Category: FPS

first person shooters

BF3 preload action

In anticipation of the 25th, pre-ordererererers can get the giant download of BF3 starting today (or once you get an email from EA) .  This in itself isn’t news at all, but I wanted to babble at some length about the excellent beta and other random stuff.

BF3’s beta was flat out the best I’ve ever been in.  It dispelled doubts about the Origin system being crap, let us play on one map a lot and another map for a few days both of which are absolutely worth playing over and over and over as even the small one without the vehicles is supergigantic, super intricate and most of all, fun as hell.  While there were bugs and issues, the long neck stuff, the dead-alive bug, crashing, not saving stats, and, of course, the servers being filled to the brim all the time, none of that really detracted from the hellacious amount of fun to be had running around, throwing grenades and just enjoying the carnival of carnage that BF3 has turned out to be.   With 154 shotgun kills (and the suffering that goes along with trying to get close enough to people to use a shotgun on them) I was just going berzerk.  EA is not a company I’m a huge fan of, so I went into the whole thing with a healthy skepticism born of being burned by their crappy steam-like client before (calling it steam-like is a bit of an insult to steam really) and the fact that it’s well know they want to eat into Valves electronic delivery mastery and BF3 is the engine that will lead them there.  However, after a good span of time  with BF2142, and a dabbling (as much as I had time for in the last year) with Battlefield Bad Company 2, I will buy every single Battlefield game made by DICE for the PC regardless of their publisher.  That’s just a cold hard fact of life.

Politically, we’re looking at a huge AAA+ title about ultra-recent warfare that again has the Russians vs Americans, which is getting sort of ridiculous at this point (about as ridiculous as the USA taking on a 5th rate economy in the cold war for 40 years instead of concentrating on hegemony and dominance of other areas of the globe that are now much more threatening to everyone else’s way of life).  However, if you look at the release trailer, Iran is in there as well and, of course, a good part of the game takes place in the middle east.  Doing something on the middle east during the absolute height of Arab Spring is a tough row to hoe and I’m a bit afraid of what the politics the single player will try to be.  We’re seeing the shitbags in power that the people of the arab world should have been burning in effigy for the last 30 years finally getting ousted or getting some bullets placed inside of them, and let’s face it, after the last year we can never look at Egypt, Libya and Tunisia the same again (and I hope we can say that about Syria and Iran soon) because everything has changed.  DICE obviously has been working on BF3 for years, and I can’t imagine the panic the writers may have been going through during the tyrant shake down that’s been happening.  Some of the factions they reference in the game may not even exist in the next few months.  Overall, this is a multiplayer game and no one is going to care if the political landscape is changed when they are blinding people with a tactical light attachment, base jumping off half-mile high cliffs or crashing helicopters into giant wind turbines.

RAGE – the awesome is everywhere

I spent four all too short hours with Rage in the last few nights and while the storyline feels like a minor sub-plot in Fallout so far, the environments are just amazing.  Nothing repeats, nothing is the same anywhere, every polygon surface you see is different from all the other polygon surfaces. There are no patterns.  It’s as if someone textured the entire world by hand (which it turns out they did).  The level of detail in these textures as well is astounding, even broken bits of concrete in a dark corner have gang iconography all over the place and is crazy with details.    The character models are really good, but stylized a bit (like Brink) giving them a bit of  a cartoonish look.   Everything looked so cool, I can’t help but continuously take screen caps, mostly of those that gots themselves shot.  An absolute visual feast.  I haven’t seen a ton of machinery yet, but from Doom 3, id has proven that their in-game machine creations are amazing. I’ve seen one so far, but I don’t want to spoil it.

The game play is good, weapons have a solid feel to them, and if you had any worry about the enemy AI after DOOM 3, don’t.  I’ve fought most of wasteland gangs and a few hundred mutants so far and the AI is real fun to fight against.  They duck, they call out orders to each other, they hide when they get shot, they run away and hide if they get scared and each gang has different tactics and specialties.  After only three hours or so, I’m still in the tutorial bits where they introduced the vehicles and racing.  Racing and vehicle fighting are loads of fun, it’s not the easiest on the keyboard as it feels (like any racing game) that an analog stick is ideal, but WASD works just fine.   My only complaint  about fighting in the wastes is that it’s a bit too easy because all your weapons home in on the targeted enemy as long as they are in your forward arc.  While this works in the Rage paradigm, if you’re looking for Twisted Metal, this is close but isn’t quite that.   What’s more, in races (not in the wasteland) if you get blown up you respawn. Again, this works as races are a side quest type thing, but it’s a little strange to see cars spawn into a post-apocalyptic race track (including yourself).

