budgie

Rocky, we're home. Looking forward to Wildlands - been hoping for an open world tac-shooter forever. Ghany or central Asia would have been nice but I can do Bolivia too - it's got the Clancy name on it after all. This is what it takes to get me excited these days...

Naturally the gameplay in MOH is over-the-top and theatrical but I'd like to see GR go woth the real-world modern day theme rather than the futuristic bs. Well guess I can't have it all my way. Even in GR1, I disagreed with the addition of the OICW.

That would be a minor bummer, but the theme still takes the cake in my book. Gritty, real-world locales. GR has gone too far into Star Trek territory for me. Set phasers to gay!

Yeah Arrowhead looks more my cup of tea. No time for the space cowboy Bling. that's why I haven't played any of the GRAW games since GR1 - the direction just went silly after that IMO. Now MOH with its real-world grit looks more like the game GR should have become.

Good timing as I'm finally playing it again after almost a year off because of the frustrating flaws in the game's design. It's a beautiful idea and I love the game world, but the devs failed to reach a lot of the game's potential. Their lack of vision (or maybe it was the publisher's marketing team) leads me to present a long wish list for the next sequel. I loved the Africa setting and would like to see a return. However, any third-world bush war will also do: SE Asia, Central America, as long as it's as gritty as FC2. But for me to actually purchase the game here's what I need to see fixed. Gun porn: That's what action gamers are here for. FC2 got it half right with typical used weapons in circulation on third world markets today. They got it horribly wrong with every rifle having the same ammo, same clip size and doing the same damage (almost none that is). A little variation in ballistics would be appreciated. The wear-and tear was good, but too fast and only applied to the player. Make it possible to repair or maintain guns: replacing them free of charge was just plain lazy game design. Having them break down all the time was just artificial difficulty. Gun Bazaars: There need to be proper marketplaces/dealers in various towns. Each should be unique and have slightly different pricing and inventory based on availability; no more of this GTA-style generic gunshop that is horribly overpriced. Ten diamonds for an old AK? You could buy a truckload in Africa for one. Civilians: A real population. Shopkeepers, hoteliers, barkeepers (oh yes!) Refugees, non-combatants, relief workers, hostages and hookers. The world doesn't have to revolve around the player. Wildlife Thew herds were too small, tha animals behaved too erratically. No lions or hippos or crocs. It would have been nice to cruise through the savannah and happen upon lions running down a zebra herd. Don't tell me it was too hard to program it when all the mwercs are hell bent on chasing me down. Don't tell me it would have depleted wilddlife reserves when the guiardposts regenerate goons every five minutes. Surely it wasn't that hard to program feeding/hunting algorithms - as my next complaint will attest... Incessant combat: Ditch the mindless and constant attacks from total strangers. It's an action game but that action needs to be in context. No more tiresome interruptions forcing us to stop and kill another suicidal merc in an ancient Datsun. It wasn't even challenging, just a chore. If they could have put such killer instincts into some of the wildlife it would have paid dividends in ambient experience. Unlocks: Get rid of them. Stop trying to be GTA in the Jungle. A GPS tracker for random cases of diamonds? 'Scouted' guardposts as an 'achievement'? 'Safe'' houses? The silly way equipment purchases were handled? Given the gritty real-world themes of FC2, it was galling to be treated like a 14-year-old 'power gamer'. Artificial boundaries: In such a big awesome gameworld why the stops? There was a mountain range to stop us from leaving the country so why did we have to black out AND LOSE THE CAR whenever we drove halfway out into the desert? To filter us back to thos guard posts and that incessant mindless combat, that's why. It was so obvious it was slap in the face. Maybe I wanted to be creative and get around the dangers. Maybe I just wanted to see a desert sunset. Either way the developers punished my creativity. This has to rank as one of the most artificial insults of a design restriction in over a decade of open-ended gaming. Finally the technology for big game worlds is there, they dangle it in front of us and they don't let us enjoy it. Consequences: There need to be more 'role playing' elements in a game like this. Working for the different factions made no difference to the game outcomes in FC2. It didn't stop everyone trying to kill you regardless of who your worked for. It didn't shut off quest paths at times your bridges should have been burned. It never onced changed the direction of the narrative. Once again the grown-up theme of the game called for more grown-up treatment of the player. Modding tools: Most of my above complaints could have been rectified by creative modders, yet two years on and the game engine remains closed to the public. A cruel joke. Did they really think their end product was that good we wouldn't want to alter it? Sadly it's as if the game was designed by people who just don't understand gamers. As I said before, the theme and setting of the game were a breath of fresh air in an industry obsessed with mimicking the competition's glitz. However for such a brilliant piece of intellectual property, FC2 relied far too heavily on tired old gameplay conventions from the likes of GTA and Just Cause. Next time they need to create something special and this time realize it is special and not get carried away designing what ends up to be 'just another action game'. Get that right and I'm on board

