Kireatic

Part of the One Hundred Plus Games Review.

BioShock. Said to be one of the best games of recent times, but wasn’t a game I had ever actually played, despite it’s high rating among most gamers. So, when I was gifted a copy, it gave me the chance to have some proper quality time with the game.

What I discovered may well shock some of you. BioShock is…okay.

I’ll quickly back-pedal by saying that the storyline is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a game, and has the most stunning plot-twist since when that platform went round the corner in Portal and I saw a fire pit. Would you kindly…? The little sisters, and the journal entries scattered about the game slowly increase the back story, until every new piece of Rapture makes you think “Ah, this is what such-and-such was talking about…”. It’s masterfully done, and really helps you feel immersed in a game, something that doesn’t happen every day. You even have the choice of harvesting or saving the little sisters each time, which in essence is a form of good or evil. A man chooses, a slave obeys…

Graphics are on the whole pretty good, with plenty of detail in the scenery, and water acts like it should when it’s part of said scenery, which is nice. It doesn’t interact with objects otherwise, other than to obscure your view, which is a shame, but understandable given the tremendous increase in power that is required from the engine and the computer to do that. PhysX would be nice in BioShock 2 for that, but I digress. My biggest complaint on the graphics would be on the enemies and people you see around the place. Unless in a cut-scene, their mouths don’t move when they talk. That really annoyed me. How are they talking when their mouths aren’t moving! A real shame, but there you go. Some variation in the little sisters other than dress and hair colour would be appreciated as well.

Gameplay is where the game actually suffers. There is a tremendous amount of customization that you can do, swapping out how your plasmids work, how much damage you take, how fast you move, even how objects in the game react to you, which is fantastic. But that all comes to nothing once you realize that the lighting plasmid and the wrench is all you need. I killed the final boss with the lightning plasmid and the wrench. I’m sorry, 2k, but giving the player everything they need at the start, while technically sound, is boring. I had over 700 Adam before I took on the last boss purely because I didn’t want to spend it on any abilities that I wasn’t going to use. Although let it not be said whacking everything with your wrench isn’t fun, and you can always vary it if you like at your whims, it’s just a shame that you are never actually forced to change weapons unless taking on a Big Daddy – and even then it’s not required to do so.
Other than the whole zap and smack issue, the game plays rather well, and is never too slow a pace with once exception, near the end – trying not to spoil it, but the escort segment is extremely slow and agonizing. But other than that, no complaints. The game took me 10 hours to complete, 6.6 hours of which were in a row, so it has holding power at the very least.

The UI is good, easy to read and the game is easy to control. Default plasmids using the F-keys is a bit annoying, as those keys are just out of reach during normal gameplay, and I don’t like having to move my hand away from the WASD keys to quick-change to a plasmid, so I was mostly using the mouse and scroll – less speedy, but easier. I’d recommend re-binding that particular setup, but otherwise worked great.

BioShock gets:

Gameplay: 7/10
Graphics: 9/10
Difficulty: 8/10
Storyline: 10/10

Overall Score: 8.5/10! Hoping that BioShock 2 fixes the gameplay aspects, and then we’ll be away!

Red Faction – the original one, I mean. A classic game, if not a tad dated at this stage in computer gaming, being released in 2001. I have the great honour of owning all the Red Faction games, but have never in fact played any of them. As part of my One Hundred Plus Review, I played through the original Red Faction with an eye to review the game by both today’s standards and those of games of almost a decade ago.

My first experience of Red Faction was actually when it first came out on a friend’s Playstation. I never played the single player, but much fun was had in the multiplayer mode, running around, getting cheap kills with the rail gun and digging a hole in the wall. So, when I first started up the game, it brought back many fond memories, and reminded me of what I love most about the game; the destructible environments.

