BioShock Weekend!

Just a quick post to spread the word about Steam’s weekend Bioshock offer. This could not have come at a better time for me, I have just built a brand new awesome gaming rig (details later) and just finished the Bioshock demo! So, at ~$32 it is a bargain, if you like first person action games with a lot of atmosphere (no pun intended) I highly recommend you take advantage of this offer.

Update, just took a look and it almost a 8Gb download, users on capped monthly bandwidths beware.

DoD:Source - Play for free this weekend!

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.

We don’t go to Ravenholm

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

The Simpsons meet CTF

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

A breathtaking Clear Sky in the zone.

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.

ID Officially Announce Doom 4

In a somewhat surprising move, ID Software today announced they had begun development of Doom 4. This is not particularly earth shattering in itself given the spate of recent rumours to this effect, however the reason it surprised me was that ID Software are already fairly far into a project named ‘Rage‘ which appears to be a post-apocalyptic vehicle slash first person shooter based on ID Software’s Tech 5 Engine, currently in development. Whilst is would not be unusual to ID to be working on two games at the same time using the same engine (Quake 4 / Doom 3 anyone?), given the rumours circulating about a new Quake game, I didn’t think we would be seeing another Doom game so soon.

Judging by the Careers page, the extra staff ID Software are taking on for this project will be require ‘applicable skills’ for developing for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms indicating ID Software are looking to make this a multi-platform game in much the same way as Doom 3 which was also released on the Xbox. This is, however, just early supposition on my part at this stage.

Doom 3 was criticised for being too dark, too broody, too linear and having too little variation. I disagree, having found it atmospheric and a lot of fun to play, but what worries me, is where ID takes us from here. Quake 4 didn’t really do it for me, I preferred Doom 3 for a number of reasons. The story was simpler and more elegant as was the environment. Whilst being a colonial marine and interacting with other marines and military equipment was fun in Quake 4; it felt a little over done and I never really bought into the whole Quake universe past Quake 2. There were, however, moments which I genuinely enjoyed not just because they brought something fresh into the ID-style FPS genre but also because they were quite unexpected. (Those that have completed Quake 4 will know of the Hospital section I am referring to!)

Doom 3 really was a no brainer in that it was classic Doom style game play with a modern engine, I will be decisively underwhelmed if ID are planning to just update the graphics for Doom 4.

The (fairly) Definitive List for all XCOM Fans!

I blogged before about XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a game released in 1994 which is still today heralded as the first (and so far only) example of a real time strategy (RTS) game which combines turn based strategy seamlessly to make a very accessible, enjoyable game. Easy to play but at the same time, involves a great deal of thought to get right.

I will start off with the direct clones, games that, either as a result of an open source community or a big software house have tried to recreate the magic.

UFO 2000

Perhaps the original, the one that started it all. The majority of the work was done by a Russian programmer who did a magnificent job of laying down the basic framework. With the 0.2.x builds, you could randomly generate a terrain and populate it with soldiers playing a very basic hot-seat style multiplayer game. Since then, a great deal of work has gone into this project to improve and expand on this framework. It has become a fairly stable multiplayer game with its own hosted server which is normally always populated and even has its own (rough) league table based on the completed games.

The only problem I have is that, in an attempt to shed all non F/OSS content, they have dropped the requirement for the UFO: Enemy Unknown graphics. What this means is that you can play with an entirely community made set of artwork / weapons. This is great in some ways and a lot of people have contributed both terrain, weapon sets and armour artwork but this is the project’s greatest problem at present. There are so many different weapon sets you can choose from (as well as armour and graphics) that the game feels as though it has abandoned its routes in the xcom universe. Personally I feel that the game should stick to what it is good at (being a multiplayer UFO:EU clone) and have these community driven skins/models on a completely different server.

This is definitely the most mature project (it supports both UFO: Enemy Unknown AND Terror from the deep graphic sets) infact, most telling is what is currently NOT supported:

• HWPs and Terror Units.

• X-COM Planes and UFOs.

• Strategic mode (a.k.a. Geoscape).

• Single player mode.

• Blaster Launchers and Psi-Amps

• Medi-kits, Motion Scanners, Electroflares

Having recently added flying units and deloyable aliens such as the Floater, Ethereal and Snakeman making this clone the most feature complete around at present and definitely one I would strongly recommend.

UFO: AI (Alien Invasion)

Is another fairly recent project that has come forwards in leaps and bounds in the last few years. Based on the open source Quake 2 (known internally as the id Tech 2) engine, the team behind UFO:AI have spent considerable time making the maps modular and converting this first person engine into a RTS style one. While at the low level, the engine is still a FPS, the camera has been dramatically modified as to is the engine’s ability to handle dynamic map production through the stitching of smaller map units. I have played a few of the builds the team has released in the last few years and overall I am impressed.

Unfortunately the game suffers from a very jagged feel, unit movement and shooting phases do not feel fluidic and it is quite hard to beat the aliens who seem to have an unfair advantage coded in. Given the limitations of the engine they started with, they have made huge progress but I am unconvinced this project will mature much further.

X-Force: Fight for Destiny

This is one of the clones of Ufo: Enemy unknown that I really enjoyed playing, although very rough around the edges you can see the amount of planning that has gone into this game and it is fun to play. The moot point is that the native language of the development team is German, this would not be an issue if it was not for the very poor job someone did translating some of it (the rest of the clone is still in German.) There are several key things which make this game quite enjoyable, firstly the game is uniquely different, but easy for a XCOM veteran to pick up and play with minial adjustment, and secondly, the way in which destructible terrain has been implemented. In a way it feels a lot more like Apocalipse but in the UFO: EU universe which makes it quite entertaining. I have not tried the more recent builds but this is one I would definitely recommend you try.