One warning though, both the bosses I’ve hit ran me completely out of ammo, so when you pick the game up make sure to buy TONS OF AMMO or you will end up doing the ASS PUNCHING method seen here.

Again, the story is nothing that great so far mostly because we’ve played through every possible post-apocalyptic plotline in Fallout 3, though things aren’t as bleak for the people in RAGE as the people in Fallout as they have TV’s and radios and cars and stuff, there is clean water all over.  Seems like the people would be fine if they weren’t trying to kill, torture and eat each other, but then they wouldn’t need you to go around shooting hundreds of people and things.   The way you get quests is pretty old school RPG, a lot like the Witcher and Fallout where an NPC is hanging out in an area and you talk to them and they give you stuff to do.  Unless you are in an inside area, you get pathing on your map to know where to go.  With this feature you can get to places extremely quickly, with no searching around at all.  There’s good and bad about this, but it seems to be the thing devs do since oblivion.  I’m playing Dark Souls at the same time and the contrast between the absolutely remorseless lack of information and the “your quest is here” of Rage (and Witcher, etc.) takes a bit of the fun of exploring.  What’s more, the devs don’t have to put stuff between you and the quest to waylay you because you’re going to get to the quests so quickly, it doesn’t matter that much what’s between.

I haven’t gotten into the Multiplayer yet, but hope to this weekend.  We all have some tough decisions to make with BF3 and Rage out within weeks of each other.  Being and id fanboy, I preordered Rage so took the pain of 60$ a month or so ago. Of course with the BF3 beta ending this weekend, and that’s another must have title.  This month hasn’t been wallet rape, it’s been wallet gang rape by the gaming industry and I’m left BEGGING FOR MORE.

There are some very bad people running around after the asteroid hit.
her sole purpose in the game is to teach you the wing stick...
big jumps are an essential part of the being filled with RAGE

RAGE TONIGHT! Dark Soul’s tomorrow!

It begins.  The 2011 GOLDEN SHOWER OF GAMING HITS.  Midnight unlock of the RAGE on steam (we think), and tomorrow Dark Souls.   Dark Souls goes without saying will be painful and frustrating and amazing.   Rage is id’s first game for a long long time and I have high expectations.   I expect it also to be a ton tighter than the new Frostbite engine, which, while I am loving the BF3 beta, has some poignant issues with the stretchy necks and falling through the map.  MRAAAAAAK!

Battlefield 3 beta, Origin and grenades

You are going to see this logo a lot in the next year or so.

Yesterday I cruised home over lunch to start the BF3 beta download, and for 3 gigs it went exceptionally fast.  80% by 2PM or so is no joke with that size download.   I wasn’t able to get in the game right away due to a driver update download (much slower from nvidia) and the CHILDRENS, but got in late at night for a span of time.  Suffice to say, this is really a must-have game for everyone that likes FPS, even if they play 10-20 hours with the singleplayer and dabble with the multi, it will be well worth it for the visuals alone, which are incredible.  EA knows everyone will want and buy this because, let’s just face it, it will be awesome incarnate. Like Blizzard with Starcraft/D3, and Stardock and every online publisher, EVERYONE wants to try to take a piece out of Steam. Since BF3 is going to be so awesome, EA wants to take a big piece out of Valve with it’s new Origin system.   You must have Origin installed and running to play BF3, even the single player, from what I understand. So EA is strong-arming people who want to play their awesome game to have their version of Steam installed.  Wouldn’t you?

