I can still fondly remember sitting in my dorm room in college, watching a video demonstration from E3 of Half Life 2. It was the first game I had ever seen that really used physics in any kind of meaningful way. I saw boards and pallets being shot apart, and immediately my mind began envisioning ripping entire buildings down, brick for brick. Well, Half Life 2 turned out to be an amazing game, and it did indeed make great strides with its physics and destructibility, but ultimately it wasn't capable of the wholesale destruction I had in mind.
This idea of destructibility in games is something that comes to mind quite frequently. Every time a new game or engine comes out, I read the "fully destructible environments" tag they slap on and think, could this be the one? No, invariably it's not.
What destruction means today, is a trick that takes specific objects and lets them be replaced by broken versions of said objects once they've taken enough damage. Not exactly dynamic. That being said, it doesn't mean that these tricks can't be effective. For instance, the upcoming Mercenaries 2 game allows you to blow up any building in the world, including bridges and other structures. Is the destruction predetermined? You bet. Is that a bad thing? Being able to level a city block with a tactical nuke in a game can't ever really be classified as bad. It simply falls short of my lofty visions.
Crysis is another good example. If you toss a grenade into a makeshift shack during your wanderings on the islands, it will completely blow it apart. Those parts are the pieces of aluminum siding and boards that it was made out of, so it makes sense that that's where the building would break up. Unfortunately, if you toss the same the same grenade into a cinder block structure, you'll probably blow the roof off if it's the right materials, but the blocks are indestructible. Again, still very cool, and I'm not complaining, it's just not there yet.
So are there any games that do have a more dynamic flavor of destruction? Well, oddly enough, the most dynamic destruction I've probably seen, was in a game that is now to old to actually run on my computer. The geo mod technology in Red Faction allowed you to literally tunnel through the ground with a rocket launcher in certain areas. The game even came with a tech demo area that had you in an underground cube with a glass house in the middle. You could use your limitless rocket ammo to drill a fairly lengthy hold into the wall, or you if you were clever, you could carefully cut chunks out of the ceiling and watch them fall. Not bad for the time. How did that technology work in the game? It didn't. The geo mod tech was the very definition of a gimmick. It was sweet stuff, but it didn't show up in the gameplay in any meaningful way.
As far as recent games go, the Digital Molecular Matter technology behind Star Wars: Force Unleashed is definitely a step in the right direction. This tech allows for destruction that is more than just a replaced model. Can you destroy everything? No, but the damage that is done is definitely way more convincing.
Which brings me to my last example. Red Faction: Guerrilla may suck. I don't know, I haven't played it. But regardless, it definitely has the most comprehensive destructibility of any game I've seen so far. You really can bring buildings down in a far more dynamic fashion in this game. Instead of trying to do the building as a whole enough damage to bring it down, you look for specific structural weak points that will cause the whole thing to collapse in on itself.
Even if the game ends up sucking, at the very least it shows a welcome push forward in what is possible in the realm of blowing crap up in a game. I should probably clarify that not every game should have full destructibility. I would even say that most games shouldn't. Unless your game is built around it to some degree, it will definitely break a lot of gameplay mechanics. I think as time goes on and these technologies become more prevalent, developers will learn to use them more and more effectively to not only give us those cheap thrills, but also more meaningful gameplay options the deepen the illusion of being in that game world.
I'm sure that once they do get to the point where I can pull a building apart one brick at a time, I won't be satisfied and will demand that I be allowed to rip things up at the atomic level, but I guess that's just human nature.
-gamer odd
The State of Destructability
REVIEW: Team Fortress 2
I guess I had better start this off by saying that I was never into the original Team Fortress game, so I can't really compare the two. What I can do is judge the game for what it is and how it holds up in the current sea of multiplayer shooters.
GAMEPLAY
The foundation for TF2 is the 9 different characters you can play as. Each character has his own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the Scout is extremely fast, but has little health and no high powered weapons. On the other end of the spectrum is the Heavy, who is as slow as a turtle, but can turn everything and everyone into swiss cheese with his mini-gun. Aside from those two, you have the Sniper, Demo-man, Medic, Soldier, Engineer, Pyro, and Spy.
The great thing about having so many classes, is that it allows everyone to find a style of play that they like. Don't want to go in guns blazing? Well, then be the Medic, and heal people with your Ghostbusters inspired beam gun. Enjoy taking a more defensive support role? Try setting up some sentry guns and health dispensers with the Engineer. Another aspect of this is that it forces you to work together to complete your objectives. When you start a match, you can see how many of each class are currently being played on your team, and choose your class accordingly.
