and Red Alert 2), but this was he game that, for me at least, put the fun back into the RTS genre. Stupidly fast-paced, it delivered the kind of adrenelin rush that you don't expect from an RTS. Moreover, with the gratuitous use of FMV cutscenes, it left most other offerings this year in the dust in terms of production values.
5) Crysis (PC) - The combat doesn't quite match up to Call of Duty 4's, but the sheer scope of Crysis is incredible. Even compared to Farcry, the sheer number of ways you can tackle each mission is staggering. If it weren't for the incredibly irritating floaty mission in the alien base, this would have been a contender for number 1.
4) Forza Motorsport 2 (Xbox 360) - Still no release date in sight for Gran Turismo 5, but I don't care any more. This is the best "realistic" racing sim I've seen on any platform, ever. A few more tracks would have been nice, but I guess we can hope to see that in the sequel.
3) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - With a hideously dated game-engine and a repetative combat system, this might seem an odd pick for so high up on the list. However, with the superb production values, the great writing and the innovative "everyday life" dynamic, this was my favourite Japanese RPG of the year.
2) Portal (PC) - Let's be clear, this game was too short. But there's no point crying over every mistake, you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake.
1) Mass Effect (Xbox 360) - My game of the year, by some distance. Bioshock show just what they can do when they step out of the shackles of other people's content. It took me a while to get into this game, as the sheer size of it was a bit intimidating. However, there's no denying this is the deepest, best written, best produced and just-plain-all-around-jaw-dropping game of the year. The combat rocks, the characters are memorable and the game mechanics are intuitive.
Now, a few games not quite in my top 10, but which also impressed me a lot this year (in no particular order):
Ar Tonelico (PS2) - The ultimate guilty pleasure. I really shouldn't like this, but I couldn't help it.
Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - Too short and unoriginal to make the top 10, but still engrossing.
Resident Evil 4 (Wii) - One of the few Wii ports to be genuinely enhanced by the control system.
Final Fantasy 3 (DS) - This is how you do a remake.
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (PSP) - Another excellent remake.
Heavenly Sword (PS3) - Thoroughly overshadowed by God of War 2, but still decent.
And now, the disappointments...
Supreme Commander (PC) - It pains me to write this, because I had a lot of hopes invested in this game, but it just reminded me how much things had moved on since Total Annihilation. A good effort, but it felt slow and (dare I say it) a bit boring compare
Wow... if this story isn't a wild exaggeration, then this is about as unfortunate as a game-bug can possibly get. Of course, a reasonably savvy user could probably have an affected system working again fairly quickly without any data-loss, but my own experience suggests that such users will be in the minority.
The only gaming-related parallel I can think of relates to the uninstall programme bug for the 2001 version of Pool of Radiance. In that instance, attempting to uninstall the game (something many users would do not long after installing it, given the tedious and half-baked nature of the game) had a good chance of wiping the user's hard disk. I actually deliberately triggered this bug for fun myself when I decided it was time to wipe my old machine after I bought a new system. If anybody can think of any other examples on this kind of scale, please do share them.
I wonder if this is going to cause any unpleasant and potentially expensive legal repercussions for CCP, from users who have lost data while trying to fix the issue?
Given your history of trolling me, I don't know why I'm even bothering to reply.
Read my original post. WoW ran acceptably on my old P4 2.0ghz. It ran perfectly, with all extra prettiness turned on, on the P4 3.2ghz that replaced it. There is no discernable performance difference between how it ran on that or how it runs on my current Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz, 2gigs RAM, GF7950 or, indeed, my Core 2 Duo, 2ghz, 2 gigs RAM, crappy intel graphics laptop, which cost around a quarter the price of the laptop under discussion here.
On both my current systems, as well as my previous desktop, the fps is locked above 60fps at all times, in full detail at the highest resolution my monitor will support. There would be absolutely no benefit in WoW terms from moving to the laptop under discussion.
Yes, of course I know this, but read the blurb that goes with it. They're talking about "the ultimate World of Warcraft gaming experience". Strikes me as a somewhat dubious claim to make, given you could almost certainly get an identical experience on a machine costing less than a quarter of the price.
Or perhaps a Crysis/CoD4/anything-that-might-actually-challenge-a-modern-PC branded uber-laptop, mmm?
It's no secret that its the fps market that drives the top-end gaming PCs market. MMORPGs such as WoW are generally designed to be relatively undemanding, to maximise the player-base. A cynic might suggest that it is those who are time-rich but cash-poor (to put it euphemistically) who are the most reliable market for these games, so forcing an expensive upgrade doesn't make sense.
Given that World of Warcraft used to run just fine on my old P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4, why on earth would I want to spend such a ludicrous sum of money on a laptop to play it with? I know that Burning Crusade was a little harder on systems than the original game and that Lich King is likely to be slightly more so, but we're still not talking about a game on the cutting edge of technology here. Even cheap, off-the-peg PCs bought in the last two or three years should be able to run it just fine. World of Warcraft relies more on design than technology for its visual appeal.
Crysis? Sure, I can see that people could need an expensive upgrade to play that (I know I would - although after playing the first 2 hours, I'm not convinced the game is worth it)... but not World of Warcraft.
That said, I can see some redeeming value here, provided they design it so that the Horde laptop randomly crashes and reboots, mysteriously formats your hard drive at regular intervals, sends filthy e-mails to your mother and electrocutes your dog.
Actually, the big news for me in that list is "Lord of the Rings: The Third Age". I've been itching to replay that for months, but now that I've given away my original Xbox, had no way of doing so. It was an interesting and ambitious attempt at making a Final Fantasy-style RPG out of the LOTR franchise and even though it didn't work perfectly, the production values were high enough that I'm looking forward to going back to it.
Why was parent modded off-topic? The game is mentioned in the summary and is probably one of the factors behind the big increase in PS3 sales. I've not picked up my copy yet (too many other things to finish off first - Persona 3, Mass Effect and Crysis at the top of the list), but it does look astoundingly good.
