grand theft auto 4

Posted by ASk



Review:
Rockstar's vivid tale of Niko Bellic, an immigrant with convictions powerful enough to rocket him through the crumbling substructures of Liberty City's world of organized crime, is now out on PC. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games shipped this past April, and with this one you'll find a few alterations and additions those who waited are sure to appreciate. Despite what's been put in, if you've already played the console versions it's hard to recommend picking this one up, even though it now includes space for up to 32 players in its multiplayer matches and a robust, easy to use replay editor for recording and fashioning clips from your in-game actions. 

The Grand Theft Auto franchise rocketed to mass popularity after Grand Theft Auto III's release and the ground rules were set for a different style of game. Since then we've seen slight alterations and tweaks to the core formula with Vice City and San Andreas, and Grand Theft Auto IV represents another step forward. This is a game that strips down a lot of the more zany challenges from games past. You won't be doing any remote control helicopter missions or lowrider matching challenges here. Instead, the focus is on realism, a more mature sensibility, and bringing GTA into the present day. 


Niko Bellic is one of the strongest videogame characters in recent memory.
Starting from dealing with your cousin Roman, a small time operator prone to gross exaggeration, you'll move your way up through criminal rings until you get what you want. Unlike GTA characters of the past, though, Niko isn't trying to prove himself as some sort of badass for the ages, driven to rule the city no matter what. He's looking for something, and the missions he undertakes are really the only way for him to find it. He may perform a number of ruthless acts (which you, by the way, instruct him to), but there are points during the story where you can ease your finger off the trigger or make a choice as to how things proceed. Despite the kind of senselessly violent tendencies many may associate with GTA characters, Niko represents an exception in many respects, as he has a code by which he operates. 

The game's infrastructure has been made more convenient, though there's still space to improve. If Niko fails a mission, a message asking to retry it pops up as soon as you respawn, and when you die you don't lose your entire arsenal. Getting across the gargantuan metropolis is made easier by hailing cabs that take you to waypoints on your map. Stealing a car and driving yourself is always an option, as is the more immersive element of actually riding in the cab's backseat the whole time, staring out the windows at the passing lights. For anyone who's short on time or would prefer to forego the random dangers of driving across a GTA world, the cabs are certainly welcome. 

Still, you'll be doing quite a bit of mission restarts, and that often means repeating large chunks of the challenges. Many missions break down into an initial travel segment, some kind of escalation event, a conflict, and an escape. Getting through the on-foot shooting sequences, a real headache with the clunky control schemes of games past, has been made much better with the inclusion of a cover system and, as with all PC versions, mouse and keyboard support for aiming and shooting. From behind cover it's possible to blind fire, rapidly pop out to unload a few shots, or move cover to cover, a system that doesn't always work perfectly but is a definite step up for the series. It's possible to use a gamepad as well, which handles vehicles better than a mouse and keyboard. You can even switch freely between the control devices. Juggling the two input methods depending whether you're driving or shooting is pretty awkward, but it's great that Rockstar built it in without forcing you to fiddle with a control input menu toggle. And if you have to pick one, it's far easier to shoot from a moving car with the mouse and keyboard. 


Aiming is definitely easier with the mouse and keyboard.
Some of the mission structures can be really impressive and work well in the context of the narrative's direction, but unfortunately the franchise's trial and error nature hasn't disappeared. You could be doing a mission perfectly until you accidentally tap a cop car, inadvertently shoot an item vital to the mission, or misinterpret a new set of directions that require precise timing upon a mission's phase change, and then it kicks you right back out to try again. Some may interpret that as part of the challenge, but it's a setup that's become a little familiar at this point and its continued existence will likely frustrate series veterans. 

