Where are the games?

Well, at least the ones I like?  And specifically, the ones that push PC's?  Most everyone I know has switched to gaming on their PC's and Mac's.  With the disaster of what's going on with Sony, and the aging graphics of the Xbox but continued high prices, most people I know have switched to primarily gaming online with their computers.  With the surge in downloadable games, growth in delivery services like Steam and D2D, and hardware pushing ahead, where are the developers pushing forward?  Have they all bought into the idea that all game sales are on the consoles, and only the casual Facebook crowd game on PC's?  Or that the iPhone is the only place to innovate?  Having invested in some new hardware, I am searching for games that will let me see some eye candy.  After hearing on a recent episode of the Bombcast that Skyrim was going to be DX9 in November (due to consoles), and we're on DX11 in the PC world, I was pretty disappointed.  Funny how things have changed, and PC gamers are now the "ports" and "afterthoughts".  At this point, I don't even care what version of DX you use.  Just push the performance on the pc versions.

For Science!

When the first Portal came out I was just blown away by such a simple idea. 1 gun, 2 portals and a lot of puzzle solving. I fondly remember playing Portal in one sitting and before playing Portal 2, I quickly refreshed my memory by playing the original one more time. Despite Portal 2 just on the horizon it was still an absolute pleasure to play the original Portal.

Portal 2 returns you back to Aperture Science as Chell. Our female mute hero who has a knack for puzzle solving is awoken by a new character called Wheatley voiced by Ricky Gervais close friend Stephen Merchant. I’m going to get this out right now, the voice acting in this game is great and the narrative is spot on. GlaDOS makes her return with her witty, death threatening, yet very satisfying and often hilarious announcements as you play through each level. Stephen Merchant does a great job in his role as the rather dumb yet helpful sidekick that he is at the beginning of the game. Being British I enjoyed hearing a British talent in such a mainstream game and was quite surprised that voice acting, story writing and character gestures were all executed sublimely. I’m almost tempted to put down that half the fun was just waiting to see how GlaDOS would insult you next or what Wheatley was going to say the next time you saw him. Even Cave Johnson, the creator and owner of Aperture Science who you hear from later in the game does an excellent job of not only personifying the craziness that is the Aperture Science Labs approach to science but also the aging of the company itself.

Aperture Science is in large scale ruin. Nature has made its way into some test areas while others are just decrepit and falling apart. It’s a nice change to what we were shown in the original Portal, but GlaDOS is busy repairing the test areas for you as you advance. What I really enjoyed was how Valve showed the player just how big and massive Aperture Science is. If not darn right ridiculous. Test areas are just huge cubes of robotic tiles that can are themselves movable in this giant structure of a testing facility. It’s really quite cool and I was glad to discover more about Aperture Sciences inner workings and history.

The tests themselves have new components to them too. 3 types of Gels are introduced. Blue allowing you to bounce to the same height you dropped from; great for clearing massive gaps. Orange gel allows you to accelerate rapidly along it and white gel when applied to surfaces makes that surface usable with the portal gun. Tractor beams which could both push and pull, light bridges which could be used to walk along as well as act as a barricade for moving objects or protection against sentries. My personal favorite was the faith jump plates which would launch the player or an item very high into the air at a designated target. I really enjoyed the air time moments in the original portal where you had to plant an entrance and an exit portal while you were in midflight and was glad to see more levels like this in Portal 2.

With all these new additions, you might think puzzle solving in Portal 2 is a real head scratcher, but really their quite solvable. Admittedly there were times where I was like; WTF? But Valve did such a good job with slowly easing the player into learning each new device and how these could be used to help solve future test areas. The learning curve is balanced very well and I never felt any puzzle were impossible. Importantly Portal 2 never makes you feel stupid. Sure you might stall on a few levels while you think, but when you do realize the solution you’re never embarrassed by how stupid you were at not noticing the solution sooner, just genuinely satisfied that you solved the puzzle. It’s a great feeling solving a puzzle in the test area, reaching the exit and moving on to the next test area.

The story in Portal 2 is a lot more informative than the first one. You learn loads more about Aperture Science and its history. Wheatley sets the tone of the game at the beginning but soon you find the tables have turned and you’re learning a great deal from GlaDOS and Cave Johnson in the later levels of the game. I enjoy learning about the lore of game worlds and even though Valve has only briefly mentioned Aperture Science in Half Life 2, I did find myself thinking how Portal and Portal 2 fits in the Half Life universe timeline. In any case it was cool to finally hear about how GlaDOS had come into being. Some information is revealed about Chell’s past but nothing on the scale to everything else going on. While the story formula is nothing new in Portal 2, it was an absolute pleasure to play through to the very end and see the conclusion, which by the way is out of this world! Spoiler? Maybe, but it was an epic end and the rolling credits had me smiling.

A great game and one you should all add to your collections. Could it be game of the year though? Hmm way too early to say for sure. Were only just entering Spring and there are so many games to be released yet but I think it’s safe to say that since 2011 started this is by far the best game to be released this year so far. I’ll be posting my Co-Op review tomorrow.

MAXIMUM REVIEW!

Crysis 2.