I think, more than anything else, the factor behind the PS3's sales increase will be the fact that it is finally getting some games worth playing. For almost a year, Resistance: Fall of Man has been the only really top-notch title on the system, but this is definitely starting to change now.
Last time around, the PS2 won the sales war by on overwhelming margin despite being both the most expensive system and the least impressive technically. Why? The games. First of all, it had the key, core exclusive franchises that move systems like no other; Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. However, this alone wouldn't have been enough. More important was the fact that the PS2 was effectively guaranteed to pick up any game that wasn't a 1-platform exclusive. Plenty of games didn't get an Xbox or a Cube release, despite appearing elsewhere, but despite the pain involved in the development, the PS2 got basically everything. If your family only plans to own one console and doesn't intend to change it for a good few years, this is a huge factor.
So far in this generation, no system has managed to establish a similar position on games. The PS3 is notoriously short of titles and most PS3s, my own included, are still mostly used as shiny and expensive PS2s. None of the franchises that helped Sony out so much last time have hit the machine yet. The Wii is an absolute desert for quality titles outside of a tiny number of Nintendo's own franchise games. In Japan, at least, its monthly sales lead has evaporated as the PS3 makes a fightback. The 360 is probably the best placed on games, due to its greater age, but it hardly has what I would call a commanding lead. MS have done a good job of attracting a more balanced line-up and, in Forza 2, have almost neutralised the advantage held by Sony with one of their "big" games (Gran Turismo), but they've still got a long way to go in some markets and in throwing off their image as the "fps" console.
The game is an excellent (but now dated) adventure/puzzle game (with minor action elements), that was something of a sleeper hit in the early-ish days of the PS2, before its software library became the unstoppable juggernaut it eventually turned into.
The basic concept of the game is that the player, who takes the role of a boy with horns, left in a mysterious castle as a sacrifice, must guide a mute girl around and eventually out of said castle, fighting against shadowy enemies and solving increasingly complicated puzzles. The game was notable for a number of reasons.
First, it had a striking visual and aural style. Unlike many early PS2 games, it turned away from bright colours and fancy coloured lighting effects, adopting a colour scheme that verged on monochrome at times, with a heavy emphasis on contrasting light and dark areas. The music was distinctly minimalist, but fitted the game well enough that the soundtrack went on to sell well in its own right.
The game-play was also notable. By contrast with the excess of button-mashing titles that dominated the PS2 scene at the time, Ico had a slower, more thoughtful pace. Combat elements were largely perfunctory - the real challenge was in defeating the puzzles posed by the game environment. In some respects, the gameplay had many parallels to that of the 3d Zelda games, although Ico placed higher degree of emphasis upon artistry than almost anything else around at the time on any platform. There was no enthusiastic voice-over urging you on to rack up big combo attacks, or to rush to the next objective before the bomb went off. Instead, the player experienced a mix of trepidation and a genuine sense of exploration as he made his way through the game world.
Ico never became a huge seller and never got a huge mainstream following. Nevertheless, it's an important part of gaming history. It was the first game to really use the power of its console generation to deliver something other than fancy special effects. It set new standards for story-telling, that remain influential even today. It spawned a "spiritual successor", in the form of "Shadow of the Colossus" (released relatively late in the PS2's life-cycle), which took many of Ico's concepts and developed them further, with greater technical expertise, to deliver an experience which was simultanously substantially flawed and deeply engaging.
Tsunamis and Rogue Waves are very different. If you'll forgive the generalisations; Tsunamis are mostly caused by events which result in the displacement of large quantities of water, such as earthquakes, landslides and asteroid impacts. They travel for hundreds, or even thousands of miles and cover a wide area of the sea. Their speed and height is heavily dependent upon the depth of the water - in deep water, they can travel at hundreds of miles per hour, but, crucially, may be no more than a few inches high. Ships can pass over them without ever realising they've done so. When they hit shallower water, the wave grows. However, what does the damage with tsunamis is not the height of the wave, per se, as the sheer amount of water behind it. The Boxing Day Tsumani that caused so much devastation a couple of years ago was only about 30 feet high when it hit land in many places - well within the range for a storm wave at the high end of the normal scale. However, the "wave" you see with a tsumani is just the front end of a huge body of water, with a vast amount of momentum. When a tsunami hits, it is as though the water level in the area affected has just jumped up to the height of the top of the incoming wave. This is obviously devastating, as it causes massive flooding and hugely powerful movements of water that can go miles inland.
Rogue waves, on the other hand, are essentially "surface" waves. The causes vary (winds running counter to currents is one cause, but there are others), but they have, in most respects, more in common with a storm wave than a tsunami. Their shape resembles that of a "breaking" wave when it hits the shore (although this is quite different from the "rolling" shape of a wave in the middle of the ocean) and there is no huge mass of water behind the wave itself. However, the height of a rogue wave is truly terrifying - essentially up to 100 feet - twice the size of the largest storm waves you could normally expect to encounter. Rogue waves are so dangerous to ships because their size and shape ensures that the pressure they exert on a ship they hit is way beyond what would normally be expected and designed for. However, they are rare and short-lived. The waves will usually be no more than a mile or two long and will run for about 10 miles or so on average.
The system discussed in TFA appears to be a radar based system. It works by picking up very, very large waves on radar and warning the crew of a ship caught in the path (giving them time to prepare and turn the ship to meet the wave). However, tsunamis would not show up on radar in mid-ocean and only the ultra-rare megatsunamis (which can occur either in an enclosed bay which suffers a massive land-slide, or on a broader scale when a truly massive asteroid impact or landslide occurs) would ever reach the height of a freak wave. Tsunami detection is likely better left to seismic monitoring and pressure sensors.
I doubt very much this is a widespread issue. When a console game releases with major crash-bugs, it tends to be picked up in reviews or even make the news (by contrast with PC games, where it is often treated as par for the course). Even minor bugs tend to report in screaming all over the forums. I've seen absolutely nothing of the sort on any of the forums I would expect to with regard to Halo 3. If a game *this* big had a serious crash bug, it would have been on the TV news.