The strength of story and character along with the amazingly detailed world are undoubtedly going to make strong impressions on whoever dives into this version of Liberty City, but GTA has always been about moments. Remember that time you went off the stunt jump and landed on the pedestrian after slamming through the light post with the police chopper crashing to the ground in the background, setting off a string of explosions rocketing through the stalled traffic? With the PC version you'll be able to actually save that sort of thing using the replay feature. Hitting F2 will save a chunk of gameplay roughly 30 seconds long to your hard drive and make it available for use with the integrated replay editor. This suite of tools will let you drop in filters, splice together clips, add text, attach music, adjust camera angles and more so you can recreate your favorite scenes however you see fit. Want a string of shots of you firing at traffic jams from an attack chopper? Remember to hit F2 every time you're in that situation and splicing them all together should be no problem, giving you the opportunity to save and savor those quirky, seemingly impossible-to-repeat moments that pop up in GTA's unpredictable world
To enter into the editor mode Niko utilizes his cell phone, which acts as a sort of hub for a wide range of activities. It comes into play during the course of missions for checking messages and talking with the game's vibrant, well-realized NPC population as well as serving as a tool built to allow players to live Niko's life as if it were a real one. NPCs will call to talk, for instance, with no purpose other than broadening your sense of their character. You can go on dates, organize a game of darts or pool, and manage relationships much like you might outside of Rockstar's world. Many of these diversions turn out to be fairly tedious after a while, but they're entirely optional so you can just leave them alone if you prefer. 

Beyond that there's plenty to discover in Liberty City, a stunningly realized virtual version of New York City caked with all the dust, wear, and dents you'd expect to see while walking down an actual street. There you can engage in the missions, sure, but also immerse yourself in activities strictly frivolous, from heading to Internet shops and clicking through fictional junk mail to sitting back in a dimly lit apartment and absorbing the glut of programs and commercials that, in typical Rockstar style, wryly torpedo popular culture. 


Stunt jumps!
The series staple radio is very much intact in GTA IV. When set against the Internet and cell phones it seems like somewhat more of an anachronism, but it still delivers the game's fantastic soundtrack and a cavalcade of fake talk programs and sarcastic advertising. Perhaps in GTA V, the protagonist will finally get an iPod. 

PC gamers will get more freedom when it comes to music selection, as Rockstar has included Independence FM with this version. Since you're bound to get tired of hearing about Dragon Brain and Pisswasser eventually, you can load in music files to a game directory that play when this station is switched to, giving you a better ability to find something you like should you decide to go on one of the adrenaline fueled cross-city cop chases GTA is known for. 

Then there's the online play, a major addition for the series and a section of the game that's been expanded with a larger player limit in the PC version and better search functionality. Accessed through Niko's cell phone you'll find a wide range of options for play, from races to deathmatches to a number of team-based games with more specific rule sets. The real draw of the online portion here is to engage in 32 person chaos across the expanse of the metropolis in free mode, but the structured content's there for players looking for something more organized. It would have been nice to see a few extra cooperative modes instead of those already packaged in the console versions, but the multiplayer remains a strong component of this product for the freedom it gives those who venture online. 

Online or off there's no doubt you'll be impressed with some of GTA IV's visuals. It's not so much the character models, but the sheer diversity of the city's sections, from the glitz of Liberty City's "Times Square" to the grime slathered over the industrial areas, Rockstar has produced one of the most authentic, believable settings ever seen in gaming. Yet with the PC version, you're going to need a particularly powerful machine to see it in all its splendor at a decent framerate, as even on our system (Core 2 Quad 2.40 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 768 MB GeForce 8800 GTX with Vista 32) we were having performance problems even after toning down a few of the settings, and some of the effects (the shadows in particular) didn't look so hot when displayed in high resolutions. 


