Hidden, and not so hidden gems

[TronFAQ]

Just finished playing this:

I've still got to pick this up, at some point. It sounds like a flawed jewel. Which is what STALKER was too, at first.

I agree that, if anything, these guys should be rewarded for having the balls to make something that's different. I'm getting really tired of all the cookie-cutter games being made these days.

[win3k]

Afternoon chaps

This week's waste-of-time-o-matic:



That's right, gamefans. System Shock 2.

This is the latest salvo in the never ending battle royale for king of the survival horror genre. Peeking under the hood reveals this to be shootage of the third person kind (it's in the rules of the big book of survival horror, apparently), with carefully targeted dismemberment of the opposition being the key to success.

To suggest that this is a little bit derivative and formulaic would be to understate things; this game shamelessly copies and pastes from all over the place. You're the ever-silent protagonist named Isaac Clarke (see what those clever chaps at EA did there, sci-fi fans?) who boards the Ishimura (see also: the Von Braun, yes, there's the hydroponics level, there's the medical level, is that the crew quarters level? Oh yes of course it is) in response to a comms blackout.

As per the big-book 'o survival horror rules, it all turns to crap and you're left to pick up the pieces. Most of the rest you've seen before; the video/audio diaries as backstory fillers, the set piece made-you-jump moments, the (painfully) predictable denouement etc. etc. all competently handled in an engine that renders some rather nice visual effects in sizeable environments with plenty of detail, all running at smooth framerates, assuming you sit somewhere North of the recommended specs.

The enemies are the usual shambling gibbering sweepings-off-the-abbatoir-floor things; think Carpenter's "The Thing" and you're pretty much there. One criticism is that the enemy types are seriously limited, with that old standby of using a reskinned model to denote tougher enemies. There are RPG-lite elements in your ability to upgrade your weapons and other equipment which work reasonably well.

In terms of deviation from the normal, there's three things that stand out; first, the optimum route to enemy gunishment is to dismember them (literally). Madly throwing shot after shot into them will eventually work, but surgical removal of legs, arms, and heads is the way to go. Second off, you have a bullet time^h^h^h Stasis module, and a gravity gun^h^h^h^h Kinesis module. Finally, you have zero-G sections which work pretty well.

All told, this game is far too easy (Gentlemen, set Phasers to kill, we're entering the Port of Console). Playing it to completion brings some unlocks including, thankfully, an "impossible" difficulty mode (it isn't, obviously).

Final thoughts: buy this if you like your survival horror with a side order of blood spatter. Unlike, for example, Resident Evil, the puzzles are at least rational, and in context, so you don't suddenly have to decipher some crap poetry to work out where to place the plaque of the sun or what-have-you, and the gunplay, especially once you've upgraded your primary weapon, is kick-ass gratifying.

win3k

[TronFAQ]

Thought you would like it, win3k. Yep, it's a shameless rip-off of many things. Including System Shock 2. It's so painfully obvious it started life as System Shock 3, but EA thought: "how can we make this SS3 without using the name, and having to keep up with all the expectations associated with that name".

That's where 2K Boston failed. They made Bioshock out to be another System Shock game ("Shock" is right in the damn title), but it fell far short of expectations by associating it with that name. I know that I am NOT excited about Bioshock 2 this time. At all. I might pick it up, but only when it's hit the bargain bin.

If by some miraculous chance the gameplay for BS2 isn't for drooling simpletons and pushover grandmas, then maybe I'll pick it up on release. If the reviews from System Shock fans are more positive this time around. I no longer trust game magazine and game site reviews. They slobbered all over the first Bioshock and unanimously praised it, giving out a ridiculous number of perfect scores. Should've known right away that something was wrong.

[win3k]

Afternoon chaps

If by some miraculous chance the gameplay for BS2 isn't for drooling simpletons and pushover grandmas, then maybe I'll pick it up on release

Having seen the various bits and bobs of teaserage courtesy of the usual sites, I'm not going to mark BS2's release date on my calendar. Frankly, it just looks like more of the same as the first time round - though I'm glad they got rid of the stupid visual effect when wearing the big daddy helmet.

Between the lack of an SDK, the PS3-exclusive challenge room content and the limited activation DRM nonsense, I'll wait for the bargain bucket version - and even then it'd better be *very* cheap.

win3k

[Daddyo]

You guys should put together a website on video game reviews, give your independent review on the same game, then number of "digits" up... and for the complete waste of $$ games give them two mid digits up hehe

[TRON.dll]

You guys should put together a website on video game reviews, give your independent review on the same game, then number of "digits" up... and for the complete waste of $$ games give them two mid digits up hehe

That's a pretty good idea, been meaning to set something up like that for a while now, lol.