Halo 3 isn't a great game (although it's by no means bad either). It's way too short and besides HD graphics, it doesn't add much that wasn't in Halo 2. That said, there is absolutely no reason to believe that it's a broken game.
Personally, I stopped reading the article at the point where he says:
"Much like cut scenes, level loads are anathema to enjoyment of game play"
Sorry, but an awful lot of gamers (in fact, I'd say we're in a comfortable majority) enjoy our cutscenes quite a lot. As far as I'm concerned - the prettier the better. I'd take some well-done CG or even FMV over a game-engine cutscene any day.
Yeah, Metroid, I will admit, is a welcome step forward for Nintendo in terms of production values, an area in which they've lagged way behind the field for the better part of a decade. It's not a fantastic game, but it is solid enough and compensates for some of the most serious defects of earlier installments.
My point with my post was more about how ridiculous it is to tar all the works of a single publisher - especially one as vast as EA - with a single brush. Of course EA put out dire shovelware, most publishers do. Genuinely bad games are more or less a thing of the past, existing now only in isolated incidents on straight-to-budget PC and DS/GBA ranges, but hundreds of mediocre and boring games hit the shelves every year from many different directions. My point was that EA put out a good number of games that do not fit easily into the established slashdot stereotype of their output.
Funny, I don't remember any of those in... say... Battle for Middle Earth, C&C3 or Crysis, to name but a few.
Of course, had Bioware been bought out by Nintendo, we could have expected to see:
1) "Lovable" mascot characters running all over every game from the moment the first intro screen flashes up. 2) Menus that look and feel like they were designed in 1980, with sound effects that appear to have been produced on a cheap keyboard synthesiser of a similar vintage. 3) Voice acting? What voice acting? All you need is a bunch of random squeaks and twitters. Surprised nobody yet released an epic science-fiction RPG that sounds like the Teletubbies? 4) A soundtrack that might, just might, have been passable on the SNES. 5) Mass Effect: Red and Mass Effect: Blue. If you want to see the entire game, make sure you buy both versions!
Indeed. To my mind, C&C3 was the best installment in the series since the ground-breaking original (which wasn't a better game per-se, but did basically introduce the drag-click interface that defines the modern RTS). After the turgid, obsolete-before-it-was-released Red Alert 2 and the why-does-this-even-have-the-C&C-name-on-it Generals, C&C3 was fantastic. Very fast paced and very demanding in terms of both reflexes and tactics, with superb production values (yay FMV cutscenes). I'd been expecting Supreme Commander to be the RTS for me this year, but C&C3 was just so much more fun.
I know that EA-bashing is in vogue right now, but they do still put out some excellent games and there are faint but plausible signs of a change in their attitude towards studios they absorb.
Right now, the only people moving this way are Sony. You'll note that Warhawk was available as a download purchase, as well as being sold in stores. Don't expect to ever see this feature for the Wii, though. The lack of a proper hard-drive means that you'll never see new commercial-quality games as downloads.
That's... a little harsh. Not necessarily untrue, per se, but it's not quite giving the full picture.
My own impression of Molyneux's output over the last decade is that it's been very strong on the ideas, but dreadful on the implementation. While this means that many of his games leave the user frustrated and infuriated, it doesn't mean he's a bad thing for the industry.
Take Black & White as a case in point. There are few games that have inspired such utter, blind rage in me as the original Black & White. I remember one of my friends hammering the eject button on his CD drive, yanking the disk out so hard he damaged the drive, then smashing the disk into tiny pieces with a hammer, sticking it in an envelope and mailing it to Lionhead with an obscenity-filled tirade. The concept was very strong; a god-game that you play not, primarily, through exercising a direct influence, but rather by training your own independently intelligent avatar. Unfortunately, the game was crippled by terrible mission design, one of the worst camera systems in the history of gaming and bizarre quirks in the AI that could cause your creature to snap and behave completely and irreversibly out of character for no discernable reason.
However, the core concept of a game in which you train up an avatar through "tactile" interaction, reinforcement of behaviours and more advanced training has lived on and now sits at the heart of the modern "virtual pets" genre, which has become such a cash-cow on the Nintendo DS.
Slashdot posters often complain about a supposed lack of innovation in the games industry (although this isn't a line that I personally subscribe to). But if you want to encourage innovation, then tolerating and supporting the eccentrics who produce terrible games containing great ideas (that others with more of a knack for polish can develop further) can't be a bad thing.
Yes, I think Deus Ex was what, for me, ruined Half-Life 2. Up to that point, fps protagonists had either been completely mute, or else they'd been... well... Duke Nukem. Deus Ex demonstrated that you could work dialogue into an fps that actually improved the experience and added to the atmosphere. Most other plot-heavy fpses since then have gone down that route and, had HL2 or Bioshock chosen to go down that route, both would have been massively enhanced.
Ugh, this kind of pretentious clap-trap illustrates perfectly what I found objectionable about Half-Life 2.
Now, don't get me wrong, I still think the original Half-Life was one of the greatest fpses ever made. Sure, it's not aged all that well and feels a little primative now, but compared to the competition at the time (basically Unreal and Quake 2), it was superb. It had a plot that made sense, an environment that actually felt plausible and AI which, while relying heavily on scripting, *felt* convincing and realistic to the player.
Half-Life 2, however, left me utterly cold. It reminded me of nothing more than the pretentious student-videos I'd had to sit through at University, put together by people who thought that "OMG SILENT MOVIE" or "OMG BLACK AND WHITE" were original, ground breaking concepts, never thought of before.
The biggest problem I had with HL2's storytelling was that it took the technical limitations imposed by the general state of the genre at the time of HL1 and made them into supposed virtues. The biggest obstacle to immersion for me was the "mute protagonist". I'm sorry, but this is absolute bollocks. We're supposed to be playing *Doctor* Freeman here. I've spent my share of time in academic circles and I have never known a PhD who could stay silent for more than 10 seconds at a time. However, we are supposed to believe that this mute, inexpressive guy whose visage is largely obscured by a bulky hazmat suit is some kind of inspirational resistance leader? Pull the other one. He's also got this strange, stuck-firmly-in-the-freaky-valley woman who obsesses over him and who seems to be on the verge of orgasm every time he stares blankly at her or hits a bit of the scenery with a crowbar. Immersion by this point is so badly blown as to be irretrievable.