Save, tweak, and share clips with the video editor.
The sound is implemented even better. Stellar voice acting throughout an absolutely unbelievable amount of sharply written dialogue conveys and illuminates GTA IV's thrilling tale. As you're driving along the introductory sequence of a mission a second time you'll often be treated to an entirely different, cohesive dialogue thread between the passengers of the vehicle and then understand the lengths to which Rockstar has worked to fill this world with variety and personality. But it's also etched into every environment, from the snippets of pedestrians to the ambient horns, train track squeals, and general mechanical fuzz that suffuses big cities that Rockstar's managed to capture so very well here, and contributes heavily to Liberty City's authenticity.
Closing Comments
If you've so far neglected to enter Grand Theft Auto IV's stunning modern metropolis of Liberty City, by all means get this game. The overall GTA formula has been refined and retooled in this version to be more convenient, more realistic, and ultimately more mature, though it still gets stuck on brambles held over from games past. As far as living a virtual life goes, managing the social network, night life, travel habits and explosive forays of virtual dynamo Niko Bellic is one that'll stick in your thoughts for years to come. The PC version comes with a few added features, such as online filters for finding matches, the ability to save clips and edit them together, added graphics and control options, as well as a larger player capacity in some of the multiplayer modes. Though you'll need a high-powered system to truly experience the PC version's enhanced visuals, Liberty City is still a wonder to behold.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011
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far cry

Posted by ASk



Review:
Even games with the best of intentions come and go, if they fall short in a couple key areas, to be eventually shuffled off to the graveyard of industry footnotes. A new graphical innovation here, a good sense of humor there, but something just doesn't gel. With Far Cry, however, you can see so many places where things could have gone wrong, but didn't. The AI could easily have been blindly aggressive or stone deaf. The load times could have been constant and distracting. In almost all major areas, Far Cry manages to walk the tightrope of game design over a chasm of Things Gone Wrong. I've always wondered why no one apparently tried to license the AI of the Marines in Half-Life, because after that, I was always a little bit disappointed with the FPSs that came after. And finally someone has answered the call and the creatures here are actually smart.

It's not all wine and roses, though. It's important to keep in mind that this game is meant to push your rig to its limit. My home system is a 2.4GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM and a 9700 Pro, and while this has been more than enough for 99% of the games I've played on, with all the details cranked up, it's not the case here. I need the full power of the Alienware rig at work, a 3.0GHz P4 with a gigabyte of RAM and a 9800 Pro. The deciding factor seems to be the extra RAM and CPU horsepower, as I can run everything on Very High on this machine, but the home rig has to do Medium and High on most options. However, the many graphical options provide plenty of flexibility. You can't ratchet down view distance, but you can tone down things like dynamic lighting, water effects, and shadows. The game will only load once for each of the enormous areas, and it takes about a minute, but reloading from a save game after dying only takes a few seconds. The system with a gigabyte of RAM did both operations noticeably quicker.

With that said, Far Cry can be an incredibly beautiful game. From the 1-kilometer view distance, to the almost-overflowing foliage, lighting and more, this game is a bullet point list of things you'd want a game to be able to do. I'm very pleased to say, though, that it's more than just a glorified tech demo. It creates a continuous strategic and tactical challenge while wowing my eyeballs with next-generation bells and whistles. There is some clipping--it seems to be unavoidable in a 3D engine--and textures at a distance scale down noticeably even with everything maxed out. Also, you'll sometimes see long-range targets fade in as you get close to them. Lastly, lowering some of the graphical settings for the environment can produce foliage popping, where a bush will start out as a flat, basic texture, then sort of spring into a full-fledged, high-detail image as you get close to it. However, the smallest (and most numerous) foliage objects would fade into view as you may have seen in PlanetSide, which is much more transparent for the player.


Sound isn't too shabby either--especially when playing with headphones, where the ambient music really comes to the fore to develop mood. You can turn music off, but you'd be missing out. It adapts to the action, and each area has a subtly different theme. Some of it is standard action movie fare, but there's also plenty of effective ambient spookiness to go around. However, the later cutscenes in the game had dialogue that seemed a second or two off from the on-screen action.
Weapons receive the same careful treatment and are nicely balanced. The M4 can switch to single shot semi-automatic mode to pick off guys at medium range, but the sniper rifle is of course far superior. However, rifle ammo is precious throughout the game, so you won't be able to wander around and cap people like some distant hand of God. The genetically altered creatures are generally pretty tough, which will make you want to use the fully-automatic shotgun, which packs a satisfying punch against all targets except for the biggest of enemies. You'll also get a nice variety of grenades at your disposal, with frag, flash, and smoke grenades all offering unique tactical advantages. Since the enemies have to actually see you in order to shoot at you, the last two grenades are great for getting out of a tight spot. None of the AI ever magically knows right where you are, which is pretty refreshing. Instead, they rely on where they last saw you and the position where they last heard gunfire. You can use the silenced submachine gun so that they never even hear you fire unless they're right on top of you.

