What to Think

News Which To The Best Of My Knowledge Is Now At A State That Can Best Be Described As Old

Good news! The new Shadowrun game is coming to PC as well as the 360!
The bad news? Well, I'll Microsoft tell you in their own words:
"Shadowrun™ is a team-based first person shooter (FPS) where ancient magic blends with modern weapons and advanced technology to form a revolution in multiplayer FPS gaming. Purchase new weapons and abilities each round in an extraordinary arms race to increase your options and open up new tactics for your team"
Way to go, guys, you're making Counter-Strike but with magic.

Ridiculous names aside, after seeing it in action with a few diverse titles, there's little no doubt now that I will be purchasing a Nintendo Wii. Graphically, it cannot compete with the PS3 or 360, but Nintendo knows they cannot compete directly with them with hardware power, they're doing it through innovation, and that's probably a better mission statement to get behind.
Really, what sold it was watching footage of the upcoming Wii FPS Red Steel and watching someone play it by moving the remote around to aim various firearms and then use it to engage in a swordfight. Unfortunately the footage for this is restricted only to FileShack Mercury members, but if I can track down another source I'll try to post it here.
But here's a promotional video made by the Big N, that'll have to do for now.
The system also lives up to it's new name in that it is really quite a small thing.

This may be one of the most underwhelming E3s ever, outside of hardware announcements. The only thing I've found to be exciting is the Wii, which looks like a lot of fun with the added bonus that it will be substantially less expensive than either of the other two systems, especially the PS3 which will be roughly $600. The Wii's Virtual Console service sounds like an interesting platform, which will be the online component that will allow you to purchase and download some retro games from the N64, NES and SNES to play on the system but what I did not know is that this service will apparently also include Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 titles as well as be an online delivery platform for independent budget titles. Combined with being backwards-compatible with the GameCube and its controllers, as well as the unveiling of a retro controller, a system like this that will likely have a price tag around $199 sounds very attractive.

 Either I am becoming jaded but nothing about the PS3 impresses me, almost as much as the 360 did not impress me, and neither system has that one killer game yet that gives me any desire to possess one. Resident Evil 5 may be that game, but that's still a ways off.

On the software side of things, and maybe I haven't dug deep enough, things seemed a little grim. There wasn't really anything that blew me away, no surprise announcements, but there are a few things of interest. Bungie announced Halo 3 to the surprise of no living creature on the planet. Crytek, makers of Far Cry, put out some impressive media of their new game Crysis. I'm sensing a trend with their naming scheme. BioShock, the spiritual successor to System Shock, is looking good but is still relatively early in development. The newly released trailer for Splinter Cell: Double Agent is strangely missing the voice of Michael Ironside, who played Sam Fisher. It also seems they're going for a pre-packaged "dark and gritty" and "personal" experience by killing Sam's daughter early on the story, making Sam smolder with that generic rage Ubisoft is infusing all of their franchises with. Rainbow Six: Lockdown was a joke, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter strays far from the series like Ghost Recon 2 did, and now this seems to be their final attempt to completely alienate their Tom Clancy fanbase. There's a new Indiana Jones game on the way with some supposedly brand new and impressive AI engine and new animation system, but it's so early in development there is no media showing us the man with the hat himself. The only thing that has been revealed is that LucasArts was researching photos from San Francisco circa 1917, so it doesn't bode well for those who want to kick the shit out of Nazis once again. Bioware's new XBox 360 RPG Mass Effect looks sharp, but little else is known about it. John Woo's Stranglehold has me interested, but it may just end up being a prettier version of Max Payne, which would be ironic considering what the latter was derived from. Arkane Studio's new Source-powered action-RPG Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is shaping up to be something special. THQ announced Mercenaries 2, but it's still up in the air what systems it will actually be appearing on, but with the inclusion of online cooperative play this time around I really hope it makes it to PC. Disney Interactive is apparently working on Pirates of the Carribean Online, because we all need the chance to play everyone's favorite overrated teenage girl heartthrob. The Alone in the Dark series is coming back, but in an episodic format that developers are shooting for roughly an hour an episode every week. Good luck with that. Also planning on debuting with an installment plan is Telltale Game's Sam & Max, which will unfortunately be appearing on the diabolically moronic service GameTap.