People talk about *proper* cut-scenes destroying immersion, but frankly, compared to the nasty, cut-price story-telling in HL2, the classic "Mark Hamill at his worst" cutscenes of the Wing Commander 3 era are masterpieces. I fail to see what is so great about being able to run around during vital plot exposition, to the point that half the time you don't even realise it's happening until you've missed half of it.
Finally... this idea that the back-plot can be filled in through newspaper cuttings and the like? Fine... that can work. If done properly. Unfortunately, HL2 didn't have anything like enough of it and finding a good chunk of it involved spending way too much time staring at every inch of wall in the game in the hope of finding something relevant. I found HL2's contemporary, Doom 3, did this whole business much better, with the audio-logs system.
I see a few comments in TFA about things you can do that will ingratiate you to the staff in a store. My own experience (UK-based) is that this really, really does matter. As a "good customer", you shouldn't count on automatically receiving any favours... but valued customers are always going to be more likely to pick up unexpected little bonuses.
My own case in point here revolves around the launch of the Wii. I hadn't actually planned on picking one up, to be honest, but these were in seriously short supply in the UK right through to the middle of February in most regions. Now, I've gotten into the habit in recent years of buying most of my games from a small branch of GAME (our equivalent of Gamestop) that I pass in the morning on my way to the office. It saves me the stress of having postmen or neighbours steal games I've ordered online during delivery (this has happened a few times now), it's convenient and the staff in this store are good; older than the average straight-out-of-a-Mickey-Mouse-degree-at-university types you often get, deeply knowledgeable about games and generally not too pushy. Because they're a small store and often don't get much stock in, I tend to pre-order most games that I know I'm going to want. I buy enough games that the Loyalty card is worth it and I don't mind getting the odd junk-mail from them (they sometimes throw in vouchers). In short, from their POV, I'm more or less the ideal customer.
Now, as the only person in the team without family committments, I got roped into manning the office between Christmas and New Year. These are typically graveyard days - you come in late, take a long lunch and don't hang around in the evening, but you're there just in case anything goes wrong (always a major concern in my line of work). On the way into the office that week, I popped into GAME to pick up some title or other; I forget what it was now... some fairly crappy expansion pack I'd been putting off buying for a while, I think. When I get in, the manager tells me that they're expecting a shipment of a half dozen Wiis in some time around 11AM. At this point, my "shiny toys in short supply" circuit goes in and the Wii moves on my list from "meh, I'll pick one up cheap in a year or two" to "MUSTHAVEMUSTHAVEMUSTHAVE". He warns me to get over for 11AM, as they'll vanish in seconds when they arrive.
I go to the office, sit down and wait out the morning. At about 10:50AM, I'm getting my coat on to pop out. Suddenly, one of our senior managers (who has also decided to work these days) decides that it's time to have a long, in depth discussion with me about a project I've been working on. My heart sinks as the clock ticks around... 11:00, 11:15, 11:30... 11:45AM. Eventually, just before noon, I finally make it out of the office. I walk into GAME and the manager says "Sorry, they all went in minutes." I think I swore at this point. Then he says "But we held one back for you".
Gaming store staff are under an obligation to treat all customers equally and most will do their best to do so. You should never expect any favours. But don't be surprised when genuinely good customers do get the odd little perk.:)
Indeed. And this is where a longer term problem - one which affects players as well - is going to rear its head. While the original business model for the game still held true, Sony had a huge incentive to actively develop the game and continue producing new decks and the like. After all, from what I can see, they're probably not actually making much (if any) profit on selling the game/hardware bundle. The plan must always have been to pump the profits out of the card sales.
However... the golden goose has now been well and truly shot, cooked and served up for dinner with all the trimmings. The most significant side-effect of its rather premature demise is that Sony no longer have any real incentive to continue developing the game. I'd expect to see it quietly sidelined in a matter of months, or even weeks.
Indeed. And while I love my 360 (currently more than either of the other two consoles), I really can't help but feel that the decision to make the HDD "optional" was a huge mistake on MS's part. The "Core" version of the 360 never sold particularly well, from what I've seen. It's only ever going to account for a small proportion of the installed base. And yet, because it exists, we're never going to see much in the way of games that actually require the use of the HDD, which brings along all kinds of technical limitations.
My general take on Sony's strategy for this round of the console wars... which hasn't been producing many results to day... is that they're hoping that in the longer term, their superior hardware will give them a clear technological advantage, attacting both consumers and developers. Right now, both the Wii and the PS3 are still stuck in the release-desert that comes in the year or so after launch, when your shiny new console is mainly used to play old games and gathers a lot of dust. The 360 is the only machine attracting games actually worth playing.
Ratchet and Clank seems to be the first sign that the PS3 is actually moving out of this early stage; the first true "second generation" game for the system. It's basically the first chance we've had to measure a "mature" PS3 game against its Xbox 360 equivalents and seeing whether Sony's strategy is likely to pay off. Once the game comes out in the UK, I'll be looking forward to picking it up and taking a look for myself.
The reviews at least make it clear it won't be money wasted.
Slashdot Mirror
Game of the Year? Hmm... tough one. It's been a good year for games. I think if I were to rank my top picks, it'd look something like this:
10) Odin Sphere (PS2) - wonderfully quirky little RPG/brawler combo, with 2d graphics that put some next-gen titles to shame and probably the best game soundtrack of the year.
9) God of War 2 (PS2) - epic in scale, utterly exhilerating to play, the perfect demonstration that you don't need a fancy gimmick controller to make a game's controls immersive. Probably the best looking game that will ever hit the PS2.
8) Call of Duty 4 (PC) - I hated the previous installments in the series, but this one is much, much better. Unlike most other "military" shooters around, this one has a pretty good plot. The combat is probably the most satisfying we've seen from an fps this year. It's too short, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts.