It's too bad that the enemies don't seem to react as well indoors as they do outdoors. When outside, they can and will flank you, call for backup, and flush you out with grenades. Indoors, though, most of that doesn't apply. When there's an alternate route to the room you're entering, they will do an end-run around you and attack you from behind. But when you're facing the chokepoint, they tend to just open the door and walk right through it on the default difficulty. It's easy to get behind something, lean out, and wait for them to file in. They also don't run away from grenades unless they're in a large room (so they won't, for example, retreat into another corridor or rush you to avoid the blast radius). I replayed part of the game on Challenging, the fourth-hardest of the five difficulty levels, and the main difference was that they aimed better and did more damage. There didn't seem to be more mercenaries and whatnot running around, or fewer health packs or ammo. Unfortunately, though, playing the game on a higher difficulty to get more challenging fights indoors means dealing with some potentially vicious skills when wandering around in the open. 
Yet even when the enemies are at their dumbest, you'll still be hard-pressed to get from one end of the area to the other in one piece, because they cooperate to pin you down, evade fairly effectively, and don't make their positions obvious. It's easy to overlook one guy who'll make your life hell as you're walking away smugly to the next spot. But instead of this being necessarily frustrating, it creates a satisfying tension of never being completely sure that you're safe at any given time. When alerted to your presence, they won't take the same tactic every time--they react dynamically. They wander about a little randomly, within their patrol routes, scan different areas, smoke cigarettes, shoot the breeze, tie their shoes. I think I even saw one of them sneeze. Everybody has a set of routines that flesh them out, rather than being generic obstacles. And when you choose the difficulty level at the beginning of the game, you can check a box that will do auto-adjusting AI as with Max Payne 2, so they won't kick your butt too hard or roll over and play dead. 
What is frustrating is the save game system, which I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot about. Far-Cry uses auto-saves that kick in when you cross certain thresholds on the map, whether it's right before you enter a certain door or right before you make your way down the slope to an encampment. There are a few situations where the game will save after you've completed an objective, but it's almost all geographical. My problem was two-fold: One, there just didn't seem to be enough of these thresholds. Two, combining this system with an open-ended environment means that you just might be getting drilled by enemy fire right as the game helpfully bookmarks your progress. If you're the type who likes to clear out an area before you move on, you risk dying right before the next save. If you find yourself taking a more cat-and-mouse direction, you just might have enemies trailing behind you as the save slot kicks in. And since some of the thresholds cross dangerous terrain covered by people armed with rocket launchers and sniper rifles, it's often a double-edged sword of a reward, like a pot of gold sitting in the middle of a minefield.

So while Far Cry is ostensibly a shooter, the save game design necessitates a pace closer to Splinter Cell: gradual, careful, measured, and sometimes repetitive. Thankfully, though, most of the truly painful obstacles can be overcome simply by running your ass off, or just driving brutally through the roadblock and hopping off before somebody toasts your ride. However, this reveals a (to me, at least) intriguing feature of the AI: They won't keep on following you if you get far away enough. While this looks like a flaw or a blind spot at first glance, it occurred to me that these men are soldiers who have orders to patrol and stick to specific areas. It wouldn't make much sense for there to be this snowballing effect of an eventual horde of mindless hero magnets. "Let the guys ahead handle him," they seem to be thinking. "I gotta cover this area."