It's been a while, again, I know. I'll be home more often again now that we've finally got a new manager at the store and they don't need me to fill in places as much anymore.

One good thing that came from my trip to Florida was that I finally got a laptop, for free even. It used to belong to my aunt when she worked for the Clayton school district, which was a long time ago, so this thing isn't exactly a powerhouse. This 200MHz behemoth didn't come with an AC adaptor, so I had to spring for that. The CD drive doesn't work, the mousepad has some dead zones in it, and the battery has a maximum charge of three minutes. That is not an exaggeration. I don't really have the $100 to spend on a new battery, but the whole idea was to have something I could take around with me, so I'll probably get one eventually.
I have been using it, though, and I found it's been easier to write from the comfort of my bed rather than sitting in this chair. I spent about three hours the other night working on a story that I've come to realize is pretty much an episode of Doctor Who without the TARDIS, but I may press on anyway. Hopefully I can get myself to commit to writing at least that much per week.

E3 is gearing up to begin in five days and already some big announcements have been made, such as FASA Studios confirming that they have been working on a new Shadowrun game for the 360 and are ready to start showing it off at the show. Since the release of Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood Gearbox has been hard at work at the Unreal Engine 3-powered sequel Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and it's looking really good.
As more develops in the coming days I'll put up what I think are the more interesting or important bits.
Also, the Nintendo Wii. What the fuck? I was told that it was Japanese for "we" but that might not even be the case. It's supposed to be pronounced as "we," but they consider the i's to be representative of the people playing with the system. Also, here's a picture of a kid playing with the Wii, and I want to break his jaw. These two represent about 95% of the people who come into the store, the one on the left, given the black clothing, spiked hair and painted fingernails has all the trademarks of a HIM fanatic sissy and his buddy on the right I'm sure will go on to have a celebrated career in rolling up fat blunts.

Anyway, here's something I haven't done in a long time that I whipped up on my laptop last night, a game review (Remember, Adam Sesslers are bad, so the more Adam Sesslers, the worse the game):

(If you're tired of reading at this point I've included some video files of the game that contain moving pictures and bright colors at the end of the review)

Condemned: Criminal Origins

The people behind F.E.A.R. bring their unrelentingly brutal 360 smash hit to the PC, and it’s one of the best games this year.

            Late last year the guys and gals at Monolith brought us F.E.A.R. to much acclaim, featuring intense firefights, outstanding visuals and a genuinely frightening story and atmosphere. Some of those elements have found their way into their latest offering, Condemned: Criminal Origins, a game with a very different, but equally creepy plot and with a strong focus on visceral melee combat rather than frantic shootouts.

            This new murder simulator puts you in the shoes of FBI agent Ethan Thomas and on the trail of a serial killer. Unfortunately for Ethan the elusive killer manages to frame him for the murder of two police officers and now he’s got to complete his investigation while avoiding capture, taking him through the worst parts of the city. If that weren’t enough, a strange phenomenon is effecting the city, turning all the local vagrants and drug addicts into violent killers.

            If there’s anything Monolith learned from F.E.A.R. it’s how to scare their players, and they’ve taken that knowledge and applied it to Condemned in its own unique way. The game manages to emulate that feeling of dread and foreboding a dimly lit alleyway creates, of walking down a city street alone at night. It’s that mythical city filled with killers and rapists that our mothers worry about us getting stranded in. Turns out it’s a pretty fun place to be.

            In relation to that, they’ve also learned from one of F.E.A.R.’s biggest faults: lack of variety. Condemned takes you from abandoned buildings to a vagrant-filled subway station to a closed department store, so it never has that sense of repetition, and they all look fantastic. From the graffiti on the walls to the train schedules in the metro station to the cracks in the pavement, the sharpness and attention to detail is outstanding.

