Crysis 2

I'm genuinely upset.

I just finished playing this game and it was great... Right up until the end. I was playing it whilst talking to someone, I looked away from the screen for about 5 seconds, looked back and I had completed it. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed by a game ending. I feel like a parent who just caught their son doing drugs for the first time. I'm not angry... just disappointed.

But before I start crying and pushing toddlers over let's talk about the game in general.

My friend asked me a simple question today, "How's Crysis 2?"

I replied with: "Good, different, it's not really Crysis 2..."

The ideals of Crysis have stayed but almost everything else has changed. The suit is different (more on that later) the characters (bar one) are different, the alien enemies are completely different, it's a confusing concept. The game hasn't gotten worse because of this, but it does feel as if Crytek have just made another game using the Crysis brand whilst changing everything.

Let's start with the suit. This they at least have an explanation for the change, the Nanosuit 2. Upgraded! Except that it's tactically worse in almost every way to the first suit. Gone are the days where the suit's normal state is Armour mode and the player can choose to switch to Speed, Strength and Stealth mode. The suit has been streamlined. Now your normal mode is 'Delicate Flower' and you can change to either Stealth or Armour mode. This has greatly affected the combat philosophy of the game. You are no longer the powerhouse you were in the original game, the game concentrates on hit and run tactics (as the helpful text told me EVERY TIME I died (which was a lot at various parts of the game)). Armour and stealth modes drain energy passively and Armour mode gets drained rapidly when you're under fire. You can no longer just wait for your energy to regen whilst sucking up bullets like porridge, cowardice is more than embraced in this game.

When I first started playing the game I fucking hated it. I'm a giant man, I liked wading into combat and tearing apart things with my hands to make up for my abject inferiority in life, I could no longer do this. I'm ashamed to say I rage-quitted a few times at the beginning. The only reason I kept failing so horrendously was that I was playing the game wrong. I've gotten lazy in FPSes, I'm used to running around in cover, shooting things, hiding and generally being a passive observer (Curse you Call of Duty franchise!). I kept on forgetting to actively use my suit's capabilities just relying on the standard suit settings (Curse you Original Crysis!). The first game got to the point that the armour mode was the best mode, so you just spent all your time in it and forgot that you had a nanosuit altogether. Crysis 2 wants you to be in control of everything you do, including your suit, so by playing this game without using the suit to your full advantage you're essentially playing with a handicap.

I then embraced the suit, constantly shifting between armour mode and stealth mode becoming the digital equivalent to a Mongolian Horseback Archer (I don't care how fucking cheesy that sentence is Colrum, it's staying in). Crysis 2 is the thinking man's FPS. Rather than just running through a corridor and shooting whatever came near me, I spent time thinking about my approach, flanking, silently killing enemies, distracting them, ocassionally just powerhousing through and sometimes avoiding enemies altogether. The whole time I spent playing I was constantly stressed out, at first I thought this was a bad thing, it wasn't until I quit the game that I realised I was craving that stress.

Onto the aliens! They confused me immensely. They still have the same cephalopod heritage but have disgarded their floating bodies and tentacles for a more humanoid form, possibly to make the transition of assimilation a more personal event, how kind of them. The original game went slightly down hill when the aliens were introduced (the space ship section of Crysis is possibly the least fun I've ever had playing a computer game), they were dull and repetitive, only redeemed by the epic last hour or two of the game.

The new aliens, are terrifying. They're very intelligent, darting around and flanking you. The first time I fought them I nearly had a panic attack. Crytek have done an excellent job at making the game feel like cinematography, I don't mean the same way that the Call of Duty games have attempted to, by making a film with the occasional shooting between scenes. Crysis 2 makes you feel like you're actually in the action. I'm not sure what they've done with the motion blur in the new engine, but every movement looks natural. Explosions are amazingly detailed. Your vision blurs out things that aren't in focus and when something dashes through your view the engine manages to show enough detail to scare you, whilst also keeping the suspense.

Unfortunately, Crysis 2 has also gotten on the Call of Duty bandwagon that most FPSes seem to be clinging to these days. It's been dumbed down from the first game in a few very fundamental ways. To add a bit of spice to this review I'm going to add a feature!

Badger's Top 3 Ways Call of Duty Has Ruined the FPS Genre in Recent Years (Eg. Modern Warfare Onwards!)