7) Bioshock (PC) - yeah, I know, it wasn't quite the Second Coming of Gaming that some of the early reviews made it out to be. The atmosphere, concept and sheer flexibility of the combat system, however, still mean it was a great game.
6) Command & Conquer 3 (PC) - I went into this prepared to hate it (I loathed C&C2 and Red Alert 2), but this was he game that, for me at least, put the fun back into the RTS genre. Stupidly fast-paced, it delivered the kind of adrenelin rush that you don't expect from an RTS. Moreover, with the gratuitous use of FMV cutscenes, it left most other offerings this year in the dust in terms of production values.
5) Crysis (PC) - The combat doesn't quite match up to Call of Duty 4's, but the sheer scope of Crysis is incredible. Even compared to Farcry, the sheer number of ways you can tackle each mission is staggering. If it weren't for the incredibly irritating floaty mission in the alien base, this would have been a contender for number 1.
4) Forza Motorsport 2 (Xbox 360) - Still no release date in sight for Gran Turismo 5, but I don't care any more. This is the best "realistic" racing sim I've seen on any platform, ever. A few more tracks would have been nice, but I guess we can hope to see that in the sequel.
3) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - With a hideously dated game-engine and a repetative combat system, this might seem an odd pick for so high up on the list. However, with the superb production values, the great writing and the innovative "everyday life" dynamic, this was my favourite Japanese RPG of the year.
2) Portal (PC) - Let's be clear, this game was too short. But there's no point crying over every mistake, you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake.
1) Mass Effect (Xbox 360) - My game of the year, by some distance. Bioshock show just what they can do when they step out of the shackles of other people's content. It took me a while to get into this game, as the sheer size of it was a bit intimidating. However, there's no denying this is the deepest, best written, best produced and just-plain-all-around-jaw-dropping game of the year. The combat rocks, the characters are memorable and the game mechanics are intuitive.
Now, a few games not quite in my top 10, but which also impressed me a lot this year (in no particular order):
Ar Tonelico (PS2) - The ultimate guilty pleasure. I really shouldn't like this, but I couldn't help it.
Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - Too short and unoriginal to make the top 10, but still engrossing.
Resident Evil 4 (Wii) - One of the few Wii ports to be genuinely enhanced by the control system.
Final Fantasy 3 (DS) - This is how you do a remake.
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (PSP) - Another excellent remake.
Heavenly Sword (PS3) - Thoroughly overshadowed by God of War 2, but still decent.
And now, the disappointments...
Supreme Commander (PC) - It pains me to write this, because I had a lot of hopes invested in this game, but it just reminded me how much things had moved on since Total Annihilation. A good effort, but it felt slow and (dare I say it) a bit boring compare
Wow... if this story isn't a wild exaggeration, then this is about as unfortunate as a game-bug can possibly get. Of course, a reasonably savvy user could probably have an affected system working again fairly quickly without any data-loss, but my own experience suggests that such users will be in the minority.
The only gaming-related parallel I can think of relates to the uninstall programme bug for the 2001 version of Pool of Radiance. In that instance, attempting to uninstall the game (something many users would do not long after installing it, given the tedious and half-baked nature of the game) had a good chance of wiping the user's hard disk. I actually deliberately triggered this bug for fun myself when I decided it was time to wipe my old machine after I bought a new system. If anybody can think of any other examples on this kind of scale, please do share them.
I wonder if this is going to cause any unpleasant and potentially expensive legal repercussions for CCP, from users who have lost data while trying to fix the issue?
Given your history of trolling me, I don't know why I'm even bothering to reply.
Read my original post. WoW ran acceptably on my old P4 2.0ghz. It ran perfectly, with all extra prettiness turned on, on the P4 3.2ghz that replaced it. There is no discernable performance difference between how it ran on that or how it runs on my current Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz, 2gigs RAM, GF7950 or, indeed, my Core 2 Duo, 2ghz, 2 gigs RAM, crappy intel graphics laptop, which cost around a quarter the price of the laptop under discussion here.
On both my current systems, as well as my previous desktop, the fps is locked above 60fps at all times, in full detail at the highest resolution my monitor will support. There would be absolutely no benefit in WoW terms from moving to the laptop under discussion.
Yes, of course I know this, but read the blurb that goes with it. They're talking about "the ultimate World of Warcraft gaming experience". Strikes me as a somewhat dubious claim to make, given you could almost certainly get an identical experience on a machine costing less than a quarter of the price.
Or perhaps a Crysis/CoD4/anything-that-might-actually-challenge-a-modern-PC branded uber-laptop, mmm?
It's no secret that its the fps market that drives the top-end gaming PCs market. MMORPGs such as WoW are generally designed to be relatively undemanding, to maximise the player-base. A cynic might suggest that it is those who are time-rich but cash-poor (to put it euphemistically) who are the most reliable market for these games, so forcing an expensive upgrade doesn't make sense.
Given that World of Warcraft used to run just fine on my old P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4, why on earth would I want to spend such a ludicrous sum of money on a laptop to play it with? I know that Burning Crusade was a little harder on systems than the original game and that Lich King is likely to be slightly more so, but we're still not talking about a game on the cutting edge of technology here. Even cheap, off-the-peg PCs bought in the last two or three years should be able to run it just fine. World of Warcraft relies more on design than technology for its visual appeal.
Crysis? Sure, I can see that people could need an expensive upgrade to play that (I know I would - although after playing the first 2 hours, I'm not convinced the game is worth it)... but not World of Warcraft.
That said, I can see some redeeming value here, provided they design it so that the Horde laptop randomly crashes and reboots, mysteriously formats your hard drive at regular intervals, sends filthy e-mails to your mother and electrocutes your dog.
Actually, the big news for me in that list is "Lord of the Rings: The Third Age". I've been itching to replay that for months, but now that I've given away my original Xbox, had no way of doing so. It was an interesting and ambitious attempt at making a Final Fantasy-style RPG out of the LOTR franchise and even though it didn't work perfectly, the production values were high enough that I'm looking forward to going back to it.
