#10 – F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origins

FEAR 2 was a game that we can call a true successor. It relied on the same tried and proven awesome scares that got our juiced pumping in the first FEAR and ofcourse the same level of slow-motion-bullet-spraying-headshot-making-kick-to-the-face action that we grew to love. Sadly the scares were a bit few and far between, and the cliffhanger was a major turnoff… literally. Still, compared to the rest of the games launched this year, it deserves tenth place.

#9 – Killling Floor

Killing Floor initially started as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004, but quickly made its way full-sized and commercially available on Steam. Saying this is a mod is like saying Counter Strike is “just” a mod. Killing Floor is a game on its own, featuring great survival action and co-op gameplay that really focuses on being co-op and dynamic. Having to run half the map away to the next trader/safehouse while monsters are nabbing at your feet can be quite nerve-wracking. While a great achievement from a small team, it could use some polish and maybe some updated graphics to put the punch back in the game. Killing Floor receives a well-deserved ninth place.

#8 – Cryostasis

This is a title you might not have heard of. It’s a russian FPS featuring a very novelesque storyline that really rewards the player for thinking through it, and not just spraying bullets randomly. Most russian games have a unique strenght and crippling flaw.. they have great ideas but poor application of them. Oddly, Cryostasis pushes away the crippling flaw and delivers a very polished gameplay experience, with great visuals and an intriguing storyline to boot. Sadly, the story is so deep and complex, that it may be possible for you to finish the game and then wonder what the hell just happened since while it does a great job of telling the story, sometimes it just feels like it’s outside the player’s grasp. Eighth place goes to Cryostasis.

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That’s just one of the many awesome stories you’ll hear around the watercooler  from the people that played Red Faction: Guerrilla.  And there’s a lot more where that came from.

Welcome to Mars. Now proceed to totally destroy everything.

Red Faction: Guerrilla, also known in some circles as Red Faction 3, is a third-person sandbox game made by the same creators as the series, Volition. While initially a PS3/Xbox360 game, it got ported to the PC and launched a few days ago. Red Faction: Guerrilla (henceforth known as RFG), continues the proud tradition of Red Faction 1, introducing a system of structure damage,  Geomod 2, fallowing the introduction of Geomod 1 in the first installment. While it shares the same name, you can’t consider them as having the same source. Geomod 1 was made on the basis of creating holes in terrain or buildings with explosives or drilling equipment. It was extraordinarily awesome and even a bit before its time, but sadly, the technology never saw adaptation in other games, and it was used sparingly even in the original game.

Geomod 2, while taking away the ability to create ‘holes’ in terrain, we are given an extraordinarily complex building destroying simulation. Each building is not just a 3D model in one bulk setting, it’s a huge Lego, a building being formed of hundreds of pieces, some also being destroyable in themselves. So what i’m saying is that to take a building down, you can destroy the foundation, and it will implode on itself. You can even destroy a part of the building and watch half of it fall down over other structures, and a wide load of possibilities.

Undoubtedly this is an interesting gimmick in the least, but how does it fit in the gameplay? Well.. let’s just say that by the end of the game, you wont find it boring, during the game you’ll have fun with it and use it all the time, and  in the beginning you will be stunned at just how AWESOME it is. Now that i’ve started with the hind-end of the game, let me make a proper introduction.

Alec Mason. He's so manly he mines with a sledgehammer.

You play as Alec Mason, a demolitions expert, a guy that just got on Mars hoping for a peaceful life alongside his brother Dan. Not five minutes in the game, and ofcourse Dan dies, and you get recruited in the Red Faction, a rogue ‘terrorist’ group that fights for a free Mars. Free from the tyrannical and throughly evil capitalist scum that is the Earth Defence Force (EDF). Now, if you played the original games, you might see some connections here and subtle hints. In Red Faction 1, you played as a guy named Parker, working for the Red Faction back in the day, that was lead by a chick named Eos, that had you curing the planet of a plague and calling the EDF to save Mars from other oppressionist scum. Now you play as Mason, starting in the Parker sector, working for a new Red Faction, having to fight the former-savior, EDF, that uses the Eos sector as a headquarters. A lot of nods and intertwining with the story of the first game, all that were quite unneeded since the game acts like a reboot, but respectful nonetheless. The story isn’t particularly well done, but considering the focus of the game is the gameplay, i don’t hold it against it too much.

As said, the game is a third-person sandbox, a ways of from the scripted first-person-shooters that established the series. You have to free Mars, and to do that, you have to take control of 5 sectors from the EDF: Parker, Dust, Badlands, Oasis and Eos. You have primary missions related to each sector that you have to finish to secure it, and also secondary missions that help get EDF control down and morale up for the citizens. Once EDF has no control and you finish all the primary missions… you secure that sector. The secondary missions act more like challenges and fun stuff to do in the game. From rescuing hostages, to blowing up buildings as efficiently as you can, to riding shotgun on a bike-car-turret made of epic, win and legendary, destroying as much EDF property as you can. All in the name of freeing the sectors.