1) Videos of Action

I don't know what the trend of this is in recent years. Videos of your character killing things, from the first person perspective. Call of Duty does it all the fucking time and Crysis 2 has some of it too. Taking your hands off the keyboard and watching your character start killing things is completely arbitrary. I've spent the time up until this point doing it alright, I'll be continuing the actions right afterwards, why can't I do the action? It's a flaccid attempt to make computer games into films. We don't need to see a hero do things. We're supposed to be the hero, let me dream ok!

2) Quick-time events.

ARGARHGGHGHGGHGHERAHRGAHGGHHH! That is a literal representation of what I feel about quick time events, especially in FPSes, especially completely pointless ones that serve only to "build tension", ESPECIALLY ones that just make you crawl by pressing "Left Mouse button, Right Mouse Button". Crysis has stolen these directly from the Modern Warfare games, and they were shite in them too. There are a few occasions where you have to apply your own defibrillator, which I think is a generally fucking crazy idea, by pressing the space bar over and over again. The awful ending to this game involves a quick time event.

3) The Idiotic Character Who is CONSTANTLY BETRAYED

Ok, so this is a bit of stretch, but I needed three, it's not just CoD that does this, but FPSes recently have had a trend of everyone being a treacherous cunt, then having the switcheroony, so the cunt was actually good! The main character for Crysis 2 is a fucking moron. He's just the epitome of an American grunt, never thinking for himself, just takes order and runs around and does what he's told. Apart from when I was hunting about, not thinking about the storyline, I felt like a supporting character of the game. The character has no leadership at all. Fair enough, he's got a bad case of Gordon Freeman syndrome, being that he doesn't say a word for the entire game, but he's such a follower it's unbelievable. There's one section of the game where you're hunting a bloke who has just betrayed you, you corner him, he says "Ok you got me, now here's a syringe... why don't you take it?". You immediately jam the fucking thing into your chest and essentially pass out. The first game made you feel like you were the main character and a hero, this games storyline fails to do so.

The storyline in general makes little sense. You're thrown into the game, where everthing has changed from the first, some confusing things happen and you just sort of run with it. Enemies become friends and revert back so quickly that it's pointless getting attached to any of them. The only character that was genuinely interesting  helps you and hurts you so much, I felt like I was in a domestically violent relationship.

However, these CoD like tendencies are easily overlooked by the fact that the game is amazingly fun and interestingly diverse to play. It is a different, fresh approach to FPSes that was desperately needed in the current market. Coupled with a very fun multiplayer (if you can access the fucking thing) Crytek have brought out a bloody good game.

They just need to learn how to fucking end the bastard things...

Dragon Age II Review

I don't know if it's because this game is disgustingly immersive or I'm getting more and more perverted, but this game made me push back my chair, stand up, point at a character on the screen and shout "I will fuck that!" just because I could.

Probably the perversion...

Dragon Age 2 is a very, very good game, as long as you stick by a few golden tenets.

1) Dragon Age 2 is not Dragon Age or Dragon Age: Origins

2) Do not expect a cerebral storyline

3) Do not try to take any of the ingame writing to be serious

4) Don't try and force the game to be an old school role-playing game a la Baldur's Gate

5) People will try to fuck you.

Dragon Age II has gotten a shit-ton of flak since the release of its demo a few weeks ago. The hunchbacked denizens of the internet have come out in force, voicing their disgust at the game, just because, as far as I can see, it's not the original Dragon Age.

It was at this point that I realised the childbirth had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

It appears that the people from the internet don't like change. A phrase is getting thrown around (and I know I tend to throw around the phrase thrown around a lot but bear with me) at the moment is "consolification", a lot of PC gamers view that companies are dumbing down PC games to cater to much more lucrative console gaming market. However, this is being applied to EVERY aspect, of EVERY game at the moment. 

Dragon Age 2 (Electric Boogaloo) has indeed been made slightly easier, I'll concede that. The combat has been made a lot faster and slightly "button bashy". This however is not that bad a thing. It's still quite challenging at high difficulties and in my view the benefits of having much more exciting combat vastly outweigh the price of lowering the challenge slightly. Dragon Age 2's combat is amazing. It's exciting, gory, visceral, ridiculous and various other adjectives used to describe the more brutal aspects of games that the media is claiming are turning me into a serial killer (I found her like that...). It feels almost exactly how I imagine picking up a girder and laying into a corridor of people would feel like. The original Dragon Age's combat got very dull. The mobs just had so much fucking health and you seemingly did absolutely no damage at all. It got to the point with some bosses that the only difficulty came from the fact you were essentially flamboyant dandies throwing used tissues at them in a vague attempt to get the enemies to leave you to eat your aperitifs. 