            Also they’ve improved upon F.E.A.R. in the character detail as well, whereas in that game there were only really three or four different types of enemies, in Condemned you’ll be dealing with a wide assortment of enemies with all different kinds of body types and clothing. From junkies wearing leather jackets and wifebeaters to gimps with what I can only describe as garbage bags with eyeholes on their heads, the game is filled with colorful characters for you to bludgeon to death with a desk drawer. Also, an effect which I hope becomes standard, you character is completely modeled in the game, so when you look down you actually see your legs and feet rather than just an empty space. This also helps make their lighting and shadow effects that much more impressive, because it isn’t just a static animation, it reflects all of your motions and actions. For example, the way you check how much ammo you have in a firearm means you actually remove the magazine from the weapon and look at it, and doing this in front of a light source with your character’s shadow cast on the wall means you can see the same actions of unloading the gun on the wall in front of you. Not a revolutionary achievement, but something that has yet to be universally adopted and adds great to the level of detail and believability to the game world.

            Eschewing the traditional FPS format of tons of guns being your weapons of choice, and while there are firearms in the game, your arsenal in Condemned consists of pipes, 2x4s, pieces of rebar, locker doors, metal signs, sledgehammers, crowbars and pretty much anything else you can get your hands on. All the weapons have different stats consisting of damage dealt, speed, blocking effectiveness and reach, adding some depth to a fairly simple combat system. Though what also helps keep it exciting is an incredible animation system, enemies will block, recover and counter-attack dynamically, there isn’t a set pattern or just one kind of animation, so timing your blows and blocks is something that you have to be on your toes for. The combat itself is extremely fun and equally brutal, engaging in fights with a vagrant, blocking his steam pipe with your crowbar and countering with a swing of your own, playing out like some sort of twisted Errol Flynn movie. There’s a sadistic side to it, comparable only to Rockstar’s Manhunt, with a disturbing level of detail to the violence. For example, seeing teeth fly after you smash a drug addict’s face with a sledgehammer, seeing ugly chunks of flesh and blood fly as the result of a close-range shotgun blast, and at the end of a fight you’ll occasionally get an execution menu of sorts, where you can decide how to deliver the final blow.

            As you progress through the game and you come across crime scenes and locations the killer has visited you’ll have to collect evidence using a variety of forensic tools, but there’s really no challenge to them since the game guides you completely every step of the way. It’s a nice idea that doesn’t really quite work as well as it could, though it doesn’t really get in the way of the gameplay, either.

            The sound design doesn’t really shine like it does in similarly scary games, like Doom 3, and in this type of game good ambient sound that hints at the horror ahead has much more an impact than a gruesome visual. In some occasions they include something that works well, like hearing a distant commotion followed by running footsteps on pavement or a sudden whispered voice that has no apparent source, but these are few and far between. By no accounts did they fail with their effects and music, but with just a little more effort it could’ve been much better.

            Really, the game has only one major fault and that’s its’ length. While it certainly has much more variety in locations than F.E.A.R. perhaps having to work on those different settings limited their ability to pad it out with more content in time, since their goal in the beginning was to create a 360 launch title. To give you an idea how short it is I plowed through the game in one sitting. True, it was a very long sitting, but it was still only about 8 or 9 hours of playtime. But it’s packed with content; constant surprises, great set pieces and intense combat and it doesn’t really ever drag or hit a spot that just feels like bland filler.

 
(1 Adam Sessler out of 5)

And, as promised, videos of the game in action:
Condemned Video #1 - As you pursue the killer through a disused metro station you'll encounter all sorts that want to kill you.
Condemned Video #2 - As you go through the game you'll have to make use of different forensic tools to collect evidence, here's what one of those sequences looks like.
Condemned Video #3 - More combat, showing the use of firearms and disarming opponents.

More later, and I'll update the What to Think section some time tonight.

-K.

how are you doing tomorrow