The game I briefly want to talk about was released over 15 years ago on the SNES, I played it back then and found it thoroughly enjoyable. I recently picked it back up and thought I would give it a whirl, given that my media center has a SNES emulator - and I must say I very pleasantly surprised. It is very easy to be carried away by simply drooling over improved graphics in new game releases. This can save all but the poorest modern releases, however, games like Portal on the other hand, bring us crashing back down to earth showing us that the way the game plays can (and normally is) far more important than any visual polish the game studio applies with a trowel afterwards.
I didn’t realise until I did a bit of background research for this post, but the Choplifter ‘franchise’ began way back in 1982 on the Apple II and has enjoyed a release on the gameboy as well prior to the final version on the SNES. The gameplay elements do not appear to have changed much, the game is still a sideways scrolling action shooter, but they have been perfected in Choplifter III.
So, what’s the story? Simply, you are a helicopter pilot who is tasked with rescuing a quota of downed pilots or hostages in each mission. This sounds simpler than it is, as the game throws you from Jungle to Naval encounters, culminating in a vicious city fight followed by an intense and unexpected setting for the final ‘world’. You pick up a variety of special weapons along the way and the enemies get progressively tougher as you go along. For those who find the game too easy, there is a non-’practice’ difficulty setting which is a lot less forgiving.
Below is a video of some of the early action made by someone else.
All in all, the game is a little short - taking between 3 and 4 hours depending on player ability, but it is varied enough to be a lot of fun. I get the impression that it was not one of the major releases back when it came out and as such may have been overlooked by many gamers which is a shame.
Graphics: 8/10 - Nothing special, but fairly detailed and pleasing to the eye.
Sound : 4/10 - Unimaginative, the main let down of the game.
Gameplay: 7.5/10 - Simple premise, not enough reward for rescuing extra hostages.
Overall: 8/10 A classic, casual game that is worth picking up and trying.
I was surprised to hear of a LAN gaming center in Trocadero, but a few of my friends had been extolling it’s virtues for a little while so I decided to give it a try. It is run by Gamerbase and houses 80+ extremely high end Dell systems with 24″ Monitors and looks absolutely stunning. I went there on Friday and had such a great time I went again yesterday. The only downside is it tends to be a bit quiet when they are not running tournaments so bring a group of friends down with you! Pictured below is the 18+ section where I do my gaming.
Well, the free weekend that Valve were running has finished and according to Xfire, the number of hours Day of Defeat Source has been played has literally doubled.
Despite my rather tepid review, I was still tempted to buy DoD: Source, $4.99 was a very good deal although but I didn’t in the end, but I am sure many did and this just reinforces how successful such events can be.
This weekend you can play Day of Defeat Source for free via Steam, it corresponds to the launch of the Palermo services across steam which greatly adds to the platform by adding unlock-able achievements for each game. So what is Day of Defeat I hear you ask? It started out as a FPS mod using the original half life engine and was set in the second world war era. What initially distinguished this game from other stand-alone games and mods of the same and similar genres at the time was how thought out it was. Rather then blindly killing the enemy, to win the round you had to capture (or destroy) strategic points as well as blindly killing the enemy. In essence, it was a slower paced Counter Strike with a lot more emphasis on teamwork and strategy.
I have not played DoD for a number of years which is surprising given the fact I have been playing it since Beta 2 and had a waypointing site dedicated to the mod. Back then it was a damn good ‘rough round the edges’ community mod with a lots of promise and bags of potential.
Beta 3.0 was released and everyone celebrated. It built on the strengths of the first betas- tweaking and balancing them as well as adding new features. For a while nothing happened, we all were content playing beta 3.0 and listening to rumours of the ever elusive beta 4.0. Then, in my opinion, it all started going wrong. The mod team struck a deal with Valve and the mod became a commercial game. Beta 4.0 was actually released as version 1.0. It was highly polished and improved, as one would expect from Valve’s backing. Unfortunately it also had a boat load of issues in particular 56k dial-up gamers (yes there still were a fair few back in 2002/2003) were hit hard with very poor gaming experiences for no tangible reason.