Would Modern Warfare 2 classify as hidden? I don't think hardly anyone knows about that still. Just wait until E3, lol.

I hear Sega's resurfacing their Aliens VS. Predators game. Any opinions on that?

[win3k]

Afternoon chaps

Would Modern Warfare 2 classify as hidden?

Hidden or not, if you like a game, tell us about it right here. Hopefully, reading through the reviews/opinions in this thread might spark someone else's interest enough for them to go pick up a copy.

Aliens VS. Predators game

Could be superb, could be crap. There's some interesting looking teaserage here, for those what missed it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnc81ASjeoo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Back to the matter at hand (I touched on this a while back, but here's the full-on why-you-should-play-this).

+

This is a game that details the spiritual evolution and ultimate redemption of a mortal - cruelly separated from his beloved wife through the capriciousness of fate. Daniel, the protagonist (a Hamlet for the 21st Century, if you will) finds himself arrayed against the legions of Lucifer's realm, in an allegorical representation of the everlasting struggle for enlightment that blah-de-blah-de-blah.

Sod that BS. Gentlemen, I present for your delectation, Painkiller, where you kick seven shades of crap out of anything that moves. Also, Painkiller's base-born son, Battle Out Of Hell, the less said about which the better.

The basics: Your character, Daniel Garner, finds himself in Purgatory. Unlike the Purgatory of the Catholic faith, where sins are atoned for by having your genitals burnt off or whatever, Daniel's atonement (in a plot that really just gets in the way of the shooting) is to be attained by laying down the smack on the armies of Lucifer's four generals. Thus we have the flimsiest pretext in video gaming history for shootage of the first person variety.

The usual FPS rules apply:

Health? Check.
Armour? Check.
Guns? Checkity-check.
Ability to morph into stonking great big demon? Check.

Wait, what?

As you dispatch the legions of the damned, they leave their "soul" behind; running through a soul (which looks like a fart would look like if methane was green) gives you 1 point of health - so far so what. Pick up 66 of them, however, and you temporarily change into a demon: immune to damage and armed with a one hit killing attack that allows you to rip great swathes through the encroaching horde with ease.

The other main departure from normal is the provision of Tarot cards; accomplishing level-specific objectives (Kill all enemies, find all secrets etc) gives you a card that can be played prior to starting any subsequent level. Each card awards certain bonuses (more starting health, ability to slow the world down etc) and are pretty much required for some of the boss level challenges.

The arsenal through which you convert hell's finest into dog food is of particular note. Each weapon has dual firing modes; your faithful shotgun, f'rinstance, alt-fires a freeze ray, allowing you to arrange your nearest enemies into an artistic tableau of frozen statues prior to blasting them into bloody chunks. Your starting weapon - the titular Painkiller - is wonderful. Start with a food processor. Remove all of the plastic so you're left with the bits that slice. Then re-imagine the whole thing through the mind of H.R. Giger. Finally, convert it into a glove, add the ability to throw the hurty parts at high speed, trailing a fricking laser beam behind them. You now have one tenth of the goodness of the Painkiller weapon.

Hell's motley crew range from the expected, including zombies, spiky collared-dogs and skeletons, to the downright weird. Of particular note are the Freaks, asylum inmates suitably attired with those close-fitting jackets, whose primary attack is to stagger towards you, triggering their personal (I wish I were making this up) electro-convulsive therapy devices as they do so, the better to 'splode in your face when their heads get too hot.

The fact that the plot was developed by a hamster with ADHD, has the narrative flow of a typical snack product's ingredient list, and contains more holes than a colander, allowed the developers to build pretty much whatever they wanted to when it came to constructing the in-game environment. Levels range from graveyards to factories to train stations to haunted asylums and all are built on a monumental scale, and (mostly) staffed by level-specific monsters.

In case you missed it the first time around, shooting is the name of this game. There are no physics-based puzzles, no key-card hunting side missions, no NPC wittering on in your ear and no escort missions. There isn't a "duck" key. Why? Because if there was one, you would use it, and then you would be slower at shooting enemies to death by bullets. This game is from the same stable as Doom (the first one), Duke Nukem and (possibly) Serious Sam (although the most recent one of that series is made out of bum-biscuits and should not be played by anyone, ever). In a straight fight, Daniel could take on, and beat, Serious Sam, Duke Nukem and Doom guy. Gordon "crowbar" Freeman wouldn't stand a chance, because his brand of physics doesn't work against demons.