The tactical view (in which the camera goes to a quasi-bird's-eye-view has been removed as well. This means positioning your squad is slightly more difficult as you don't get a full overview of the battlefield, but all it really means is you have to change through your characters are have a look around before making decisions. I hardly used the tactical view in the original personally, so it may be worse than I'm putting it out to be.

Graphically, Dragon Age 2 (Liverpool 1) is beautiful. The character models look realistic and crisp, the engine is smooth and runs better than the original game in many cases. It continues the trend from the first game by making everything as gory and grimy as possible, with every battle ending looking like you've had a seriously bloody sneeze, which is fine by me. The only downfall on this front is the environment. Most of the game is spent in a city, but whenever you venture away from this, you are presented with the same map over and over again, maybe with certain paths blocked off (but still showing on the minimap) to try and trick you it's a different place. This is especially apparent underneath the city when you go in the sewers and warehouses. There are about 3 maps that are constantly reused and do get very boring. 

The storyline does also leave much to be desired. You are running away from the evils that are plaguing the lands from the first game. You go to the city of Kirkwall. You build yourself up; be it your income, your reputation or just your social life. The story isn't great. It's not a new idea. But it's just a vessel for the game to play through. The real gold of the game comes from the interaction with the characters.

Dragon Age 2's characters are great. They're engaging, amusing, you actually care about the majority of them. They're not the usual featureless heroes of most modern games (see Bulletstorm review). I felt actual emotion for my party of brigands and renegade mages. This is all helped by the fact that each character has amazing voice acting. My party, which included Merrill (Welsh accented Elf Blood mage who is constantly trying to overcome her defeatism by envisioning kittens are claiming muggings are just a "welcome to the area") , my sister (renegade mage who is constantly trying to live up to her brother's image) and Varric (Dashing dwarf scoundrel who is showing far too much chest hair, is essentially every blokes best mate and is constantly talking to his crossbow which he names "Bianca") stayed with me through most of the game, not because they were the best characters for the job (Especially fucking Varric, I have to essentially keep him on a drip the amount of times he's knocked out) but because I liked having them about. They banter together, they contribute differently to decision making, it's like a little family to plug up the hole of loneliness of my real life.

I found myself wanting to do the silly side quests your companions give you just to see how they adapt to you as you become closer allies. This happened for all the quests to be honest. I didn't feel like I had to do them, I felt like I wanted to do them. I did every side quest I could find (apart from one where a male elf tried to get me to pay him to have sex with me... *shudders*) just to experience the quests and improve my party. 

Of course, it wouldn't be an RPG without a twist death in your party, so I had to replace a party member (I won't say who just in case anyone is going to play it) with a dick head called Anders, who is constantly complaining and hitting on me, merely because I needed the heals. I moped around for a while after finding out my party member had died and there was nothing I could do about it, but the quest had to go on!

This connection with the character reached a height today when Varric was knocked unconcious yet again, and myself and my character in game shouted "They got Varric! The Bastards!". I had to take a little break after that, I shouldn't be getting this involved in games. 

They scripting for some of the dialogue is comically poor at times, but I think it's been written that way, I've chuckled at quite a few abysmal lines such as:

"The caravan came back and everyone was dead, I don't know what happened, the only survivor was a horse, AND HE CAN'T TALK!"

Whereas other times I've been amused by the quick-witted main character's quips, as I've essentially chosen the "Funny" response in every given situation, there's been quite a few.

There were quite a few occasions where I was made to choose between certain groups throughout the game which have effected how the city was controlled which seemingly have had huge effects on how I've played the game. I don't know if it's because I'm a complete bastard, or if the game is supposed to be like this, but almost my entire family have been killed off, and there have been two city-wide genocides of certain ethnic and caste groups (they started it!). It's probably my fault...

It all adds up to a very enjoyable experience however, the game feels like it tailors itself to your choices, not the bullshit "karma choices" that Peter Molyneux insists on jamming down our necks, in which you can either been a holy angel or Lord Cunt of Kittenpunt, but just general decisions that influence political agendas and change who comes to help you in the future and who comes to kill you. 

Overall this game takes the world and ideas of the original Dragon Age and makes them more exciting and changes the pace completely. You not fighting to save the world most of the time, you're fighting just because you can. You can be as selfish or as benevolent as you like. The fighting is quick, gritty and fun (an aspect that was missing from the original). The characters are wonderful. The story is shite. But you can't have it all.