At this point I walked away from Day of Defeat, life was complicated at the time and I was about to start Uni so I didn’t have much time for gaming. So, today I eagerly launched DoD:Source which I had preloaded a few days earlier… and was sadly disappointed.
The game itself is largely unchanged apart from being Source-ified which is both good and bad. It was nice to know most of the maps already, despite their new and frighteningly stunning clarity, as well as the basic classes and the useful routes / camping spots etc. What irked me is that the game itself had been dumbed down somewhat. Features which, at the time, differentiated DoD from other Mods such as bleeding, slow paced objective based gameplay and side weapon differentiation were either dropped or drastically tweaked.
What I find inexcusable however is that many of the old problems still linger. Despite the servers I have played on today having between 4 and 16 players the game frequently juddered and lagged particularly during explosions. The hitbox issue, allegedly solved in Day of Defeat, also reappears with some rather odd damage and hit patterns which can be very frustrating. What is even more peculiar, the game designers have appeared to have focused on beautifying the graphical side of the game considerably, adding odd looking ‘film grain’ effects as well as a kill cam with ‘Press F5 for snapshot’ and other useless ‘features’. Some of these additions are almost pretentious in the flashy way they are implemented especially given how inconsistent the effort appears to have been across other aspects of the game.
This is not to say the game is not fun to play and you can currently buy it for $4.99 (half price until the free play period expires) which is an absolute bargain, but I still think beta Day of Defeat 3.0 was the best version to date. I may have to fire it up with some sturmbots at some stage.
Graphics : 6.5/10 - Good but mostly thanks to the engine and sloppy in places.
Sound : 6 / 10 - Reasonable, but not earth-shattering - somehow feels less meaty than before.
Gameplay : 7 / 10 - Same classic DoD, but a little dumbed down and sadly nothing to distinguish it from other modern games.
Difficulty : 7 / 10 - Shallow learning curve and a wide range of players out there.
Overall : 66/100
Worth playing, but won’t keep you occupied for long.
VALVe released Half life 2 to a salavating world back in 2004. Gamers jumped on the game and its new engine called Source, a fork from GoldSrc which powered the original Half Life and was itself based on the original Quake. Unusually, I am going to get to the point very early in a post - I thought Half Life 2 was great. It was slick, beautifully polished and combined action, horror and character development with VALVe’s unique humour.
I do not wish to say much more about the original game, instead I want to talk about the episodic spin offs that were ment to continue the story line. Half Life 2 left us on a bit of a cliff hanger which was both exciting and disappointing. Luckily, VALVe made good their promises of a continuation which would be “worth the wait.” This was the rather obviously named Half Life 2: Episode 1 which I reviewed on my old site. Again, cutting to the point - I loved the first episode with the usual spectacular visuals and wonderfully choreographed character development we have come to expect. Apart from a little bit of “backwards and forwards”-ing and the fact the game was brutally short (I completed it in a 4 hour sitting on hard) it was an orgy of explosive action mixed with a deep undercurrent of forboding.
What the hell happened next?! Episode two has been out since late 2007 and despite promising a lot of new and exciting features such as massively destructable structures and ‘non-linear’ gameplay, I am yet to play it. Today again I watched the preview videos and felt excited by what was on offer, so why is it I have yet to play or am undecided on whether I want to play episode two? It is 2008 now, four years since the original game was released. Whilst technologically the engine (and therefore the games) have improved in many aspects, it still borrows from the tired wardrobe of the original games. We have the same MP7 and combine rifles, still we have the same equipment and still we have almost the same textures. VALVe seem to have missed the point of episodic gaming:
1) More installments with a greater, developing story line
2) Reduced cost of each installment
3) Reduced time between releases (6 to 9 months at most)
4) Something new and exciting in each new installment.
Whilst they have succeeded in point one and two, they are by no means successful at points 3 and 4. Episode two (and likely the final installment when it is released) feel a bit like a poor theatre company who are stuck with the same actors and same (now) limp faded props and dresses from show to show - trying to recreate a medieval scene one week and a futuristic dystopia the next - all from the same props!