In addition to calling for backup and flanking, they'll also sound an alarm, if one is nearby. When hurt, a guy won't just run away--he'll run away and try to get help. In an indoor fight, this will mean enemies coming from an adjacent room or two, which isn't so bad, relatively. But if you screw up and somebody sounds the alarm at an encampment, everyone within hearing distance will descend upon you. There weren't fewer people in the indoor sections, but strangely, not as many people would come. This was another thing that made those areas that much easier.

However, when you're dealing with the scientific creations hungering for a little manflesh, the dynamic is much different. I don't want to give too much away, though, so I'll just say that they present some unique challenges that will force you to use a different set of tactics, one of which sometimes includes making a run for it. You'll also want to keep a lot more distance with these guys.

I should also mention something about vehicles. You can press F1 to switch to third-person perspective, but often the foliage requires switching between perspectives in order to see where you're going. You control it with the WASD keys, but the mouse-operated camera feels sluggish, even on a high-end system. On the ground, things were pretty smooth, although I would recommend moving the Use key, as it's right next to the "throw grenade" key. There's nothing like throwing a grenade at yourself while standing in an elevator, or blowing up a car you're standing right next to, especially if it means re-treading through the last twenty minutes of gameplay as a result.


Anyway, moving back into non-spoiler territory, let me delve into how an open-ended outdoor style has been implemented. In a word, CryTek has done a fantastic job of avoiding artificial path restriction. In the jungle, you'll never walk into an invisible wall, and almost never be hemmed in by impassible slopes that force you to take one path and one path only. There are almost always at least two distinct ways you can approach any position on the island, often times more than that. You can sneak and crawl through a little valley full of obscuring underbrush and trees, or you can often find a high point to survey the land and pick off a few people with the sniper rifle or M4 on semi-automatic mode. They will be alerted to where you are as soon as you squeeze off a round (unless you're using the silenced submachine gun), but you're free to quickly back off and come around from another direction. Or you can confuse them with a grenade, or with your infinite supply of rocks.
You'll probably eventually notice that the environment is generally indestructible. You can break glass, blow up gas canisters that will send nearby objects and people flying (great physics sytem, by the way), and even cause some small buildings to collapse. And there are a few sections where massive environmental damage is built into the story, but it's not the rule. Trees don't fall over, foliage doesn't get shredded to bits, and corrugated aluminum walls don't get punctured with bullets or destroyed by explosives. I can use the "sprint" key to run up and down a ladder but it doesn't drain my stamina, nor can I jump off (except by walking off the side). The stamina bar is also tied to the breath in my lungs, so if I go underwater with the bar empty, I'll immediately start taking damage. I can't use CryVision (a combo of light enhancement and infrared goggles), binoculars or a weapon while in the water (except for the machete). I can't use anything while on a ladder, but I can while driving an inflatable boat. I get lots of missing sound effects unless I set my Windows sound card acceleration to "Basic" and disable EAX 2.0 in the game. You can fall from any height into water and take no damage, as long as it's not standing water, but you can't even slide down a slope without taking some damage.