As far as game modes go, there's the standard capture the flag, some variations of a checkpoint capturing mode, and my favorite, goldrush. In goldrush, one team is trying to get a bomb on a mine cart to the end of the map. The map, however, is actually 3 maps that are connected end to end. When the attacking team gets the bomb to the end of the first map, they move on to the second, and then the third. If they get the bomb to the end of the third and final map, they're rewarded by a rather impressive explosion that rips through the ground. If they should fail to get the bomb to the end of a map in the alloted time, then the defending team gets the chance to go on the offensive and push the bomb back. If you have two evenly matched teams, this intense tug of war can go back and forth for quite some time. There is a track that the bomb cart runs along, and to make it move, the attacking team simply needs to stand near by it. An added bonus is that the cart dispenses some health and amo to the attacking team as it moves along. The checkpoint and capture the flag modes are a blast, but in my opinion goldrush offers the biggest thrills.
TF2 was put out by Valve, which means that the game is constantly getting new updates and content. The most recent update added alternate unlockable gear for the medic, and apparently more will be coming for the other characters as well.
GRAPHICS
TF2 has a very unique art style. It most closes resembles Pixar's "The Incredibles". It has an almost cartoony shading and color scheme, but isn't cel shaded. All in all, it's a gorgeous game. The animations are spot on, and it's definitely not a game you ever get tired of looking at.
STORY
Kill, respawn, Kill...
PARENTS GUIDE
Well, if you have a problem with the "story" section above, then you probably don't want your kids to play this game. In spite of its cartoony exterior, it's actually amazingly gory. The gallons of over the top blood thrown into the lush, stylized world, is to me hilarious. Not everyone will agree. There is no profanity in any of the dialog that I've noticed, but you must remember that this is an online game, so anyone with a mike can say anything they want. I recommend just muting the team speak.
CONCLUSION
This game is a blast. It's hard to get bored with it when there are so many different gameplay styles to master among the different classes. Valve has included Xbox Live style achievements into the PC version of TF2, which will keep you busy for quite some time if you want to get them all. This, incidentally, is how you unlock the alternate weapons for the medic. I recommend getting this along with the host of other games it comes with in the Orange Box, but it can also be bought by itself. If you like multiplayer shooters and want to try something a little out of the ordinary, this is a must play.
-gamer odd
Most Anticipated Games of 2008: Part V
We're finally down to the end of my most anticipated games of the year list. Only took me half the year to do it. Even so, none of the games on my list have come out yet, so it's all good. Here are the final three games to wrap up this series.
Little Big Planet
This is one game on my list that doesn't really fit into any particular genre. Basically this is side scrolling platormer. That might night sound very interesting, but there's a lot more to LBP that initially meets the eye. For starters, the platforming in this game is based mainly on physics interaction and puzzles. It also can be played cooperatively with friends. The real draw of this game is the creativity it allows for. You can easily create your own highly customized levels and share them with friends. Even trying to explain it really doesn't do justice to the amazing tools that this game's developers have created so that you can be creative. Definitely not a game that will appeal to everyone, but check out the video none the less. This one is slated for a September release on the Playstion 3.
Alone in the Dark
Alone in the Dark is based off a classic game of the same name, and which I have never played. What I've seen of this one though makes me more than happy to give it a chance. This game is set in an accurately modeled representation of Central Park, were there are apparently some strange things happening. Technically, I might have been able to put this one under the shooter category, but there's quite a bit more too it than that. Much of the gameplay revolves around solving problems with simple items you scrounge up. Heck, calling it Macgyver the Game wouldn't be too far from the mark. The interesting thing about this items system is that you don't actually have any kind of normal menu system for seeing your items. When you want to see your item,s you literaly just open your coat and look down at what you've got. Items can be used together in ways you'd realistically expect, and sometimes in ways that you might not. For instance, you could use a bottle of alcohol and pour a line of fuel on the ground leading away from a gas barrel. Then you grab your lighter, touch of the end of the line, and watch it burn down to the gas. You could take that same bottle of alcohol, toss it above your enemies heads, and shoot it in mid air to rain down fiery death. And the list goes on and on. Apparently duct tape is a large part of your arsenal as well. The game also has a robust physics engine under the hood which allows for a lot of unique physics based puzzles. The fire system them have in play is also quite interesting. Anything that should be able to light on fire, can. You could start a chair on fire and use it as a torch until it burned down to your fingers. Got a solid oak door that you can't get through? No problem, just light it up and wait a few minutes until it's sufficiently weakened. This is another one of those games where you're better of just watching the videos. One last interesting thing about this game is that it is broken up into episodes like a tv show. The episodes all connect, but apparently don't all have to be played in a specific order. Alone in the Dark will be coming out on every console and the PC this June.