I don’t like ranting like this about a company who has given me so many hours of enjoyment, but by the same token I (and everyone else) had the right to expect more. How hard would it have been to replace the MP7 with a G36 carried by shock Combine forces just outside the city to add little bit of spice? Adding new aliens and expanding story lines are welcome additions, but if the player has the same old tool set, it detracts from the larger changes. Had this game been released a year earlier it would have been a different story, but now I have little enthusiasm for it.
I will try and play it at some point, if I am wrong I will happily put it in writing
We have been hearing rumours of a 480 stream processor equipped card from ATi for a while now. Featuring crazy capacities of GDDR5 memory and even coming with its own cold fusion generator which glows red and pats you on the ass periodically telling you ‘Well done my pet, now worship me’ ….
Ok, so most of that is not true, but some is! ATi have announced in the last few days two flagship cards from the new R700 range - the 4870 and the budget 4850. Rather than the 480 stream processors, both cards feature an even more impressive number - 800 (!) clocked at 750Mhz and 625Mhz respectively. A good preview and very promising benchmarks can be found over at gamespot. Its great to see ATi finally bringing out products to be excited about, rather than the recent damp squibs like current generation Phenom and the R600 series graphics cards.
Randomly came across this great map for Quake 3. Its an excellent remake of the Simpson home for all your fragging needs. The level of detail is astonishing, from the excellent textural work to the scale that says 230 pounds when stepped on. Genius
I am in the process of building a new gaming PC. Well, I should come clean, I have been in the process for almost 5 months now - I am mostly decided on the specifications but minor incompatibilities / annoyances cause me to stall. When this happens, real life typically takes over and by the time I look at my ‘final’ specification again, I normally rip it up and start from scratch due to new hardware being released or price drops. *exhale* I am finally on the verge of finalising the specification, the only things still holding me back are the graphics card (after news of ATi’s 4xx0 series) and the amount of RAM to put into my machine. The latter is heavily influenced by the Operating System I plan to run.
There are two crucial elements to any computer system which must work in harmony, the software and the hardware. Whilst this hardly an earth shattering announcement, I never cease to be amazed at the backlash in the form of blog / forum posts from people who forget this. Realistically when building (or buying) your next Gaming PC at the moment your choices are limited to Windows XP or Vista. Both Linux and Mac OSX suffer from platform compatibility issues with major new games and whilst the former enjoys fair server support for online gaming, neither really has much traction in the desktop gaming market.
The difference between Vista and XP is far more than cosmetic, whilst many are quick to criticise Vista for a number of reasons, I am actually a fan of Microsoft’s latest Operating System for a variety of reasons. Sure, it is feature-poor compared to initial designs and has it’s own annoyances, but the number of extra features and advances make it decisively the better Operating System. There is a caveat, for Vista to run comfortably for gaming purposes needs at least 1 Gb of RAM for itself. This on its own is no big deal - RAM is extraordinarily cheap at the moment, however the issue of platform (32bit/64bit) is now rearing its ugly head.
64 bit computing is nothing new, infact AMD processors have had 64bit extensions (called x86-64) for a number of years since the K8 platform back in 2003. Intel did not catch up (despite starting earlier than AMD) and produce viable 64bit chips until the Pentum 6xx series (late 2004), having stumbled initially with their IA64(T) specification developed for their Itanium platform.
Given this was four years ago, why are we not all running on 64bit XP or Vista? The answer is simple, in the same way that driver support initially crippled Vista’s adoption, 64bit drivers are fairly few and far between. What this means, is a lot less hardware will run properly under a 64bit Operating System. Given this situation, why do we even care about 64 bit computing? Why is it not relegated to high end computing and server farms? Mathematics.
Unfortunately, with a 32 bit Operating System, there is a mathematical limitation to the amount of memory the system can address. At most, Vista (or XP) in 32bit will only address 4Gb of total RAM. This includes both the graphics card and the main system memory. This brings my point about Vista comfortably using one Gb of RAM all by itself to sharp focus. Whilst Yes, the price of RAM is cheap there is something about me that dislikes buying 4Gb of RAM (to enable dual channel mode) only to have a quarter of it not accessible by the system. I wrote about this in detail in a previous post.