This looks like the game GR2 should have been. Yep GR2. After the first one they should have gone even more 'real-world'. This Battlestar Galactica crap at Comic Con (where else?) doesn't move me. As long as the action in MOH isn't too over-the-top they'll be taking over the mantle of special forces action games in my book.

I remember how promising the original looked almost a decade ago. Now it's gone all future laser space cowboy I'm not interested. Actually I never even played GRAW for the same reasons. Theme-wise, the new MOH is going in the direction I thought GR should have - gritty real-world locales and scenarios. Not interested in the bling.

Yeah a good-looking game, but somehow soulless. I played a few missions and regretted the purchase. I complained of COH having too much building going on and too many RTS conventions. I wanted something more like Total War. Well I got it, but it seems kinda dry. Good without the resource building but somehow dull and over-easy on the difficulty front. I hate to say it but the dirt-in-your-teeth action of COH has way more personality.

That really was me...

That's known as emergent gameplay: when players find new and unexpected ways to manipulate the environment, and it's one of the beautiful things about FC2. However my complaint with the checkpoints is not how to deal with them, or even avoid them (note the game punishes you just for driving too far out into the desert). My problem is the nuiscance of the checkpoints. There is no rhyme or reason to them, they don't fit the game snugly. I'd like to see fewer guard posts, controlled by factions and susceptible to bribery (unless guarding an off-limits area). I'd also like to see their jeeps and boats just as slow as mine, and that half of the desert between the scrub and the border opened up for exploration. I also dispute the 90% number. It's hyperbole, I know, but taking the rivers in the first half of the game is still aboit half as dangerous as the roads. I still lost a boat or two depending on the length of the trip. In the second half, that open lake is better and the waterways are generally quieter, but again, why are these guys attacking me all the time? Why do they respawn so quickly, or at all? Motivation creates immersion and more opportunities to be creative in solving problems. There's plenty of gunplay in the misssions; that's not necessarily what I need to be doing in between.

Thanks I know how to play the game. Actually waterways have checkpoints too. Fewer, to be sure, but still too many IMO. My problem is with the idea of the checkpoints. Purely a contrived effort at faux-action. Simply avoiding them isn't the solution: I think a game with a smart premise should have smarter gameplay. For me, it shouldn't be about beating all the traps the devs have set, so much as enjoying the experience. Note my comments on what happens when you venture too far out into the desert: I want to enjoy the gameworld without the constant asshattery.