To that end, you have an impressive arsenal of upgradeable weaponry and a host of vehicles that you can ‘hijack’ or steal. Most of them geared towards the goal of destroying buildings, ofcourse, making good use of the Geomod 2 technology, but fun nonetheless. The NanoRifle especially, with it’s ability to vaporize certain parts of buildings, or just whole human enemies.

The blur doesn't do it justice, but that Heavy Walker is totally awesome.

All that arsenal doesn’t really help in the end. As you read from first paragraph of this review, it ends in ‘Then i died’. Red Faction: Guerrilla isn’t named Guerrilla just for kicks. You really are fighting a capable, working and large army by yourself. Stick too much around a base blowing stuff up and killing personnel and you’ll end up with a ton of infantry, a half a dozen vehicles with turret mounts and a few tanks, for good measure, coming down your throat.  So the game really pressures you into going in, doing the deed and getting out. Too bad that the consequences for not doing so are so low. You get a slight morale drop, which is easily recovered by just killing 3 EDF infantry in quick succession for example.

Speaking of enemies, in sandbox games, you go in with the expectation that the AI will generally suck and that i’ll be like shooting at targets downrange. I went in with the same idea, setting the difficulty to Hard. Five deaths later, i was going in the options and setting it to Normal. The enemies are as smart as they are many. They use cover efficiently, even when you destroy it, they search for a new one, they jump out of the way of cars and even some weapons, and tend to stick together and act as a group. And if you’re going to try to sneak around in this game, be aware that they will actively pursue you, use grenades to make sure an area is clear, scan around after they lost contact and a host of other behaviors  that will make the life of any former Metal Gear Solid player hard. This also translates to friendly NPC’s, being able to mount turret weapons with great effect, run after you when you want them to, and generally react in a way that wont make you pull your hair out. Hell.. it will even put hair back on. The AI was that good.

Die Mars Rover! DIE!

Red Faction: Guerrilla also looks as good as it plays. While each sector has it’s own unique feel and ‘color-palette’ to it, each of them look great. The use of certain visual effects like depth of field or glowing sun-rays really surpass their condition and make the game look unique, with a superficial blandness hiding an eloquent portrayal of what would a terraformed Mars look like. While it doesn’t look as impressive in some of the more populated sectors, i personally think that deserted areas like the Badlands with some settlements and objectives here and there had a more otherworldly and a nice touch to them compared to built-areas like Eos. The Marauder areas especially, with their warped structures made of scrap and the general sound of the zone are remarkable.

The sound department also makes a great job fitting soundtracks to each of the zones. The music in the game is not enough to be protruding but enough to make you ‘notice’ it and get a good feel of the sector you’re in. Again with my previous example.. one of my best experiences in the game was when i accidentally destroyed my car in the Marauder area, and since i couldn’t find one, i was forced to make a run for it, being chased by a lot of Marauders, firing back once in a while, trying to stay alive long enough to get out. The combination of music, effects, sounds and the general feel of the area made that experience possible, reminding me a lot of the look and atmosphere of Mad Max. If the developers were aiming for that, they hit it head on.

Before..

Now, you might think that the star of the game is the Geomod 2 destruction system, and you’d probably be right. But that’s not the prime reason i liked the game so much. It had another jewel, hidden well under its belt, which a casual gamer might not even notice or respect. The procedural generation system of the game if the best system i’ve seen in any sandbox game to date. And that’s very high praise coming from someone that played a lot of games in the genre.

After..

To give you and example of what i mean. I leave my car at the edge of the base, i go in, destroy stuff, then grab an APC and make my escape, five minutes later, i come down the same road, and accidentally hit a vehicle off the side of the road. It was the car i left there. Another example… i destroy a bridge. I can be certain, that unless i activate a mission that uses that bridge and has it reconstructed, that the bridge will be destroyed for the whole lenght of the game. Having permanent damage, a long ’scrub’ time for vehicles and a few other tricks up it’s sleeve makes it a unique pearl in the universe of sandbox games that have half the map disappear the moment you turn your back on it. Sure, compared to GTA4, we have a lot less vehicles and people roaming the streets, but sometimes i appreciate the whole ‘less is more’ concept if done right.

Returning to the hind-end of the game, the Geomod 2 technology. I’ve outlined the benefits.. that you can destroy whole buildings, and that it features realistic building structures. I mean, they hired architects to design them for crying out loud. And at the end of the day, i love what they did with the whole gameplay mechanic. There is also a Wrecking Crew mode, choosable from the main menu that gives you a set of challenges to complete, with destruction in mind. Ofcourse all results are uploadable online to share with your friends. Still, Geomod for all it’s awesomeness, it has some problems.

Huge rocket-launching megatank vs. EDF. Any bets?