So what is the solution? Whilst I am huge fan of Vista (and have recently bought a Vista laptop) I do not think it is suitable for desktop gaming. With Windows XP, I have had fairly bloated a driver / runtime loaded installs using no more than 300Mb of RAM which realistically enables most PC gamers to get away with 2Gb of system RAM with no perceptible loss in gaming performance. This unfortunately would not be the case for a similar system running Vista and as such, unfortunately scuttles Vista for this market in my humble opinion.
It has an official release date (hopefully concrete), but not a huge amount is definatively known about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky - the official prequel to the amazing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I have not written about either of these games before, which is surprising given the amount of time I spent playing both single and multiplayer STALKER.
Shadow of Chernobyl was a masterpiece of visceral entertainment, made all the more authentic by it’s Ukrainian development team. Their efforts in representing the lost Soviet city of Prypet, which stands largely intact to this day, along with the areas surrounding the Chernobyl NPP like the Red Forrest are astonishing and deserving of praise. The only real drawback to the game was the overall lack of polish, particularly with the mission scripting which could be a bit hit and miss.
The lack of any online cheat protection and clearly designed multiplayer modes really disadvantaged the online experience. I have played many hours on some of the large maps enjoying the mixture between fast paced battles in Agropom as well as some of the other maps where slow methodical stalking was the best strategy. But in the end I stopped playing do to the imbalanced nature of the action.
It was with great excitement that read a number of months ago about the planned prequel that has been in development, practically since the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. For those of you not keenly following the game release sites, the name of this prequel is Clear Sky and it is set in a time before the (fictional) second disaster at Chernobyl. What was it that a wise man once said? To have one containment breach is a tragedy, to have second seems like carelessness?
Rather than unravelling the master quest by searching for the identity of this mysterious Strelok character, instead, you play a free agent in “The Zone” tasked with assassinating Strelok. He really appears to be persona non grata doesn’t he? This is only a small part of the game with the player becoming inextricably embroiled in a multi faction conflict in the zone. What worries me a little is the number of factions rumoured to be in game : NINE!Bandits, Duty, Freedom, Clear Sky, Mercenaries, Internal Troops (Military), Scientists, and Lone Stalkers and the player can choose to align themselves with any of them (although presumably only one at a time). Whilst having multiple factions is a good thing, it promotes diversity and gives a potentially huge degree of replay-ability, with so many factions it is very difficult to make them sufficiently unique and appealing. Especially with the degree of overlap in their motivations and objectives as judged by Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl.
The X-ray engine has received an upgrade to version 1.5 which will include Direct X 10 support as well a variety of particle, textural and AI upgrades. I found a video a few days ago showing the weather system in action. It looks very impressive, from oil black nights to realistic weather effects and shadows. I am very much looking forward to this, and to exploring the expanded / tweaked zone, so what awaits you Stalker, in the zone that changed?
UPDATE: According to wikipedia, the E3 demo was leaked to a variety of torrent sites today. I can only hope this does not impact on the work being done getting the final build ready for the August release date.
Those of you that play Call of Duty 4 online will recognise the name of this map - it is indeed a single player remake this fun map which is done rather well.
You play as a nameless agent in Al-Asaad’s private army trying to repulse an American invasion force. As such, your starting equipment is rather limited by game standard. You have an AKMS with an under-slung grenade launcher and a Beretta M92F pistol. The map immediately puts you in the midst of the action can gently directs you the specific route the map (re)author intends. (spoilers below)
As you work your way around the map clockwise you meet wave after wave of American reinforcements including rooftop snipers and LMG nests which are all well though out and placed. The only criticism I have here is that some of the ’snipers’ barely did anything and stood there like cannon fodder which was a bit disappointing.
As you make your way into the building with the documents you are trying to steal, enemy reinforcements arrive blocking you between a fortified position within the target building and your retreat down the stairs which is both fun and challenging. The briefcase / clipboard suffers from clipping problems but it is only a minor point. You also have a choice of picking up a sniper rifle here which, given your elevated position is not a bad idea.