Why was parent modded off-topic? The game is mentioned in the summary and is probably one of the factors behind the big increase in PS3 sales. I've not picked up my copy yet (too many other things to finish off first - Persona 3, Mass Effect and Crysis at the top of the list), but it does look astoundingly good.
I think, more than anything else, the factor behind the PS3's sales increase will be the fact that it is finally getting some games worth playing. For almost a year, Resistance: Fall of Man has been the only really top-notch title on the system, but this is definitely starting to change now.
Last time around, the PS2 won the sales war by on overwhelming margin despite being both the most expensive system and the least impressive technically. Why? The games. First of all, it had the key, core exclusive franchises that move systems like no other; Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. However, this alone wouldn't have been enough. More important was the fact that the PS2 was effectively guaranteed to pick up any game that wasn't a 1-platform exclusive. Plenty of games didn't get an Xbox or a Cube release, despite appearing elsewhere, but despite the pain involved in the development, the PS2 got basically everything. If your family only plans to own one console and doesn't intend to change it for a good few years, this is a huge factor.
So far in this generation, no system has managed to establish a similar position on games. The PS3 is notoriously short of titles and most PS3s, my own included, are still mostly used as shiny and expensive PS2s. None of the franchises that helped Sony out so much last time have hit the machine yet. The Wii is an absolute desert for quality titles outside of a tiny number of Nintendo's own franchise games. In Japan, at least, its monthly sales lead has evaporated as the PS3 makes a fightback. The 360 is probably the best placed on games, due to its greater age, but it hardly has what I would call a commanding lead. MS have done a good job of attracting a more balanced line-up and, in Forza 2, have almost neutralised the advantage held by Sony with one of their "big" games (Gran Turismo), but they've still got a long way to go in some markets and in throwing off their image as the "fps" console.
The game is an excellent (but now dated) adventure/puzzle game (with minor action elements), that was something of a sleeper hit in the early-ish days of the PS2, before its software library became the unstoppable juggernaut it eventually turned into.
The basic concept of the game is that the player, who takes the role of a boy with horns, left in a mysterious castle as a sacrifice, must guide a mute girl around and eventually out of said castle, fighting against shadowy enemies and solving increasingly complicated puzzles. The game was notable for a number of reasons.
First, it had a striking visual and aural style. Unlike many early PS2 games, it turned away from bright colours and fancy coloured lighting effects, adopting a colour scheme that verged on monochrome at times, with a heavy emphasis on contrasting light and dark areas. The music was distinctly minimalist, but fitted the game well enough that the soundtrack went on to sell well in its own right.
The game-play was also notable. By contrast with the excess of button-mashing titles that dominated the PS2 scene at the time, Ico had a slower, more thoughtful pace. Combat elements were largely perfunctory - the real challenge was in defeating the puzzles posed by the game environment. In some respects, the gameplay had many parallels to that of the 3d Zelda games, although Ico placed higher degree of emphasis upon artistry than almost anything else around at the time on any platform. There was no enthusiastic voice-over urging you on to rack up big combo attacks, or to rush to the next objective before the bomb went off. Instead, the player experienced a mix of trepidation and a genuine sense of exploration as he made his way through the game world.
Ico never became a huge seller and never got a huge mainstream following. Nevertheless, it's an important part of gaming history. It was the first game to really use the power of its console generation to deliver something other than fancy special effects. It set new standards for story-telling, that remain influential even today. It spawned a "spiritual successor", in the form of "Shadow of the Colossus" (released relatively late in the PS2's life-cycle), which took many of Ico's concepts and developed them further, with greater technical expertise, to deliver an experience which was simultanously substantially flawed and deeply engaging.
So yes, we should care about Ico.
Not necessarily.
Tsunamis and Rogue Waves are very different. If you'll forgive the generalisations; Tsunamis are mostly caused by events which result in the displacement of large quantities of water, such as earthquakes, landslides and asteroid impacts. They travel for hundreds, or even thousands of miles and cover a wide area of the sea. Their speed and height is heavily dependent upon the depth of the water - in deep water, they can travel at hundreds of miles per hour, but, crucially, may be no more than a few inches high. Ships can pass over them without ever realising they've done so. When they hit shallower water, the wave grows. However, what does the damage with tsunamis is not the height of the wave, per se, as the sheer amount of water behind it. The Boxing Day Tsumani that caused so much devastation a couple of years ago was only about 30 feet high when it hit land in many places - well within the range for a storm wave at the high end of the normal scale. However, the "wave" you see with a tsumani is just the front end of a huge body of water, with a vast amount of momentum. When a tsunami hits, it is as though the water level in the area affected has just jumped up to the height of the top of the incoming wave. This is obviously devastating, as it causes massive flooding and hugely powerful movements of water that can go miles inland.
Rogue waves, on the other hand, are essentially "surface" waves. The causes vary (winds running counter to currents is one cause, but there are others), but they have, in most respects, more in common with a storm wave than a tsunami. Their shape resembles that of a "breaking" wave when it hits the shore (although this is quite different from the "rolling" shape of a wave in the middle of the ocean) and there is no huge mass of water behind the wave itself. However, the height of a rogue wave is truly terrifying - essentially up to 100 feet - twice the size of the largest storm waves you could normally expect to encounter. Rogue waves are so dangerous to ships because their size and shape ensures that the pressure they exert on a ship they hit is way beyond what would normally be expected and designed for. However, they are rare and short-lived. The waves will usually be no more than a mile or two long and will run for about 10 miles or so on average.
The system discussed in TFA appears to be a radar based system. It works by picking up very, very large waves on radar and warning the crew of a ship caught in the path (giving them time to prepare and turn the ship to meet the wave). However, tsunamis would not show up on radar in mid-ocean and only the ultra-rare megatsunamis (which can occur either in an enclosed bay which suffers a massive land-slide, or on a broader scale when a truly massive asteroid impact or landslide occurs) would ever reach the height of a freak wave. Tsunami detection is likely better left to seismic monitoring and pressure sensors.