Obviously, this has raised the same type of ire that D3’s “always online” with the master servers (like an MMO) issue that is causing lag in single player games in the beta (granted it’s still a beta).  What’s more, the older thingy EA did to try to mimic Steam really really sucked, so who can blame people that are gunshy after that crap was installed and polluted people’s systems?  However, just like D3, everyone will buy this game anyway despite complaints and suffer Origin’s existence.  Given that, after just a few hours last night, I think EA’s Origin is going to be a lot less obtrusive and annoying than Blizzard’s MMO style approach to Diablo 3– though Origin seems very strange at first because it is the game’s front end and it’s in a browser, I think  interface so far is top notch, everything is very cleanly laid out, it doesn’t seem to effect anything in game, chatting is very well implemented and overall stuff is very simple to find and use.  At first I was understandably annoyed, but after an hour or so with many crashes kicking me back to the interface, I started to think the Origin implementation is pretty neat.  If you are a hater without giving Origin a go, you know you cannot deny that BF3 is something you want and it makes total logical sense that EA would push it’s version of Steam off it’s super heavyweight title.  Just try it out. It’s not that bad.

Now onto the game:  BF3 crashed a lot.  I fell into the map twice and couldn’t get out until I hit a kill-brush.  There was horrible lag when I was near some other players, ending in my demise via the knife.  I couldn’t find a server that wasn’t full  for 5 minutes or so each time I tried to play.   I didn’t get on the map with the vehicles because they were all locked.  I couldn’t get in a game with any of my friends.   Lots of issues?  Yes.  Was it fantastic and would I face all of these issues to play more?  YES.    The feel of the game was great, grenade explosions are absolutely breathtaking (I threw one every time I respawned just to see it explode!), tracer rounds look gorgeous, the environmental damage effects are awesome, and you can go prone and, drum roll, you can get points for suppression fire!!!  Fire and movement tactics not only implemented in a game but rewarded. Finally.  Say you are a mid ranged, hang back and fire the LMG’s type of player– you may not kills that much but you are certainly helping your team by forcing the enemy to keep their heads down and restricting their movement.  Now you get POINTS for it.

As I mentioned above, I only got to play on the non-vehicle map in the park/subway and only for an hour or so, hence I can’t write that much about the game.  Despite no tanks and toys, it was absolutely engrossing– clearing halls and rooms with your squad via grenades, suppression and rush is what this is all about and BF3 does it well.  I’m itching to see what else the game has in store.

Also of note, on Origin Deluxe BF2142 is in the FREE GAMES section. Can’t argue with that!

Uhhh– EA did you just make me tweet HOLY SHIT?

>>UPDATE!  – this was a scam!  <<  Don’t click on any twitter links to beta stuff–the only way to get it is to sign in to origin and look at the free games section.

I rarely log in to twitter, but this morning I did only to find a tweet on my wall or whatever the hell it’s called that approximated to: “Holy Shit, I just got my Battlefield 3 beta code. better get them while they last….”  of course I don’t have a Battlefield 3 beta code so this is even more ridiculous.  Of course some sites post stuff for you but this is a not a slight bit shitty because 1) I don’t have a BF3 code so I don’t know where that came from  2) it says, and I joke not, HOLY SHIT as the first piece of text in the tweet.   This EA BF launch is turning out to be very, very strange.

Pre-purchasing digital crap

It’s a ridiculous thing to do, and makes no sense just give your money and get nothing for a month or two before the product hits the streets– at which time there is, of course, no shortage because you’re not actually buying anything physical, just some bandwidth that the seller may provide to get you the digital asssssets at the time of release.    Why would anyone do this?  For some crappy in game items? bollocks.  If they were that great, they’d be in the game.  Remember the BF2142 debacle where the special weapon models made playing the game more difficult– but once you bought them/got them they could never be turned off?  All in all just a stupid thing to do, and yet people must be doing it as tons of games, especially any A-level title, is crying out for your cash before they can deliver the goods.  Who would do such a thing?  Only an idiot really.

And, of course, my hypocrisy knows no bounds as I just pre-purchased Rage and for all the stupid in the world pre-purchasing a digital download is–it felt good…

Some more time with Brink

I got in a few more hours this wweek (not nearly enough!), and I have some initial thoughts and, gods forgive me,  feelings.  Of course I’ve been reading the rather mixed reviews–some good, some bad and a lot that note that the game had/has a lot of potential that it didn’t live up to. Granted there was a lot of hype about this game as it was being published by Bethesda and used id Tech for the engine  and expectations for something awesome was high.

