Update: It actually has 2x AA.
I want more Vanquish. That 711 MB PS3 demo wasn’t enough! I haven’t felt this bad ass since the original Max Payne. Vanquish is slick, stylish and a reminder that there’s more to shooters than an M16A2 burst to the head.
Platinum Games knows its audience and the options menu is a testament to that. An option for improving the visibility of text on standard definition TV’s? No problem. An option to use L1/R1 for shooting? Of course. It runs well on PlayStation 3 hardware? Absolutely.
It doesn’t looks like it features 2X anti-aliasing and it is a bit blurry (possibly running 1024×720 as well?), but it’s fine because I’m too busy sliding on my knees and unloading bullets into the the face of robots. The slow motion slide reminded me of the diving bullet time shooting of Max Payne. It’s a very uncommon perspective and sensation.
The voice acting is solid and — I want to say — deliberately cheesy. The techno ramble fits and it somehow helps sell that awesome high tech armor the main character, Gideon, is wearing. I love watching that suit transform and morph; it’s quite possibly the neatest looking suit of armor I’ve ever seen in a game.
I died once in the demo. It was during the boss battle. I don’t know why, but I feel that this game should have a jump function. It seems weird to see Gideon sliding with rocket propulsion and not be able to jump. I also felt sliding with L2 and holding L1 for the slow motion while pressing R1 to shoot was pushing the limits of controller comfort. I’m sure I’ll get used to both those quirks, but it’s still worth noting.
Nitpicks aside, I’m sold on Vanquish. It runs well, looks good and it’s a barrage of fun. Looking forward to October 19, 2010!
For more information on Vanquish, visit the official website.
I am quite aware that this is a beta. Medal of Honor launches October 12, 2010 which means they have lots of time to work out the kinks. But, I believe the issues I have with this game are a bit deeper than the occasional freeze or jagged edge.
Medal of Honor’s multiplayer is DICE’s approach to the Modern Warfare formula. On paper: this sounds awesome. It’s Bad Company 2 meets Modern Warfare 2. The best of both worlds in one awesome reboot of a beloved franchise. However, as soon as I got into my first game, something didn’t seem right at all.
The first issue I noticed was the HUD; this game has a very poor HUD. Nothing is particularly easy to read quickly and seemed to be of a flash over substance design. This is, but a small example of the much bigger problem of communication in this game — between other players (the option for VOIP was defaulted to off) and between the game and myself. The game simply doesn’t convey the necessary info in a clear or concise fashion. The clear text “+10″ from Bad Company 2 was replaced with blurry text accompanied by some silly explosion-flash-thing which just gets in the way of the action — it’s just unnecessary for something so trivial as a kill via headshot.
(more…)
My exposure to ModNation Racers can be summarized into these two items:
- The E3 2009 stage demo
- The Kevin Butler ad
And it looks like that’s all I really needed to know to get the gist of what ModNation Racers is all about.
People have described it as kart racing meets the “Play. Create. Share. genre” popularized by LittleBigPlanet and I think it’s a fairly accurate description. Today’s 900+ MB demo demonstrated two of the three pillars quite well.
(more…)
I’m a fan of arcade racers — Wipeout HD being the favorite of the lot. I’ve always wanted to get into four wheel arcade racing, even though I haven’t found much success with that breed of arcade racer. Burnout: Paradise could have fit the bill, but I wasn’t feeling it after the demo. (I realize the game has changed dramatically since then, but then I haven’t gotten around to trying the latest iteration.) Fortunately, there are more arcade racers coming this month via Bizarre Creation’s Blur and Blackrock Studio’s Split Second. I checked out the demo for the latter.
I dug the demo of Blackrock Studio’s previous work, Pure. It looked, played and ran superbly. It was also quite exhilarating for its vertigo. Split Second isn’t about vertigo or speed for that matter — it’s about explosions. Like a Michael Bay movie. I drifted and drafted my way around a simple track building up power charges in order to trigger predetermined explosions. These triggered on-track explosions can than be used to wreck my opponents or alter the layout of the track.
When I first learned of this mechanic, I thought it was going to be awesome the first time through, but would gradually become repetitive and predictable with each passing race. It turns out I was right. After trying the demo three times, I was already seeing past the explosions and into the simple racer.
Like the gameplay itself, I was initially wowed by Split Second‘s visuals. After spending a bit of time with the demo, I began to see the faults in the visuals. Aliasing was a bit distracting and so were the lower resolution textures on the track’s assets. To sum up: Split Second just didn’t hold up to closer scrutiny.
Now let’s see if a Blur demo will show up.
After trying out the StarCraft II beta briefly last night, I have some thoughts and info I’d like to share.
Blizzard games have always been pretty scalable and I was wondering how my five year old Shuttle PC will fare. Here are the important specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0 GHz)
Memory: 2 GB of DDR-400
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
OS: Windows 7 x64 Home Premium
And here’s the configuration I ended up running the game with:
The auto configuration actually pinned my resolution at 1280 x 720 resolution, but I bumped it up since I try to play my PC games at the monitor’s native resolution.
To my surprise, the game ran at a somewhat playable framerate. There were hitches when sudden shifts in on screen unit counts occurred, but other than that I did play a single successful 2 v 2 match.
As I alluded to, I’m was not big on the StarCraft multiplayer so don’t expect any major insights into the game itself aside from “it’s more StarCraft” — at least for now anyway. What I was most impressed with were the first “five practice” matches I was greeted with when I first launched the multiplayer. It’s supposed to help Battle.net gauge my skill level and throw me into the appropriate league. I can’t say how well it works thus far since I’ve just completed a single match, but it seems like a great idea.
The map I played on had rock barriers to discourage rushing and plenty of resource locations to expand to. It was a noob map and I welcomed it. They also fixed the game speed to “normal” which was nice. All in all, I think these kinds of touches will open up StarCraft II to a wider audience than the original ever did.
I hope to play more of StarCraft II, but I don’t when. Although it runs on my current machine, it is nowhere near optimal visual or performance benchmark. I’ve always said I’ll build a new PC for StarCraft II, so I guess I’ll have to look into that before proceeding any further.
How many games can you think of these days that give you that old, nostalgic feeling of wonder? I’m not just talking about wondering what’s going to happen next. I’m talking about the feeling of wonderment you get when you are faced with many discrete options to choose from and you have to stop and analyze the consequences of your actions before proceeding. And you know you have to choose carefully because you can’t go back, you don’t even know if the decision you are about to make is a drastic, life changing decision, or simply an insignificant forgettable gesture.
(more…)
What do I know about Dark Void? Let’s see.
- It’s developed by a western studio and published by Capcom.
- The protagonist resembles The Rocketeer and is voiced by the incredibly prolific Nolan North.
- It’s a third person shooter.
And that’s about it. Needless to say, I don’t know very much about it. It was interesting enough to warrant a download of the 700MB demo and after going through it, I can see why Capcom isn’t too fond of the idea of having western studios develop new franchises for them.
(more…)