I doubt very much this is a widespread issue. When a console game releases with major crash-bugs, it tends to be picked up in reviews or even make the news (by contrast with PC games, where it is often treated as par for the course). Even minor bugs tend to report in screaming all over the forums. I've seen absolutely nothing of the sort on any of the forums I would expect to with regard to Halo 3. If a game *this* big had a serious crash bug, it would have been on the TV news.
Halo 3 isn't a great game (although it's by no means bad either). It's way too short and besides HD graphics, it doesn't add much that wasn't in Halo 2. That said, there is absolutely no reason to believe that it's a broken game.
Agreed.
Personally, I stopped reading the article at the point where he says:
"Much like cut scenes, level loads are anathema to enjoyment of game play"
Sorry, but an awful lot of gamers (in fact, I'd say we're in a comfortable majority) enjoy our cutscenes quite a lot. As far as I'm concerned - the prettier the better. I'd take some well-done CG or even FMV over a game-engine cutscene any day.
Yeah, Metroid, I will admit, is a welcome step forward for Nintendo in terms of production values, an area in which they've lagged way behind the field for the better part of a decade. It's not a fantastic game, but it is solid enough and compensates for some of the most serious defects of earlier installments.
My point with my post was more about how ridiculous it is to tar all the works of a single publisher - especially one as vast as EA - with a single brush. Of course EA put out dire shovelware, most publishers do. Genuinely bad games are more or less a thing of the past, existing now only in isolated incidents on straight-to-budget PC and DS/GBA ranges, but hundreds of mediocre and boring games hit the shelves every year from many different directions. My point was that EA put out a good number of games that do not fit easily into the established slashdot stereotype of their output.
Funny, I don't remember any of those in... say... Battle for Middle Earth, C&C3 or Crysis, to name but a few.
Of course, had Bioware been bought out by Nintendo, we could have expected to see:
1) "Lovable" mascot characters running all over every game from the moment the first intro screen flashes up.
2) Menus that look and feel like they were designed in 1980, with sound effects that appear to have been produced on a cheap keyboard synthesiser of a similar vintage.
3) Voice acting? What voice acting? All you need is a bunch of random squeaks and twitters. Surprised nobody yet released an epic science-fiction RPG that sounds like the Teletubbies?
4) A soundtrack that might, just might, have been passable on the SNES.
5) Mass Effect: Red and Mass Effect: Blue. If you want to see the entire game, make sure you buy both versions!
Indeed. To my mind, C&C3 was the best installment in the series since the ground-breaking original (which wasn't a better game per-se, but did basically introduce the drag-click interface that defines the modern RTS). After the turgid, obsolete-before-it-was-released Red Alert 2 and the why-does-this-even-have-the-C&C-name-on-it Generals, C&C3 was fantastic. Very fast paced and very demanding in terms of both reflexes and tactics, with superb production values (yay FMV cutscenes). I'd been expecting Supreme Commander to be the RTS for me this year, but C&C3 was just so much more fun.
I know that EA-bashing is in vogue right now, but they do still put out some excellent games and there are faint but plausible signs of a change in their attitude towards studios they absorb.
Right now, the only people moving this way are Sony. You'll note that Warhawk was available as a download purchase, as well as being sold in stores. Don't expect to ever see this feature for the Wii, though. The lack of a proper hard-drive means that you'll never see new commercial-quality games as downloads.
That's... a little harsh. Not necessarily untrue, per se, but it's not quite giving the full picture.
My own impression of Molyneux's output over the last decade is that it's been very strong on the ideas, but dreadful on the implementation. While this means that many of his games leave the user frustrated and infuriated, it doesn't mean he's a bad thing for the industry.
Take Black & White as a case in point. There are few games that have inspired such utter, blind rage in me as the original Black & White. I remember one of my friends hammering the eject button on his CD drive, yanking the disk out so hard he damaged the drive, then smashing the disk into tiny pieces with a hammer, sticking it in an envelope and mailing it to Lionhead with an obscenity-filled tirade. The concept was very strong; a god-game that you play not, primarily, through exercising a direct influence, but rather by training your own independently intelligent avatar. Unfortunately, the game was crippled by terrible mission design, one of the worst camera systems in the history of gaming and bizarre quirks in the AI that could cause your creature to snap and behave completely and irreversibly out of character for no discernable reason.
However, the core concept of a game in which you train up an avatar through "tactile" interaction, reinforcement of behaviours and more advanced training has lived on and now sits at the heart of the modern "virtual pets" genre, which has become such a cash-cow on the Nintendo DS.
Slashdot posters often complain about a supposed lack of innovation in the games industry (although this isn't a line that I personally subscribe to). But if you want to encourage innovation, then tolerating and supporting the eccentrics who produce terrible games containing great ideas (that others with more of a knack for polish can develop further) can't be a bad thing.
Yes, I think Deus Ex was what, for me, ruined Half-Life 2. Up to that point, fps protagonists had either been completely mute, or else they'd been... well... Duke Nukem. Deus Ex demonstrated that you could work dialogue into an fps that actually improved the experience and added to the atmosphere. Most other plot-heavy fpses since then have gone down that route and, had HL2 or Bioshock chosen to go down that route, both would have been massively enhanced.
Right... so the AC who beat me to replying to you was right then. Just checking :)
Hold on... you're accusing *me* of over-intellectualizing? Have you even Read the Fucking Article?
Ugh, this kind of pretentious clap-trap illustrates perfectly what I found objectionable about Half-Life 2.
Now, don't get me wrong, I still think the original Half-Life was one of the greatest fpses ever made. Sure, it's not aged all that well and feels a little primative now, but compared to the competition at the time (basically Unreal and Quake 2), it was superb. It had a plot that made sense, an environment that actually felt plausible and AI which, while relying heavily on scripting, *felt* convincing and realistic to the player.