Project Xenocide

This clone has wowed with spectacular renders and very grand plans, unfortunately this project started life as a kind of Geoscape (the real time strategy part of UFO: Enemy Unknown) tech demo and a few years on that shows. Whilst the Geoscape looks quite mature, the extent to which the tactical aspect has been developed can been seen in their 2007 tech demo video. This is not a serious clone at the moment because it is missing the most vital part of UFO:EU. It would be interesting if the team from Project Xenocide merged with the UFO 2000 team, although that is unlikely as it is clear they have their own plans for the Tactical element of the game. Sadly at the moment all they are is a fairly dull tech demo.

UFO Pocket PC

This is more of a port than a clone although technically the latter is the case. The Russian team (seeing a trend here? :D) have out of nowhere completed a very comprehensive clone for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC platform. I barely use my PDA but I tried it out and was pleasantly impressed. In my mobile was Pocket PC (its Symbian) then I would carry thisw around with me everywhere, the port is that good. The only minor niggle is the look system for the soldiers. Due to the touch screen only having a left click implementation, turning your soldiers is a bit cumbersome.

Whilst a lot of the GUI/ management screens are unique to this port, the game itself has been remade with astonishing accuracy. This is definately one to try if you have a Pocket PC.

UFO: Extraterrestrials

Definately one of the most polished clones, this game is a commercial offering set in a similar universe (although not the same to avoid royalty costs to the present holder of the XCOM trademark) to the originals. The Geoscape and Tactical elements are almost identical but with a variety of subtle differences. I got bored about half way through this game as it seemed to lack any real innovation. Whilst graphically it is very good, the combat seems a little meek compared to the vicious bark of the original Heavy Plasma rifle. That being said, it has a variety of game modes and the aliens are not stupid requiring a cautious commander versed in tactical thinking.

I really like the way combat is depicted on the Geoscape, whilst in the original time ’stopped’ during an interception whilst your interceptor battled the UFO in the popup screen, the battle takes place in all its glory right on your Geoscape which I was very impressed by. There is no doubt about it, this is a game to buy as it will provide hours of enjoyment.

The Altar Games : Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight

Of course, no list of XCOM universe remakes would be complete without a nod to Altar Entertainment and their trilogy of games. Aftermath came first and, whilst it was a clone of UFO:EU it has a completely different storyline which is actually quite good.

The game starts in a movie theater with a strange dust floating in the projected light, the camera tilts and you everyone is dead, suffocated by strange, alien spores. The game starts by telling you ‘yesterday’ and alien craft arrived in orbit, all communication failed and it began unleashing spores into the atmosphere. There spores blanketed the world and suffocated most of the human race. Only a select few remain. (Enter player)

The Geoscape is very different to classic UFO:EU/Xcom games in that, you start off with a small sector of the globe under your control. This is your base, you must expand your territory as you go along by completing missions and ridding nearby sectors of aliens, both mutants and the intelligent ‘grey’ like species which look suspiciously like stectoids. As you gain territory, you come across other humans who can join your ranks as soldiers. You also perform UFO intercepts and raiding missions (although you do not learn how to enter the UFOs till later.) Overall the game is extremely enjoyable and the best of the three games from Altar, however it is crippled later on by the aliens developing a second stage to their technology which is so powerful, even an experienced play could have difficulty getting more than a 1:1 kill ratio (aliens for your soldiers) which any die hard fan will agree is too hard, especially given the scarcity of volunteers.

I must mention the Geoscape interception of UFOs which is done in a unique and fun way. The battle is not controlled by the player but in the form of a brief (20 second) video of the dog fight your interceptors have with the UFO(s). This is both fun and exciting as there are a number of different outcomes which all have their own video sequence.

I only briefly played the second two games from Altar as I found them very boring and without any real redeeming features after a few hours. I do recommend Aftermath but not the other two.

I want to finish by mentioning the games that are set in the XCOM universe, but are either a completely different genre.

Clancy: The XCOM Story

This is a WIP first person shooter mod for Half Life 2 set in the XCOM universe. It appears to be a linear story driven campaign in the fairly early stages although the project has a great website and introductory video which I highly recommend. Ever since seeing the damage the UFO did in Half Life 2: Gary’s Mod I have been longing for a XCOM mod. This *could* be the answer, we shall have to see.

If nothing else, I highly encourage you to watch their preview movie on their website.

XCOM: A Last Hope

This is a multiplayer first person shooter, also utlising the Half Life 2 engine. It looks as though the mod creators are aiming at an XCOM themed Counter Strike style game and although very much a WIP, they have released several builds. This is not one that I have tried, but it does look interesting if in need of graphical polish.

Although in truth, I should really add Terror from the Deep and Xcom Apocalipse to this list, as well as the other games officially released by the XCOM franchise, but to be honest they do not really feature on my list. The reason for this is Terror from the deep, whilst it has a lot of interesting tweaks / additions is just UFO:EU with a fresh coat of paint for me. Xcom Apocalipse is a great game, but I treat it as a new game (like the Altar series.)

So that is it, for the moment! If I have missed any games out feel free to comment and berate me

UPDATE : 05/06/08 : Corrected a few spelling mistakes. Also, UFO Pocket PC appears to have gone offline. The domain at which it was hosted is not longer available which is a shame. It was definitely something worth trying out if you owned a pocket PC.

UPDATE : 24/06/08 : URL problem seems to have corrected istelf. Pocket PC UFO is back.