Games which let you blow holes in anything you feel like are rare, even today, so being able to just blast your own personal tunnel into a wall is great fun, if not a waste of explosives. More games need this mechanic rather than the RF series, in my view. However, RF1 falls down insofar that it relies too much on destruction to see you through the game. If you get caught needing to get into a room with explosives, but you have none left, you either have to reload an old save or, the horror, cheat to continue. It’s a nice idea, but if you are going to make it a necessity, have some form of unlimited destruction, not just a 5-clip rocket launcher, some C4 and a few grenades. Because they run out.

A side effect of the destruction is that there are a ton of hidden passages to be uncovered, making the game feel a lot less linear than it really is, without being confusing – something games being released now could probably learn a lot from. That and I always have liked bursting out through a wall on top of some surprised guards. Makes my day.

The gameplay itself remains good by most standards. There’s a steady difficulty curve, and both combat and stealth sections. The stealth works well for the most part, except when discovered. There’s then about a minute of frantic shooting until your silenced pistol runs out of ammo, and then hiding hoping nobody will shoot you until the alarm goes away. The alarm buttons on the wall, by the way, are apparently for the NPC’s to press, and for you to stop them pressing. Don’t press them yourself. They set the alarm off. Call me an idiot, but I didn’t realize that would happen the first time. The NPC’s are also well programmed, reacting on sight to your intrusion and not being all-knowing through walls that some games suffered back in 2001 (and some still do). The voice acting is great as well, but the first guard who said “Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed”, I believed, so I put my gun away. Bastard hits me. I shoot his head off, and proceed to kill everyone I come across for the rest of the game, just in case.

The story is…good. It makes sense, for the most part, although it’s hardly ‘gripping’. Not much more I can say about that, except for wondering why Parker takes orders from Eos so…readily.

The option to melee with your weaponry would have been nice, especially at the start of the game when you just have the pistol. What’s wrong with smacking someone with the butt of your weapon, huh? And why the hell does the riot shield vanish after one shove? Seriously, that’s just a bit odd.

The various environments of play are also great fun, with the exception of shallow water, which behaves oddly and really slows you down. On the topic of bugs, there are a few of them, the most notable one being the giant robot in the trash refinery. First time round, he got stuck. And the second. And the third. And the tenth. So I went and looked up what exactly I was supposed to be doing - apparently I was doing it right, the robot just does that. In the end I was forced to turn godmode on and jump into the robot to shove him into the tunnel before carrying on. I suspect you could have used rockets or something to widen the tunnel, but regrettably, I had used all the rockets in the area trying to kill the robot. Boo-hoo. This is why you have more than one save, people.

Checkpoints would be nice as well. If you don’t save, you are screwed – it actually just restarts the game for you. I lost 20 mins because I assumed that “Loading…” also meant saving, but apparently that mentality hadn’t caught on back in 2001. It’s been a while since I frantically saved after every bad guy, but there you go.

On a graphical note, very impressive for 2001, although the weapons UI starts out as being a little difficult to use compared to the modern day equivalents, and a tad clunky. Reminds me of HL1′s UI, but better looking and less obvious.

Oh, and I love the soundtrack.

So, Red Faction I, I give you:

Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 9/10
Difficulty: 7/10
Storyline: 8/10

Overall Score: 8/10! Not bad for a game that’s 9 years old.

With the release of Valve’s followup to Left4Dead, Left4Dead2 (the name is a bit of a no-brainer), I’ve had a good chance to spent some good quality time with it since it decoded on steam on that Tuesday morning. I’ve carefully inspected every mode, every difficulty and every last setting in order to type up this article – as well as having a damn good time along the way.

The game takes place in the same universe as L4D, although its currently unclear as to if it is before or after the first game – although it’s possible it takes place before the first game, given that there is interaction with both CEDA and the US military. I personally prefer “During” – L4D1 takes place during Swamp Fever/Hard Rain in L4D2 – post infection but pre bombing. No offical word on this though.