Star Wars: Force Unleashed
This one is entirely for the geek in me. I love Star Wars, so the opportunity to be able to run around as Darth Vader's secret apprentice while leaving a force induced path of destruction in my wake is about as good as it gets. And that's basically what this game is all about. What makes it unique though, is the two technologies being used to allow for that destruction. The first is called DMM, or digital molecular matter. This allows for the realistic breaking and bending of the things in the world. The other is called Euphoria, which is basically a sort of ragdoll AI. If you were to shoot someone in the game, instead of just instantly turning to a limp ragdoll, they would instead react to the impact and clutch at the wound. Or if you were to pick up a stormtrooper with the force, he will instinctively try to grab on to anything near him, even if it's another stormtrooper. Am I expecting this game to be deep? No, not at all, but I think it will be a really fun ride for Star Wars funs. It's been a while since there was a decent light saber weilding game released, so I think it's about time. The force will be unleashed this August. And on a side note, it's been reported that there is a level in the game where you actually get to play as Darth Vader on the wookie home world, and we all now what that means. Now we'll finally discover if wookies sound even more guttural as they're being force choked...
Well, that wraps up this series. Now hopefully some of these games will actually start coming out. I just saw some news that Killzone 2 got delayed until February of 09, so that's one off the list unfortunely, but there's still plenty to go around.
-gamer odd
Assassin's Creed Review
Assassin's Creed is an action adventure game from the people at Ubisoft who made the more recent Prince of Persia games. You play as Altair, an Assassin with an attitude problem that gets him into trouble early on in the game.
I won't go to much into the story because the twists and turns are a large part of what's interesting about the game, but the basic premise is that you're an assassin during the crusades who is given the task of hunting down and killing various men of influence throughout the Holy Land. As with any good story, things aren't what they seem..... DUM DUM DUMMMMM!.......
The gameplay of AC is all about getting around. You can travel on horse back through the country side to get to the cities in which you targets dwell. Once you get to a city and receive your mission, it usually comes down to finding the right person to talk to, completing a couple side missions, gaining access to your target, and killing him without drawing unnecessary attention to yourself. I'm over simplifying things a bit, but that's the general gist of it. Thankfully, as dull as it sounds for me to just say it like that, it's a lot of fun. The reason it's fun, is because you really can go anywhere. Jumping from rooftop to outcropping to pillar to haystack never felt so good. You simply hold down the A button as you run toward a wall or whatever, and you will automatically climb it or perform the appropriate action. That may sound dumbed down, but really it just means you won't be frustrated by constantly missing your jump.
If you go running around on the roofs like a nut, however, people will see you and react accordingly. Aside from all the gorgeous acrobatics, this is really a stealth game. You're invisible when you're doing things that are socially acceptable, like nonchalantly walking through a crowd. Once you start running through that crowd and knocking people over the guards will start to take notice. If you should make a guard decide you're a threat, you can either kill him, or try and run away and hide until the suspicion dies down.
The fighting in the game is also fairly simple. It mostly comes down to timing your blocking and swing right, and making sure you watch your back since most fights involve three or four guards. While it's nothing I would call revolutionary, the combat works well, and keeps things interesting. Generally it's something you're supposed to at least try and avoid though, since this really is more of a sneaking game. You gain different swords moves and abilities as you progress through the game. Some of the counter moves can get pretty brutal.
The assassinations themselves were usually interesting, although I felt like they didn't really require as much stealth as they should have. Some were harder to approach than others, but mostly they were pretty similar. Some times there would be archers to take out, or guards to distract, but usually you could just charge in without necessarily having to use all that much finesse.
And that brings me to probably the greatest complaint about this game. The repetition. The missions are all very similar. There isn't a lot of variety. Thankfully, what there is is fun enough to be worth doing several times over, but by the end I really wished they had changed things up a bit, or had more of a build up as to the kind of things they required of you. Don't get me wrong, sneaking into a massively fortified castle to make a kill is a blast, but when the assassination plays out all to similarly to the last 5 or 6, you just start to wish there was a little bit more variety to it.
This is one area I really can't fault them in. The cities are huge and detailed, with scores of pedestrians and soldiers and priests milling about. Unfortunately you can't generally go into most of the buildings, though it doesn't really take away from the experience since there are more than enough interesting things outside to look at. Every time I would climb onto some tall tower and look around, it never ceased to impress me. Then, of course, I would make a "leap of faith" into a hay stack a hundred feet below. That too never gets old either. The character models and animations are generally good, if not mind blowing.