FAR CRY 2 When people start to rail against ‘mindless violence’ in video games I am among the first to roll my eyes. To be fair, games like Manhunt deserved their share of flak. On the other hand games like GTA give you the choice whether to be a psychopath or not and consequences if you go over the deep end. Besides, all games have ratings. However there are times in Far Cry 2 you may find yourself wondering if the Senator wasn’t onto something. A combat-driven game set in the midst of an East African diamond conflict, the action itself is no more gratuitous or distasteful than other shooters, but it can feel a wanton nuisance at times, with constant, contrived firefights interrupting your gaming experience. I’d Miss the Rains… Far Cry 2 shares only the name with its predecessor. No more sci-fi experiments on the Island of Dr Moreau, you play a new character fighting for blood diamonds in a war-wracked African republic. It is a beautiful, beautiful country. Amidst the turmoil your mercenary can freely traverse sweeping Savannahs, deep jungles and scorched deserts. You can go on foot, by jeep, dune buggy or riverboat. There’s even a hang-glider, but it’s hard to fly sometimes. You’ll witness abandoned local villages, decayed industrial infrastructure, ransacked colonial towns and later in the game, a breathtaking inland lake if you catch it at the right time of day. All is rendered in gorgeous, DX 10 beauty with picture-perfect sunsets, tropical storms and moonlit African nights. The Ambient sounds, birds, baboons and Hyenas are all true to life and you can even see buffalo, antelope and zebra roaming the plains. Having visited the African savannah, there should be more wildlife; lion prides basking under trees, giraffes grazing and Hippos and crocs in the river. Even some real hyenas to go with their midnight whooping. Well, too many animals would slow it down I suppose and after all, you’re there for the diamonds. Ahh…the diamonds. Your character, chosen from a menu of twelve, is a gun for hire, recently arrived in country to find and kill an American arms dealer known as the Jackal. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but it’s a good premise to start with. Along the way you can work for the various factions doing hit jobs and sabotage, getting paid in diamonds as you slowly unravel the Jackal’s motives and hopefully his whereabouts. One review stated that choosing different characters gave a different start to each game, but I found the same opening every time. Nevertheless, it’s an intuitive introduction to the game world that ranks with Riddick for one of my all-time favorite intro sequences. The characters are, as Livy would put it, a mix of mercenaries ‘from all brute nations’ and lend themselves and their interesting banter well to the chaos. Their accents are good too, truly international with an unsurprising surplus of South Africans and East Africans. You can also unlock buddies by doing favors for other mercs. These guys and gals will help you out of a tight spot from time to time, which is a nice touch and surprisingly well-scripted when it happens. The only thing missing is more civilians, marketplaces and at least marginally functioning communities. The bars – excellent venues for doing deals and making friends and enemies - are empty of revellers, or even bartenders. This land has been taken over completely by the turmoil and almost everyone you see is armed and hostile. The star of the show is the Jackal himself. He’ll periodically appear in cutscenes, or voice his opinion on smuggled interview tapes. A modern and nuanced villain, I couldn’t help but get to like him as he spoke candidly and indeed, quite accurately about the ins and outs of the arms-for-diamonds trade in Africa’s bush wars. You may not want to kill him either: after all he isn’t too different from your avatar. Your protagonist has his Achilles heel – malaria. Thanks to this you must occasionally, altruistically, help the underground movement in return for medication. There are other people to work for as well. Some will give you assignments that make you question your own morality, reminding you, perhaps you are a malaria-ridden soldier of fortune in a dirty war. Such adult themes attracted me from the start but it’s a shame that the developers didn’t quite realize that they should be making a game for grown-ups. Wild Drums Echo The combat is enough fun, but missions let you approach goals in a variety of ways. I gained a great kick out of stealing into a rail yard one night, tensely avoiding sentries, planting an explosive and slipping quietly away. Likewise you can use fire to your advantage when the wind is right, setting fire to the grasslands and watching it sweep over your enemies. As one reviewer put it ‘the commitment to first-person is total’. With no HUD and no stats or crosshair, you’ll truly feel as if you are in your own movie. Need to see a map? It comes up in your hand like any other item or weapon. Ammo count? Briefly flashes on the screen when you reload. It’s a nice touch and lets you enjoy the sweeping world and useful pyrotechnic effects all the more. Yet as much fun as fighting sounds there’s just too much of it. The developers have relied on violence not just for conflict resolution, but for incidental ‘entertainment’. Driving cross-country you are constantly assailed by suicidal goons in armed jeeps or at roadblocks, bent on killing you for no apparent reason. I never know what faction they’re with or why they hate me so much they’ll risk life and limb. I know the country is in chaos but