First up, the basics. Graphics. It’s still L4D, and it’s still the source engine. But it’s an updated version of the engine, with a fair number of physics tweaks, and the textures have all clearly been improved, especially on the special infected. The models may be better as well, but I personally can’t tell the difference. The skyboxes are prettier, and with the inclusion of daylight and weather, there is really something to look at. I’ve ported a few levels of No Mercy from L4D1 into the new game, and while the old textures are still the same, the new textures on the infected are a clear improvement.

The controls are the same as L4D and indeed as every single Source game. Intuitive and simple, and easily rebound. No complaints here with the exception of the voice communication key. It defaults to C. There’s been worse, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch defaulted to K, other side of the keyboard for most gamers. But C is…awkward. Rebind ASAP if you use a mic.

Basic gameplay is simple. It’s a zombie apocalypse in progress. There are 4 of you, and lots of zombies. Shoot the zombies. Some would say that such a same-y game gets dull, and yes, you are correct. It would, except for the multiplayer aspect. I’ll take a second to talk to those who didn’t play the original game – L4D isn’t a normal zombie game, as in you can’t play it on your own very well. There are always 4 survivors (to start with) and in many situations, any one survivor will be helpless, and will require the aid of another to continue. This is not optional – all but 2 of the specials will cause a single player to become useless, immobile, and usually in imminent danger of death. Without another survivor, they are dead. The exceptions are the spitter, who is more about area denial, and the boomer, which has the potential to be highly damaging, but not immobilizing. The witch is different depending on difficulty level, but that’s another matter (sniper rifle ftw). Jumping back to you seasoned zombie killers L4D2 is pretty much more of the same, but with more tactics involved. In easy and normal difficulty modes, the game is basically L4D1 with some new toys to play with and some new enemies to shoot. However, the new additions to the game get far more interesting at higher difficulties – for example, in the first game, a corridor was more or less safe haven for the survivors. However, if you aren’t careful, the spitter could block the corridor, spliting up the team, or, far worse, a charger could run through, knocking down everyone. And all the new equipment, useful as they may be, replace an existing item. A defibrilator? Great, you can revive a dead teammate – at the cost of your heathpack. What’s easier, healing someone alive, or going back for someone dead? And melée weapons? Hoards have no chance now…but what about your infinite ammo pistols…? You get the idea. Tactics, tactics, tactics. Voice communications are vital on the higher difficulties, even with the built in voice commands, you need someone to yell “TANK BEHIND YOU!”

The new gameplay modes are also a large expansion from L4D1. Versus and Survival return, with the addition of Realism and Scavenge.
Realism is a standard campaign, except that you don’t get any of the useful visual cues you get normally, such as at the least useful end, who’s talking over voice, and at the most useful, where your team-mates are. If you split up, you really will die,  because if you get hunter’d, your team-mates won’t know until you yell, and even then, won’t know where you are. An excellent challenge for those bored of expert mode – although I haven’t met these people yet.
Scavenge is where the survivors get dumped in a level and have to run around grabbing gas cans and bringing them back to a fuel tank of some sort, while another team consisting of the special infected try to stop them – whoever gets the most cans wins. A great idea, in theory, but a team with even slight organization will steamroll their opponents…there’s no chance to regain ground once you get knocked down a notch. It’s good fun if the teams are balanced, but this is rare…I get the impression that this is Valve’s attempt at slightly-competitive L4D. It…sort of works, but not quite there. Worth playing, but Versus mode, a campaign where the special zombies are other players, is still best in my view.

I’ll finish off by addressing those who claim that L4D2 could have just been an expansion for L4D1. Yes, it PROBABLY could have been, provided that you didn’t want graphics updates – because they’d have to change the engine for that. But it wouldn’t have been free, because there’s so much new stuff in there that Valve just couldn’t give that away. But here’s the rub – I suspect that if it was released as paid-DLC for L4D1, pretty much everyone who could would buy it. But because it’s a new game, people complain. However, in my view, the new modes, the weapons, the infected, the graphics, the director, the weather, even the SKYBOXES…too much work went into this game.

Besides, you wouldn’t have the fancy southern style menu-music. I love that music.