To sum up: buy this (it's only a small number of pennies on Steam at the moment) for a game that you can play in small doses while your brain does something else. For completionists and masochists, there's the expansion pack Battle out of Hell, but:

1. BOOH's levels are rejects from the first part
2. QA? We don't need no steenking QA.
3. On-rails bits? Certainly Sir!
4. Jumping puzzles? In a first person shooter?
5. The level challenges are ridiculously hard (e.g. Don't get hurt. At all. Even though there's a ghost which throws homing fire-balls at you on sight. Suck it down).
6. Difficulty/learning curve? No. It's more like: "amble, amble, shoot, amble, jump, amble, OMIGODITKILLEDMEWITHFIRE, quickload".

Painkiller: Overdose is also available for stupid people living in stupidville to waste their stupid money on.

win3k

[Meatsack]

I just saw Empire Earth: Gold at Big Lots for $3.00.
Hours of fun. Good times.
What other RTS can you age up from Prehistoric times to the Cyberbetic Age?

[TronFAQ]

Damn you, Steam. Damn you to hell.



I just bought the Penumbra Collection from Steam. They're having a sale this weekend at 75% off. That means you can pick up all 3 Penumbra games for $5. That's cheaper than me buying it in the store. Normally I prefer buying retail physical copies, but at this price it was too good to pass up.

The first two games received a lot of positive reviews. The third one, not so much. But for $5 you may as well grab all three.

I'll review the games later, when I find some time to play them. I mainly posted this to let everyone know about the Steam sale.

[TRON.dll]

This game is available from the DSi's "DSi Shop" application (essentially the Wii Shop but on the DSi). It's a puzzle game unlike any I've seen before. You start each round with a pool of differently colored squares called "bits". During gameplay, block clusters (called "megabits") fall from the top of the screen. You touch bits to load them into your sidebar, then touch somewhere else to place bits from your sidebar. The idea is that when the bits in a megabit collide with enough bits to make 4 bits, they dissapear and begin to form the NES character sprite at the top of the screen. You win when the sprite is complete. It's a really fun game that has a lot of replay value and is definitely worth the five bucks it costs. Definitely get it if you have a DSi.

[win3k]

Morning chaps

I just bought the Penumbra Collection from Steam. They're having a sale this weekend at 75% off. That means you can pick up all 3 Penumbra games for $5. That's cheaper than me buying it in the store. Normally I prefer buying retail physical copies, but at this price it was too good to pass up.

Well spotted - d'ling now!

win3k

[TronFAQ]

I found a bit of time to play the first Penumbra game, Overture. I think I'm about 2/3 of the way through. So this is just my initial reaction to the first game.

I can see that I'll probably end up liking the first one quite a bit. It reminds me a little of the survival-horror System Shock atmosphere, crossed with a classic puzzle-solving adventure game. And the second title (Black Plague) is supposed to be even better than the first.

However, I'm having all the problems mentioned here. The bugs are ruining my enjoyment of the game. The Steam version is all patched up to the latest, and even has the Securom protection removed (yay!). So to think that the game is still in this state a couple of years after release, kind of stinks. But because of the sudden popularity of the Penumbra games thanks to the Steam sale, Frictional Games is looking into developing another patch to fix these problems.

I got stuck at one point because of one of the bugs. I didn't even know a bug was the cause, at first. I found out later that I had to reload the game to get the bugs to temporarily go away. Objects will disappear or become too large, walls will become invisible or the geometry distorted, or sometimes textures won't load correctly.

If it wasn't for the problems, I'd be very happy and consider my purchase a steal. But with the frustrating bugs, I'm starting to feel like I'm glad I only spent $5 for these. Which is a shame, because I know I should be enjoying Penumbra. There's a great gem hiding somewhere under the heap of flaws.

BTW: A couple of tips. You can force resolutions by editing the "settings.cfg" files for the games, that are hiding in the My Documents folder. I needed to do this in order to get widescreen resolution going. And in that same file, you can change "AllowQuickSave" to equal true to allow saving wherever you want by hitting the F4 key. Otherwise, the game will only autosave at certain points or you can only manually save by clicking on an artifact. Man, I hate checkpoint save systems.

[SweatyPyro]

I just saw Empire Earth: Gold at Big Lots for $3.00.
Hours of fun. Good times.
What other RTS can you age up from Prehistoric times to the Cyberbetic Age?

That game is awesome. Me and my friend, whenever we have the chance, play some Team based LAN maps past midnight with that game, even though we just build and build until we take an Uber Army and crush the enemies within 10 minutes. Oh well.