I didn’t even start the campaign at first as I wanted to get as much multiplayer as possible–and also complete some of the excellent challenge mode missions.  The challenge missions are all quite fun.  There are only four types (variable objectives, parkur, escort and tower defense)  and each gives a ton of unlocks when completed.  They are difficult without being impossible, and they expose the nuances of the gameplay that I missed jumping directly into multiplayer and just shooting everyone.  The parkur challenges are the best and I expect to see tons more puzzle missions like this going forward, even some Parkur races would be fun in this engine.

Gameplay is pretty frantic, but not as twitchy as UT3 or Quake as movement rates are much slower. It’s difficult to run and gun by design, though the game certainly encourages constant movement.  There are no gibs and no blood that I saw and one major difference from other games (and the first time I’ve seen this in multiplayer): health regenerates.  iI you get shot up and run away and hide, your health comes back after a time as if all the characters in the game were little Wolverines.  In addition, when you do get capped, you have a choice, you can either wait for a medic to rez you, or ‘sign up’ to be in the next reinforcement wave (hits about every 15 seconds).  So if a big massacre happens, it can occur that your whole team is back in the respawn area.  This gives an interesting flow to the game, one the jury is still out on for me due to what I’ve seen most in the multiplayer: Spawn camping.

Even the bots do it. A couple nights ago I was playing against two other guys, and so the server was filled with bots.  Once we closed the other team off in their base, the bots hung around right there and built turrets (like 4 of them over the course of the map) and with the exception of the human players who were filled with hijinks (of course), the opposing bots were mowed down as soon as they left their spawn.

And that’s an issue with Brink, not a bad one really because it allows you to play any time without having a full slate of human players, but an issue nonetheless.  If you jump on a server with 2-3 people– the server automatically fills the empty slots with a ton of bots all over the place, so it’s very difficult to tell what the game is really like with all real, human people.  I have yet to get on a full server filled with only human beings– that’s going to be the true test of the game.  As most human-only servers are full all the time, you end up fighting the bots… a lot.

I did get to the campaign a bit and no sir, I don’t like it. The bots all crowd around objectives, running all over outside of cover, not working together except to attack en masse, just shooting while standing in the open and tossing grenades.  After 2 missions (about 15-20 minutes each), I was pretty tired of it.  The bots on your side don’t help when they should and sometimes seem totally godlike on the other side at times.  Added to the fact that most maps have a single big firefight in one central area of 2-3 rooms for most of the game time doesn’t help either.  Brink is not a game that you should buy for the single player.  While the challenge missions are really fun, the campaign itself is simply the multiplayer maps with bots and a short intro, and the latter is a lot better with actual human players.   Like Battlefield/BF2142– I would have scrapped single player all together if this is what it’s going to be like, instead, since they do have bots, just make it so you can play multi-player matches against bots.

 

Rough reviews on Brink

Brink, a new TF2/Monday Night Combat style FPS from the creators of Quake Wars and Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, has hit the shelves today with much hype and happenstance– and then some brutal ass reviews! The synopsis from reviews so far (some posted at 12:01 AM): single player sucks ass, it’s got some broken maps due to choke points in multiplayer and some weirdness with unlocks and team roles. Ok, not to defend a game that just came out and could be shitty, but how long did these guys actually play it? How many times have we heard this in games like TF2 or BF2142 with new maps, new weapons, patches that X tactic doesn’t work any more or ‘because they made X change to this class, this map is impossible to win on for the Attackers!” Then a month later people trying to defend the same map will say–“oh this is impossible to defend now because the attacker just does X to win.” I seem to remember some similar criticisms leveled at TF2 early on, though no one now can say anything but it’s a ‘living’ classic of a game even with all of it’s fucking HATS. Again, I’m not saying Brink is on the same level, but I think that some reviewers may look back and rue the early reviews they did: oh except it made their site some ad revenue right?

Despite all the negative press, I’m really looking forward to getting into this one due to the core gameplay, i.e.: jumping around like a jack ass all over an urban environment while shooting guns.