the sheer mindlessness beggars belief. Frequently I’d go through three trashed jeeps and two boats and several clips and grenades and most of my first aid, just getting from point A to point B and end up asking myself, why? I wouldn’t mind bribing these militias for safe passage. It would make a lot more sense given the context. They also don’t let you avoid it. Rimmed by a desert and mountains, it’s impossible to leave the country anyway, but driving too near to the edge to avoid roadblocks for example, will net you a blackout, and you’ll wake up to find your car is missing. Punishing creativity – nice one Ubisoft! Likewise there’s little chance of fleeing a checkpoint: as long as the enemy has time to get into a jeep or boat before you blow by completely, they’ll pursue and their vehicles are all faster than yours, regardless of make and model. They’ll catch up and ram you and it begins all over again. This is purely a contrived effort to put more ‘action’ in the game, as if the publisher’s marketing team were looking over the devs shoulders the whole time and asking, “How can we make this more appealing to 14-year-olds?†I played on the easy setting, so this constant action wasn’t even hard, just a nuisance that depleted my resources and patience between real missions. There is a way around many checkpoints – a fast travel system of public buses. This of course begs the question of why the roads are safe for bus drivers, and how in a country where nothing else functions, there is a working public transport system. Sure it will alleviate some of the combat fatigue, but in its own way, is just as silly. One of the beautiful things about free-form gaming is that you can get lost in the game-world. All too often however, I could feel the hand of the developers guiding me in ways I wouldn’t do it myself. This Thing That I’ve Become For a game with such adult and real-world themes then, there are some terribly childish moments. In many other ways Far Cry 2 relies on outdated game conventions that should have been left on the drawing board. The weapon lineup is very accurate for the locale. Old G3s, FALs, RPG launchers and the ubiquitous AK47 are lovingly recreated in the visuals. However there appears to be no difference between types of rifles: they all use the same ammo and appear to do the same damage. They also only fire on full automatic. If they cared enough to include the right weapons for the locale, why not also model ammo, selective fire and stopping power? Since there’s little difference between guns there’s not much reason to spend on ‘better’ gear. Scavenged stuff will suffice for heavier weapons, and you can get by just fine with the free rifle you get near the start. Another great idea that was half done, the guns decay and jam over time. Eventually a weapon will rust and fall apart from overuse, but this seems to take about 48 hours in Far Cry 2’s world. So much for the Kalashnikov’s vaunted reliability. Furthermore, repair is not an option: once a weapon is bought you can replace it for free at any number generic gun shops. I don’t see why we can’t just repair them. The gunrunners must be losing a fortune. Equipment purchase itself done with your hard-earned diamonds on a PC at the gun store. Why not immerse us with over-the-counter purchases? Why not have gun bazaars in towns instead of the same generic gun merchant at various locales all over the map? Storage crates at various safehouses must be paid for in advance at the gunshop and items like the camouflage suit cost far more than weapons. Do they have any idea what diamonds are worth today? For a quick buck, there are “hidden’ diamond packages around the map, unlocks such as weapons and ‘upgrades’ for the weapons and vehicles that you’ll never really need, and stats that lend nothing to the game except the console player’s desire to keep score. One ludicrous ‘achievement’ is guard posts. When a roadblock or checkpoint is neutralized and properly looted, the game reports the location as ‘scouted’. Ten minutes later you’ll drive through the same spot to find it overrun by hostile gunmen again, leaving you wondering what exactly you achieved by defeating it in the first place. This idea of unlocks and score sheets is condescending considering the scale and detail of the world and the subject matter of the game. Playing it should be reward enough. These are small problems and perhaps only reflect the game’s console roots, but given the source material, I expected something more mature. Couple these hiccups with the incessant attacks, and you’re left with something not unlike “GTA in the Jungleâ€. Perhaps the biggest omission is editing tools to fix these problems. A year down the track and the only ‘mods’ available are MP maps. It’s Waiting There for You Still, I can’t help but recommend Far Cry 2. It is fun, it is action packed and you’ll get your money’s worth. There’s also just enough story and characterization to make you want to see it through: hunting the Jackal may become your own personal journey into the Heart of Darkness. The game world is beautiful but given the chore it is to get around under constant attack, you’ll find yourself settling for small doses. Generally I’m exhausted after one mission because getting there and back is such a headache, so my average session runs about an hour. Play it like that and the game will last many weeks. Once again the only real complaint, aside from being too ‘console’, is that with such a rich premise, the game has focused far too much on action over intrigue and falls short of its full potential.