[TRON.dll]

Racing games are generally pretty boring, but a few have managed to be really fun and interesting.

Burnout 2 is the best Burnout game I've played. Ever. This makes sense, too, considering I've never played Paradise, lol. Burnout 2, for me at least, holds many fond memories. Crash mode tournaments, crashing into other players and watching the cars break into pieces during 4 player races, the Pursuit mode, definitely the Gamecube's best racing title, hands down.

Trackmania, as a series, has to be the most addictive arcade style racing game I've ever played. Trackmania lets you design your own tracks, then race them. All of the 100+ tracks that come with each game were made in the editor, with the exact same tools you get to use in the editor. And the editor couldn't be easier to use. If you haven't played any Trackmania games, you're really missing out. Go download Trackmania Nations Forever off of Steam right now, because it's free. The original Trackmania (I'm not referring to "Trackmania Original", never played that) is even better, and you can get it for a buck or two off of Half.com or a similar website, and it works on just about any computer (if my theory of "if it works on Windows ME, it'll work on anything" is true).

F-Zero X on N64. What you're holding in your hands when you're about to put that game into your system is not the F-Zero X game cartridge. It is everything that ever has been, is, and/or will be awesome in a plastic case. When you start that game up and hear the opening guitar riff, you'll know what I mean. That opening riff basically represents how much the rest of the game wins. Plus, that Death Race mode seems to NEVER get old.

And that's three of my favorite racing games. Give them a try if you have a chance.

[TronFAQ]

I finished the Penumbra trilogy tonight. Unfortunately, the many issues I had on my ATI card have colored my perception of them a bit. Without the problems, I'd have been very enthusiastic and stated that it was the best $5 I'd ever spent on a PC game (or games, in this case). With the problems, I've been leaning a bit more toward "glad I only spent $5".

Of course, now when I was almost finished, that's when Frictional Games released new patches and ATI updated their drivers. The patches helped a fair bit . . . but updating to the latest ATI Catalyst drivers fixed all the problems. Why couldn't the situation have been this way earlier, when I started playing? .

I was able to play the last game, Requiem, flawlessly. But when I played the first two, they were plagued with problems.

Anyway. Like I said earlier, the Penumbra games are a bit like System Shock crossed with adventure games. There are also little homages to Half-Life in the story and gameplay. If you like spooky atmosphere mixed with a bit of action and puzzle solving, you'll like the Penumbra games.

The first title, Overture, I actually didn't find that spooky. This one is probably the longest of the three. Unfortunately, in order to accomplish this, the game makes you backtrack a lot in some places. There are also a couple of challenges at the end that I really didn't care for. One is basically a timed obstacle course. You have to get through an area without making one single mistake, or else you're dead. Without the quick save hack, this section would have been torture. The other challenge was having to keep holding an object (you have to keep holding down the mouse button) while jumping, without dropping the object or bumping into anything. Gah!

The second title, Black Plague, is the creepiest. Unlike the first game, in this one you have no weapons and can't easily defend yourself. This adds to the tension. It's hard to say which one I prefer. A lot of the reviews say Black Plague is the better game. I'd probably say it's just . . . different. There's more voice acting here, though. And the levels are far more varied.

The third title, Requiem, is kind of an afterthought. You have to know the history of these games in order to understand what happened here. Frictional Games originally had a different publisher with the first two Penumbra games. But the publisher didn't treat them well and more or less forced them to cram what was planned as three games, into two. Then when they managed to switch to another publisher, by that point the first two games had already been released. They'd already crammed all the story into the first two titles. Now they tried to come up with something new for the third title.

Requiem is esentially just a physics puzzle game. A creepy version of Portal. There's a bit of story here that kind of wraps up what happened in the first two games, but you could easily skip Requiem and not really be missing anything. Also, I found the ending of Requiem to be a bit unsatisfying. It doesn't really make a statement and ultimately confuses more than it offers story closure. I also didn't like the fact that while notes would be taken automatically (to help you remember details later, like codes and passwords) and you could add items to your inventory in the first two games, in Requiem there are no notes and you have to carry everything one object at a time in front of you. So if there's a code, you have to write it down on a piece of paper or remember it. And if you need an object, you have to pick it up and hold it (keep holding the mouse button) and carry it all the way to where you need it. It's just like that challenge at the end of Overture that I complained about, only now it happens the entire time in Requiem. Stupid!

Overall though, except for the problems I had, the Penumbra trilogy still gets my recommendation.