Being the budget gamer I am, I’m forced to play the shiny new PC games on a somewhat graphical lackluster rig. In this case my laptop. While I can game quite comfortably on my laptop, it is starting to show its age when processing the eye candy. Never the less Crysis was able to detect the ideal settings for my laptop and runs rather well on it. We all know Crysis 2 looks amazing.

Even though the graphics are scaled down for my laptop I was still really impressed with the visuals. Crytek did a really good job with creating a destroyed, occupied New York city and while the open world exploration is gone there is still a large amount of freedom for the player to navigate through levels. I found myself using different tactics where possible depending on the terrain of the level and the amount of bad guys in my sights.

Crysis 2 lets you know when you’ve reached a strategic moment which usually places you on some high perch looking down on the level that awaits. During this time you can go into binoculars mode and have a look around, highlight enemies and ammo dumps as well as think about how to get from your current position to the objective.

In all honesty though, there isn’t really much emphasis for you to be strategic. I found myself just having a quick glance at where the enemies were, where the ammo was and if there were any vehicles packing heavy weaponry. The problem is that your radar gives away too much information. It lets you know where enemies are and which way they’re looking. I know you’re in a high tech suit, but a little less of warfare information would have made things a little more difficult and surprisingly. Sorry soldier hiding around the corner, but I know your there! There have been moments though where I was caught by surprise but I think this was just orchestrated by the game itself. The AI aren’t that smart either, too many a time have I caught a soldier glitch walking into a wall only to die by an equally unimaginative and over reused melee kill.

The suit is the real star of the show though. The suit powers have been more mainstreamed since the original Crysis; powers can be activated and deactivated by a simple key press, though the command star is still there. I never did understand why sprint was a power though. Yes sprint is slightly faster in Crysis 2 than other FPS games but it’s not that fast. Maximum armor and cloak are probably the 2 “real” powers you use the most often. Sprint can be used in conjunction with cloak and maximum armor but it drains your suits energy at a higher rate. The same when you use the power jump. The suits power animations though are quite impressive. I especially liked going in and coming out of cloak mode. The animation on the weapons and abilities like grab and melee, while nothing new were all rendered very smoothly. You also have nano vision too which is basically thermal vision. It’s necessary to use in low light parts of the game and when tracking down foes, but really it’s just thermal vision. Why call it nano vision. I felt like there was a missed opportunity here for more suit powers.

Crysis 2 forces you to use the suits powers a lot, but as you progress through the game, you build your own method of combat style with the suits abilities. For the first part of the game I was being very covert and had some excellent moments where I would clear a whole level of enemies with melee kills or just sneak straight pass them. It’s enjoyable but time consuming and you soon find yourself combining powers as the situation evolves around you. Different enemy types require different approaches and mixing all these up kept me thinking throughout the game. I certainly didn’t feel I was on rails shooting non-stop, though there are boundaries and limitations to the freedom you have in levels now. The open world island of the past is gone, but there is still a level of choice to what you can do.

What I really liked about Crysis 2 was the on the fly customization of weapons and your suit. Each power tier can be upgraded to have a bonus trait. For example cloak can be upgraded to use less suit power and the time to activate cloak is substantially quicker. These upgrades cost nano points which you collect from the dead aliens in the game. Weapons can be modified to have different types of scopes, silencers, attached shotgun/grenade launchers, extended magazines, firing modes. I definitely appreciated being able to change the weapons in the game to meet my needs. Something I wish I could see in more FPS games.

The story in Crysis 2 is a lot more character involved. In the previous Crysis I felt there was more emphasis on just the suit, the island and the alien invasion. In crysis 2 there is a lot of dialogue and cut scenes between levels. Some might say too much but I didn’t feel like I was being pulled away from game play for too long and I did enjoy following along with the story.

There’s multiplayer too, but when it comes to FPS games there is only one FPS game I play online and that is the Battlefield series. I played a bit of the multiplayer but found myself just running around aimlessly with my team mates or cloaking up behind enemies etc. It’s fun for like an hour or two but nothing engaging or rewarding about it at all.

All in all a good shooter and an enjoyable single player. Use it to benchmark your gaming rigs.

FRAPS is not your friend

Recently, I wrote a perspective comparing experiences of gaming on the PS3 versus the PC on the Assassin's Creed games.  During that time of comparing and contrasting the video fidelity, benchmarking, and asking for outside opinions from my wife, one thing became clear; I'm a bit obsessive.  The second thing that became clear is that FRAPS is not your friend.

Assassin's Creed (2 and Brotherhood): PS3 vs PC experiences

I've recently spent over 100 hours with Ezio/Desmond and crew. That's a lot of time, and I'm a little burnt out. So instead of contuning to write reviews like all the game sites do, I'll try to come up with new angles to write about. For this one, I thought I would write about the different experiences because of the change in hardware.

New Hardware! AMD HD Radeon 6950 and OCZ Agility2 60GB SSD

Well guys, I saved my pennies, got some birthday money, and invested in a new card (XFX 2GB version).  I wanted to get something current generation with DX11 support and determine based on that upgrade whether or not to invest in a new cpu/mb/ram upgrade later this year or postpone to next.  Also, I wanted to see for myself if the SSD hype was worth it, and upon stumbling into a sale at CompUSA, I picked one up.  What are the results?