You're an assassin in this game. Need I say more. There's no sexual content. You won't find any brothels in Damascus. There's blood and killing and that's about it. There's quite a bit of philosophy tossed about that will probably go right over most kids heads. There is definitely a lot of emphasis placed on the act of killing itself, at least when it comes to the particular targets. The guards don't get much mention, but you'll almost feel bad for killing the targets when they start casting doubt over your motives with their dying words. Not a game for most young kids in my opinion.
Assassin's Creed is fun. It really is. The repetition in gameplay is made up for by the fact that the core gameplay mechanics are fun enough to be worth going through for each mission, even if you probably won't be likely to play through it again, unless you just have to find all the flags that are hidden throughout the cities. I didn't. It's an open world game with some interesting twists. The world they've created is a sight to behold to be sure. The story is interesting, and definitely takes a few major twists by the end. I stated at the beginning that this was by the people that made Prince of Persia. This is definitely not Prince of Persia. There are acrobatics and swords, but the similarities really end there. AC is unique in many ways, and it does a lot of things very right. The things it does wrong may be enough to make you just want to rent it for a long weekend, however. None the less, it is definitely a gaming experience worth having.
-gamer odd
Most Anticipated Games of 2008: Part IV
This post we'll check out two RPG's coming out this year that look like they show some promise. There are probably more than two good ones coming out this year, but these are the ones that seemed pretty sure bets.
Fable 2
The first Fable game on the original X-box was a good game. What it wasn't, however, was all that it had been talked up to be. Before its release, there were a lot of revolutionary features that it's creators were jabbering about that never actually came to fruition. Fable 2 looks like it will deliver on a lot of those promises. There is still relatively little known about the title. It is set several hundred years after the first game. You begin as a child and age over the course of the game. How much you fight, how good or evil you are, and how much you eat determines how your character looks as he ages. You can marry and have children. You can buy any house in the game for the right price. Apparently, if you buy every house in the whole kingdom people will start calling you the king. Another interesting gameplay element will be your dog. There are no buttons to control the dog, it's simply a matter of you interacting with his AI. For instance, if you're fighting, and your dog is wounded, you could just be a jerk and leave him limping around. But later on your might be playing cards in a tavern somewhere, and he'll come limping in, having looked for you in his doggy faithfulness. And that's basically what the makers of Fable II seem to really be going for. Giving you choices with real in game consequences, and then trying to get your emotions involved through that. We'll have to wait till this fall to find out when Fable II is released for the Xbox 360.
Fallout 3
To be honest, I've never played Fallout 1 or 2. I've heard some good things about them, but just never gotten around to them. So that fact that this is a sequel doesn't really interest me. What does interest me, is the fact that Bethesda is the developer making it. If you're not familiar with Bethesda, they're the people behind Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. If you don't know what Oblivion is, then you really need to play it, because it was by far the best RPG of its kind in recent memory. Well, it looks like Bethesda is putting just as much work into their next RPG. Unfortunately, there's very few details out on this one either, but what we do know is very appetizing. Like previous games, it takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. Fallout is about you coming out of the bunker you've been living in, and seeing how mad the world outside has become. Like Oblivion, there are lots of paths and choices to be had. There are some pretty big choices too. For instance, there is one town you go to that has an undetonated nuke at its center that stands as kind of monument. If you talk to the right person, they're ask you to set off the nuke for some kind of reward. You can chose either to ignore him, and continue to talk to the people in the town, and buy from the stores, or you can actually blow it up. You'll get the reward or whatever, but you lose those people and those stores, aside from the sleepless nights. Any aparently all those little and big choices make a difference, because the game has a reported 200 different endings. Unfortuneatly, I don't have any actual gameplay videos for this one, so the trailer and screen shots will have to suffice. Fallout 3 will hopefully be out sometime later this year.
Well, that's it for this addition. Just one more and I promise I'll be done...
-gamer odd
Burn the Rope
This is the shortest game you will ever play, but that in no way means you won't have fun. I don't think there's much more I need to say about, other then you should definitely listen to the credits so that you can get that song stuck in your head as well...
-gamer odd
Unlimited Orange
I may be straying somewhat from the realm of gaming with this post, but I just couldn't help myself. I came upon a website called Unlimited Orange. Basically, it's a endless website. It was essentially created as an ad, but it's still pretty impressive. You can just keep scrolling down and down, discovering little games to play, or just weird things to interact with. If you want to be totally creeped out, I highly recommend talking with the box that is almost at the top of the page. I think he's the fourth object down. Just talk to him...
-gamer odd