The first one is that, i think due to gameplay restrictions in single player, buildings act a tad funny when you try to destroy them. You’ll often see buildings stand on just two pillars, and you’ll have to do minutiae destroying to bring it down. And that really bogs down the pace of the game sometimes. For all the mindless destruction you can cause, it kinda sucks that you have to actually stand there and check which damn part of the building is still there holding it up. Now, in the Wrecking Crew mode, you can set the level of how easily the buildings collapse. On low, it functions like in single-player.. but on high. You have a lot more realistic aperture. They fall down a lot easier, but also as you would expect to in real life. I suppose that that would have been too easy in single player, given the fact that you can have a huge number of explosives on your person at all times, but i would have preferred that, with ammo/power restrictions to weapons, rather then the ‘do more boom, less efficiently’ approach they went with.

The second problem is the price you pay for the fact that you can blow up any building. That price comes in CPU power. I’ve not talked with anyone that said they didn’t have problems with laggy gameplay once a building started to shatter and fall. Sometimes it’s so bad, that it lowers gameplay into the single-digit frames per second limit. Sure it’s for a little while, but in a heated battle, with you jetpacking all around and firing NanoRifles and Thermobaric Rockets from the hip, it’s not exactly a welcomed event. Oddly, this is the only performance nag i can find on the game. Incredibly, it loads up a save game, straight from Desktop/Menu/Load Game, in under 5 seconds. For a game that looks this good and is a sandbox, i just find that absolutely mindboggling. Why can’t other games load assets this fast?

I ain't afraid of no ghosts!

The multiplayer aspect is well done, using the same techniques that you’ve practiced in single player. You have different backpack options aswell, giving you certain powers aside from the jetpack you played with in single player, and you can use them to varying effects. A load of game types you can play, and there is an xp-gain system, but combining them is never a good idea. Certain game-types are locked until you gain a sufficient number of experiance points, and while i can appreciate the reasoning behind this, i’d rather have that as a server switch. Overall the game is very fun in multiplayer, and i’d highly recommend it if you’re looking for a new multiplayer game.

So time for the bottom line. Is Red Faction: Guerrilla worth your money? Yes. In the end the game just looks and plays well, even considering that this is a port, has great gameplay and even some replay value, and the number and size of the problems it does have is so tiny and insignificant that you’d be hard-pressed to rag on the game just because of them. I really liked Red Faction: Guerrilla and i recommend it warm-heartedly.

So what are you waiting for? Buy it by clicking the image below, and have a copy shipped off from Amazon to you in a matter of minutes.

Red Faction: Guerrilla @ Amazon.com

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Dragon Age: Origins, Leliana reveal

As we near closer, we get to the end of the line of reveals about this game. Also, as much as i want to take it seriously, it’s damned funny to see characters bathed in blood talking casually. Sure, the whole blood-splatter is purely a graphical thing, but still.

First view of The Secret World

Funcom’s upcoming MMORPG, The Secret World, is set in a world of vampires and werewolves, undead and foul things. Set in modern-day New York, you get to battle monsters and defeat evil things. Or so it says on the box. No sense getting hyped now. Wait for it.

New screenshots and a new dev-blog post from Jumpgate Evolution

This MMO has a lot riding on it, since there is quite a market for a Freelancer-esque-type MMO out there. Today we have some new screenshots on it in the gallery section of their site, and a dev-post about the music and sound of Jumpgate Evo. I’m quite hyped about it, seeing how my Eve Online 6-month experience left me a bit dry.

Champions Online patched

It seemed obvious that Champions Online had a bit of problems at launch, and fallowing the tradition.. not a month passed and it’s already getting a bunch of fixes and rebalances. Also, a free Retcon, stat reset, is available.

Red Faction: Guerrilla getting evaluated on it’s PC-port performance

It just came out today, and i’ll have a review up in a day or two.. until then, see what changes are expected visual-wise between the console and the PC version.

LucasArts reveal Lucidity

Remember yesterday when i mentioned LucasArts was going to announce a new IP? Well.. it’s Lucidity, an adventure for the Xbox Live Arcade and PC, due this month. Lucidity stars Sophie, a little girl, presumably doing some Alice-In-Wonderland type of stuff. Glad to see LucasArts returning to their own style, what with Monkey Island and all.

More L4D2 community hilarious drama

Read more after the jump, but the jist of it is that a modder from Australia got a tad ticked that Valve flew over to their HQ, the founders of the L4D2 Boycott steam group. So after he mailed Gabe Newell, he received a most hilarious response that the dude will have to fly Gabe Newell AND Erik Johnson over to his place in Australia since Valve is ‘boycotting his campaign’. As such, he’s started a fund raiser to get Gabe and Erik there. Incredibly funny stuff. Read the exact mails in the news-link. Still.. this is how Valve creeps back in the hearts of it’s fan base. Again, mega-props.

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