Once you have seized the documents, you have to make your way around the edge of the map and into the central building. This is a bit of a nightmare as all the doors on the ground floor have all been blocked off so you literally have to go the long way round and jump through a window. Before you get there, in a excellent piece of scripting, you are ambushed by enemy reinforcements in the form of 5-6 troops and a armoured personnel carrier with a high caliber turret. Luckily (and a very worn and cliche way) you find an RPG and healthy supply of rockets right next to this ambush point so dealing with the vehicle is fairly easy.
Once you finally break into the middle building, your troops are not far behind. They kick down the doors as you walk down the stairs. At this point, the enemy forces launch an all out attack on the building and your new objective is to hold for a minute and a half whilst your reinforcements arrive. This is a great touch and there is plenty of fire to be traded with the enemy soldiers who are dropped by Blackhawk onto the neighbouring building. The only bad thing was the soldiers tended to just fire from the buildings they were dropped onto, they did not try to storm the central house the player has to hold.
Once your reinforcements arrive, you rendezvous with Al Asaad who, from somewhere seems to have picked up a prisoner and the mission ends. I was a bit confused by this and can only assume he was captured during the fighting.
It is enjoyable. The map layout is great with good use of obstacles and prefabs but you would expect that given the map was made by Infinity Ward. However, the scripting was excellent making good use of fixed positions and well as surprise attacks and several sections of the map were editing rather well in order to enable a single path to be followed by the player.
All in all, I would give this map 8/10. Had the author made the map himself, I would have given him(or her) a 8.5 or 9. More screenshots from the map can be found on my Xfire page.
I would highly recommend you try it yourself. Download.
UPDATE 17/06/08: It appears the website cod4-maps.com is in the middle of a redesign. The links at the moment are broken, when the resources appear on the new site I will update the links
UPDATE 06/07/08: cod4-maps.com still down, so I found another mirror.
The game I briefly want to talk about was released over 15 years ago on the SNES, I played it back then and found it thoroughly enjoyable. I recently picked it back up and thought I would give it a whirl, given that my media center has a SNES emulator - and I must say I very pleasantly surprised. It is very easy to be carried away by simply drooling over improved graphics in new game releases. This can save all but the poorest modern releases, however, games like Portal on the other hand, bring us crashing back down to earth showing us that the way the game plays can (and normally is) far more important than any visual polish the game studio applies with a trowel afterwards.
Beta 3.0 was released and everyone celebrated. It built on the strengths of the first betas- tweaking and balancing them as well as adding new features. For a while nothing happened, we all were content playing beta 3.0 and listening to rumours of the ever elusive beta 4.0. Then, in my opinion, it all started going wrong. The mod team 
What I find inexcusable however is that many of the old problems still linger. Despite the servers I have played on today having between 4 and 16 players the game frequently juddered and lagged particularly during explosions. The hitbox issue, allegedly solved in Day of Defeat, also reappears with some rather odd damage and hit patterns which can be very frustrating. What is even more peculiar, the game designers have appeared to have focused on beautifying the graphical side of the game considerably, adding odd looking ‘film grain’ effects as well as a kill cam with ‘Press F5 for snapshot’ and other useless ‘features’. Some of these additions are almost pretentious in the flashy way they are implemented especially given how inconsistent the effort appears to have been across other aspects of the game.
It has an official release date (hopefully concrete), but not a huge amount is definatively known about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky - the official prequel to the amazing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I have not written about either of these games before, which is surprising given the amount of time I spent playing both single and multiplayer STALKER.
Once you have seized the documents, you have to make your way around the edge of the map and into the central building. This is a bit of a nightmare as all the doors on the ground floor have all been blocked off so you literally have to go the long way round and jump through a window. Before you get there, in a excellent piece of scripting, you are ambushed by enemy reinforcements in the form of 5-6 troops and a armoured personnel carrier with a high caliber turret. Luckily (and a very worn and cliche way) you find an RPG and healthy supply of rockets right next to this ambush point so dealing with the vehicle is fairly easy.
It is enjoyable. The map layout is great with good use of obstacles and prefabs but you would expect that given the map was made by Infinity Ward. However, the scripting was excellent making good use of fixed positions and well as surprise attacks and several sections of the map were editing rather well in order to enable a single path to be followed by the player.