Rating 13/7

(That's not 13 out of 7 by the way, it's more like approximately 1.85714286 I haven't come up with a system yet, try and apply your own to this arbitrary number!) 

Rift Review (My friend has more money than sense and is lonely so has bought me it!)

I have something of a disgusting obsession with MMO's, it's most likely due to the bottomless pit of free time I have. No matter how bad it sounds, I will want to try it, I can't help myself.

My current hit-list stands at: World of Warcraft, Lineage 2, Final Fantasy XI, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, Aion, EVE Online, RF Online, a few free or god-awful ones that I can't remember the names of and now Rift.

Now to preface this review, most MMORPG players categorise themselves (or someone else does it for them) as either a WoW fan-boy or what many self-important fuckwits call themselves "hardcore mmo-ers", or something to that effect. I am neither. I played WoW, a lot, far too much, it was a good game, but it was not the be-all and end-all, you have tip your cap to Blizzard though, they know how to make a fucking MMO. I like other MMOs however, I like trying them, I hope they're good. They're usually not.

People usually quote MMOs as either "WoW-Killers" or too like WoW. World of Warcraft has completely dominated the market to the point that it makes everyone playing, developing or reviewing the games develop some sort of crazy complex about the size of WoW metaphorical genitals. They either claim there's are bigger, or seemingly worship it.

So onto Rift, or as I like to call it World of Aioncraft in a War of Reckoning. Believe it or not however, this mockery is a good thing.

Trionworlds (the developers) have taken all the good parts of various successful (and not so successful) games and jammed them together into one game. It is, and I cringe saying this, very much like World of Warcraft, but World of Warcraft's styling came from earlier MMOs. It has the same smoothness of WoW. Most MMOs feel like you're using your keyboard through a joint of pork. It's taken the group quests idea from Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, the greatest part of that game, the items also have a similar feel to the WAR ones. Similar maps too. The animations are quite similar to Aion. All these products together have created what can only be described as a very fun game.

The main fun in Rift is the Rifts. Which is one of the stupidest sentences I've ever typed, but it's true. Rifts are what the game gains it title from, if you haven't realised by the amount of times I've typed Rift... rift. Rift.

The game employs a mechanic where random... rifts open around the world and monsters pour out of them. These monsters are killed for reputation rewards and currencies which allow for shiny new items for your shiny new character. However this isn't the main incentive of them. They're... fun.

For anyone who hasn't played an MMO this may sound like a trivial statement. Most MMOs aren't fun most of the time. A lot of my friends who I've had conversations with often don't know why they play MMOs. This could be because all my friends are emotionally damaged wo/man-children, or it could be that all MMO players are. MMOs suck you in by the idea of constantly improving your character, progressing onwards merely for the point of progress. Rift breaks this normality by making this a secondary value.

The Rifts get worse (in a good way!) when an invasion happens. Rifts open everywhere. Invasion-teams run rampart. Monsters set up footholds. It's fucking mental. Everyone stops everything and tries to stop the towns getting destroyed and NPCs being killed. My friend and I spent hours running around killing things, dying and generally saving the world.

There are faults in this game too. The Class/talent point/soul/duck/god knows what else system. It's trying to be innovative and it's trying too hard. In the first 6 levels you have to choose 3 different classes with arbitrarily small text blurbs about what they do. The idea is to give each player their own individual, hybrid class, but with the fact that lots of spells are copied over trees and the majority of the spells are useless, the classes feel weighty and overly complicated A lot of the classes are completely useless as well.

Other flaws include, gear feeling useless, with current level being the most important factor when doing anything, this may change at the top level however, boring environments which are too large, making a lot of the quests just feel like an endless trek across the map, depressingly boring character models and weapon/armour models.

All in all, this has been quite a boring review. There isn't too much to criticise but also there isn't much to praise. The Rifts are amazingly fun, but that could just be because they're a new gimmick, they may become boring. It is an amalgamation of other MMOs which may work towards it's fall or rise. It all depends what the developers do with it. If they add lots of end game content (read: RAIDING!) and don't try and concentrate on PvP like every other fucking MMO on the market at the moment they should do well. If not, they'll join the pile of Free-to-play MMOs that have failed in the past few years trying to cash in on the rising market.

Coming soon: Shogun: Total War 2

Coming soon: Fallout New Vegas' DLC; Dead Money! (Merlin bought it!)