Why does Delta always have to have the black flakjackets and hockey helmets in games? That was what they wore in the early nineties, I'm pretty sure they have other gear nowadays.

It's hard not to like Clear Sky. The gameworld is expansive, exciting and beautiful to look at. It is also buggy, unstable and brimming with unrealised potential. None of the major reviewers marked this game even as high as its vaunted yet deeply flawed predecessor and it's easy to see why. The limited vision of the developers and the rushed-to-shelves nature of the product detract from the genius of the game world and the source material and leave you wondering whether the developers have learned anything from past mistakes. First, the good. In many ways this is the game Shadow of Chernobyl should have been. The world is slightly bigger, is packed with much more to see and do and at least on the face of it, is rent by an intriguing web of factional quarrels and territorial disputes. You are a stalker again, a lone mercenary in the shattered post-post-apocalyptic world of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The game is a prequel to SOC, wherein you find yourself in pursuit of Strelok and his crew as they seek the Zone's centre and the truth hidden in the sarcophagus of the burnt out nuclear reactor. As before, It's a hokey plot but a great excuse to go questing in this quasi-RPG gameworld. As said in my previous review, Stalker is an RPG at heart. You get a big fairly open world to explore and are given a variety of missions, jobs and quests depending who you run into. The shifting adioactivity of the zone has closed some areas and opened new ones. The Swamps, a reimagined Red Forest and the city of Limansk are all beautifully rendered, expansive and full of loot. Loot you say? The artifacts baby. Radioactive anomalies produce beautiful little works of science that offer health and protection benefits (that's righht, magical items in any other game) and can be sold for cash. You can also scavenge used weapons and other abandoned equipment for sale. Too bad the economy is stacked against you. In the case of artifacts - which are costly to locate and downright dangerous to retrieve this time around - the reward hardly justifies the risk. You may want to download a trader mod to make the stingy pawnbrokers in the game pay more for saleable goods. To add some spice and life to the Zone, you can now join several of the factions - Stalkers, Bandits, Freedom, Duty and the new Clear Sky group. These factions have ongoing struggles for control of different regions and it can be profitable hooking up with one or another to help achieve their ends. It can also get you in trouble with their rivals. I felt the contest for some areas was palpable if a little contrived: you may find yourself wondering just how many times you have to eradicate bandits from the Garbage hangar for example. However the benefits are many. Each base has a bar, trader and weapon repair mechanic and you'll get better prices from a friendly faction. Sadly however it's still the same old stalkers even if they deliver new lines. The bases rarely feel properly settled - they're more like squatter camps - and the stalkers don't do much but stand around waiting to interact with you or be attacked by something. It would have been nice to see proper saloons, women and children in the settlements and lonely wanderers stalking the countryside to gather artifacts. There's that feeling in Clear Sky that the world revolves around you. Yet there is still plenty of freedom to interact with that world if you please. take sides, or not. Do missions for everyone or enrich yourself collecting loot. If like me, the main story doesn't suit you then you are free to pursue your own goals. The world is a beautiful place again, an neglected wildrness littered with the husks of soviet architechture like a time capsule to another era. It's beautifully rendred and immersive. Raid mutant dens, eradicate bandits, make money, collect artifacts. You can even join a faction and try to see them through to the end. I'd still like to see more quests, open ground between regions and better money to be made, but the game is at least more replayable than SOC was. As replayable it may be however, you can't hbelp the "been there, done that" feeling left over from the game's predecessor. Most of the areas available were in the first game and have changed little visually. The creatures are all kinda samey and don't quite scare the willies out of you like they used to. They also often seem easier to kill, despite the acverage human target rewuiring half a clip of rifle ammo to stay down. There are mods to address gameplay balance issues like these and the trading imbalance mentioned earlier, but should it really take the mod community to fix design decisions the devs made? These are things that should have been thought of before release. But the worst complaint? Bugs. Unfortunately the radioactive emssions from the zone appear to be so strong they can reach across time and space to your PC and crash the game. Lightning storms at night are a beautifull display of DX10 prowess until they get sliced through with green disco lights. Some quests caused inexplicable crashes and game-ending repeat-crashes. In one iteration I couldn't get through to the Army Warehouse zone without a CTD, no matter how many earlier saves I reverted to. Other people have reported similar problems with Agropom, Yantar, the Garbage, pretty much all locations in fact. Bugs of course can be patched, but the Developers' vision is a bigger problem. With such an interesting IP, such deep source material, why are they trying to mimic on-the-rails games like Half-Life and Call of Duty? Fully the last three zones *a thrisd of the game in the mnainstory, are nothing but a series of increasingly harder scripted gunfights. Midway through the game there is a scripted robbery event that forces you to start over with nothing and the opening off new areas to explore is wholly dependent on progress through the main quest. Stalker's Chernobyl setting and Slavic appeal have the potential to rival Fallout as a franchise, but the Devs seem to cling to old-fashioned gaming conventions like security blankets. The Stalker series is a beautiful bird that has yet to spread its wings. More freedom, more quests and a better sense of immersion at the heart of a game like this, not afterthoughts. There are ways around these problems that can make the game more enjoyable. As stated earlier the main quest is dull and doen't really make you want to complete it. Instead you can ignore the main story and join the faction wars. You can concentrate on enriching yourself on looted equipment and artifacts, but be prepared to limit your hunting grounds to anything prior to the Warehouses. You can be a 'good' or 'bad' stalker depending on your RPG preferences and can ally yourself with the faction whose goals best suit you. . However any enjoyment of this sort feels in spite of the game rather than because of it: avoiding the story generates the one feeling in a game that detracts from all immersion; that you are beating the Devs, not living the game. Lets hope the promise is finally realized in the upcoming Call of Pipryat. Indeed it is hard not to like clear sky, yet until the series reaches its potential, there's so much of it to dislike.

Yo Para - finally released? Wow. Dude I was in Hong Kong when you started that. That was three countries ago man!