Half-Life 2, however, left me utterly cold. It reminded me of nothing more than the pretentious student-videos I'd had to sit through at University, put together by people who thought that "OMG SILENT MOVIE" or "OMG BLACK AND WHITE" were original, ground breaking concepts, never thought of before.
The biggest problem I had with HL2's storytelling was that it took the technical limitations imposed by the general state of the genre at the time of HL1 and made them into supposed virtues. The biggest obstacle to immersion for me was the "mute protagonist". I'm sorry, but this is absolute bollocks. We're supposed to be playing *Doctor* Freeman here. I've spent my share of time in academic circles and I have never known a PhD who could stay silent for more than 10 seconds at a time. However, we are supposed to believe that this mute, inexpressive guy whose visage is largely obscured by a bulky hazmat suit is some kind of inspirational resistance leader? Pull the other one. He's also got this strange, stuck-firmly-in-the-freaky-valley woman who obsesses over him and who seems to be on the verge of orgasm every time he stares blankly at her or hits a bit of the scenery with a crowbar. Immersion by this point is so badly blown as to be irretrievable.
People talk about *proper* cut-scenes destroying immersion, but frankly, compared to the nasty, cut-price story-telling in HL2, the classic "Mark Hamill at his worst" cutscenes of the Wing Commander 3 era are masterpieces. I fail to see what is so great about being able to run around during vital plot exposition, to the point that half the time you don't even realise it's happening until you've missed half of it.
Finally... this idea that the back-plot can be filled in through newspaper cuttings and the like? Fine... that can work. If done properly. Unfortunately, HL2 didn't have anything like enough of it and finding a good chunk of it involved spending way too much time staring at every inch of wall in the game in the hope of finding something relevant. I found HL2's contemporary, Doom 3, did this whole business much better, with the audio-logs system.
I see a few comments in TFA about things you can do that will ingratiate you to the staff in a store. My own experience (UK-based) is that this really, really does matter. As a "good customer", you shouldn't count on automatically receiving any favours... but valued customers are always going to be more likely to pick up unexpected little bonuses.
:)
My own case in point here revolves around the launch of the Wii. I hadn't actually planned on picking one up, to be honest, but these were in seriously short supply in the UK right through to the middle of February in most regions. Now, I've gotten into the habit in recent years of buying most of my games from a small branch of GAME (our equivalent of Gamestop) that I pass in the morning on my way to the office. It saves me the stress of having postmen or neighbours steal games I've ordered online during delivery (this has happened a few times now), it's convenient and the staff in this store are good; older than the average straight-out-of-a-Mickey-Mouse-degree-at-university types you often get, deeply knowledgeable about games and generally not too pushy. Because they're a small store and often don't get much stock in, I tend to pre-order most games that I know I'm going to want. I buy enough games that the Loyalty card is worth it and I don't mind getting the odd junk-mail from them (they sometimes throw in vouchers). In short, from their POV, I'm more or less the ideal customer.
Now, as the only person in the team without family committments, I got roped into manning the office between Christmas and New Year. These are typically graveyard days - you come in late, take a long lunch and don't hang around in the evening, but you're there just in case anything goes wrong (always a major concern in my line of work). On the way into the office that week, I popped into GAME to pick up some title or other; I forget what it was now... some fairly crappy expansion pack I'd been putting off buying for a while, I think. When I get in, the manager tells me that they're expecting a shipment of a half dozen Wiis in some time around 11AM. At this point, my "shiny toys in short supply" circuit goes in and the Wii moves on my list from "meh, I'll pick one up cheap in a year or two" to "MUSTHAVEMUSTHAVEMUSTHAVE". He warns me to get over for 11AM, as they'll vanish in seconds when they arrive.
I go to the office, sit down and wait out the morning. At about 10:50AM, I'm getting my coat on to pop out. Suddenly, one of our senior managers (who has also decided to work these days) decides that it's time to have a long, in depth discussion with me about a project I've been working on. My heart sinks as the clock ticks around... 11:00, 11:15, 11:30... 11:45AM. Eventually, just before noon, I finally make it out of the office. I walk into GAME and the manager says "Sorry, they all went in minutes." I think I swore at this point. Then he says "But we held one back for you".
Gaming store staff are under an obligation to treat all customers equally and most will do their best to do so. You should never expect any favours. But don't be surprised when genuinely good customers do get the odd little perk.
Indeed. And this is where a longer term problem - one which affects players as well - is going to rear its head. While the original business model for the game still held true, Sony had a huge incentive to actively develop the game and continue producing new decks and the like. After all, from what I can see, they're probably not actually making much (if any) profit on selling the game/hardware bundle. The plan must always have been to pump the profits out of the card sales.
However... the golden goose has now been well and truly shot, cooked and served up for dinner with all the trimmings. The most significant side-effect of its rather premature demise is that Sony no longer have any real incentive to continue developing the game. I'd expect to see it quietly sidelined in a matter of months, or even weeks.
Indeed. And while I love my 360 (currently more than either of the other two consoles), I really can't help but feel that the decision to make the HDD "optional" was a huge mistake on MS's part. The "Core" version of the 360 never sold particularly well, from what I've seen. It's only ever going to account for a small proportion of the installed base. And yet, because it exists, we're never going to see much in the way of games that actually require the use of the HDD, which brings along all kinds of technical limitations.
My general take on Sony's strategy for this round of the console wars... which hasn't been producing many results to day... is that they're hoping that in the longer term, their superior hardware will give them a clear technological advantage, attacting both consumers and developers. Right now, both the Wii and the PS3 are still stuck in the release-desert that comes in the year or so after launch, when your shiny new console is mainly used to play old games and gathers a lot of dust. The 360 is the only machine attracting games actually worth playing.
Ratchet and Clank seems to be the first sign that the PS3 is actually moving out of this early stage; the first true "second generation" game for the system. It's basically the first chance we've had to measure a "mature" PS3 game against its Xbox 360 equivalents and seeing whether Sony's strategy is likely to pay off. Once the game comes out in the UK, I'll be looking forward to picking it up and taking a look for myself.
The reviews at least make it clear it won't be money wasted.