But the thing is, I didn't really care about all of these apparent flaws, because I was too busy trying to survive, whether it was as a Sam Fisher-style assassin or as a Schwarzenegger commando. The action is careful, gradual, and measured, if sometimes repetitive due to the sparse save game slots. And Far Cry managed to have a hard-to-describe magic about it. You'll feel "It" when you're crawling through the Regulator and edging down a dim corridor looking for any signs of movement in the shadows. You'll feel it when an entire underground facility begins to flood and you have to save someone before all the air rushes out. You'll feel it when you're standing in a watchtower on a high hill overlooking a brutal battle. And you'll feel it when you hear the enemy somewhere beyond the next hill or corner, but you don't know how many or exactly what mix it will be. While the actual plot was a pretty thin and the dialogue a little cheesy, there were still a ton of great moments and scenes. 
Another cool thing I should mention is how escort missions are handled. It wasn't perfectly implemented here, but CryTek still did an excellent job of avoiding situations where you were desperately trying to prevent the person from dying. Instead, the person would mostly hang back, and when you were desperately trying to keep them alive, it was actually part of the story and was pretty thrilling. If I had a gripe here, it would be not being able to tell them to wait in one spot, or not fire until I fire--that kind of thing. Still, it was a fairly small section of the game, and a lot of cool things happen at that point that I don't want to spoil. 
Multiplayer consists of capture the flag, deathmatch, and team deathmatch, and things run pretty smoothly without the CPU calculating enemy AI. Unfortunately, there's no auto-join for the team-based matches--you have to choose which team you want, and there's no auto balancing of teams, either. Also, stamina seemed to drain a whole lot quicker, making it good only for darting once across a road and barely enough to clear the blast radius of a grenade. Headshots are pretty lethal, even for the pistol, which balances things out a bit. The levels are all well-designed, with an organic flow that makes them feel like realistic, adventurous locations. Plus, all weapons with scopes will glint in the light as they aim at you, making it very difficult for someone to just hide in the bushes and snipe. However, UT 2004, with its Onslaught and Assault modes, has taken the punch out of standard FPS multiplayer game types. I think the long-term appeal for this game is in full-on mods more than potentially cool maps. What's cool is that you can load a mod from within the game, in the style of Half-Life, rather than ending up with a folder or desktop full of shortcuts.

Closing Comments
I started out loving this game. It had so much of what I'd been missing. Sure, it looks fantastic, but it also plays well and is satisfyingly long; each of the 20 levels should take you about an hour or more to play through, if you don't get risky and keep your head down. But I hit a few level design roadblocks that, combined with the Spartan save game system, made for some numbing repetition of load, die, load, die, load, die, ad nauseum, until I finally figured out the correct strategy. If Far Cry had manual saves, even a limited number per area or for the whole game, I would have been overjoyed. I really hope they add this in a patch, or perhaps add it as an unlockable feature.

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fallout 3

Posted by ASk



Review:
Fallout 3 is a special videogame. It's an open-world role-playing game that delivers an experience unlike anything on the market right now. It's a gripping and expansive showcase of how much depth and excitement can be packed into one videogame, and it does justice to the Fallout franchise. This sequel is the first made by Bethesda, the developers responsible for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You don't need to play any of their past games or any previous Fallout games to enjoy this one. It stands on its own as a memorable and well-crafted videogame.


The Fallout universe paints a picture of a dystopian future. It exists in what people on the cusp of the atomic revolution in the 1950s saw as the sci-fi world of tomorrow…if several thousand nuclear bombs were dropped on it. It's a quaint sci-fi view of a future filled with atomic cars, robot servants, and incredibly basic computer terminals. A nuclear war has taken away most of these technological comforts, providing the backdrop for a game with a dreary, desperate atmosphere filled with glib and dark humor. It's a world that is both fantastic and somehow believable. And it is one that's exciting to explore. 
You play as the Vault Dweller, a blank slate for you to write your story on. The game begins with your birth and then quickly moves through childhood with snapshots of pivotal events, such as the day you get your Pip-Boy 3000. It's a cleverly veiled character creation and tutorial sequence that sets the backdrop of the story. You live in Vault 101, a bunker designed to keep its occupants alive through the nuclear war that ravaged the surface. However, this vault didn't reopen when the war finished and as the opening cinematic informs you, it is here you will die because nobody ever enters or leaves Vault 101. 

But that wouldn't make for a very interesting game. At the end of your childhood, you awake to alarms and confusion. Your father has opened the vault entrance and taken flight. The fragile existence of the other vault inhabitants has been shattered. Nothing will ever be the same, especially for you since it is your charge to leave the relative comfort of Vault 101 and search for your father out in the wastes. 

When the vault door rolls back and you step into the sun for the first time, the sense of awe and wonder as you gaze across the wasteland that was once the United States' capital is palpable. Life is absent where it isn't hanging on by a thread. Few buildings remain standing, most reduced to piles of rubble. In the distance, you can see what was downtown Washington D.C., a standing but wrecked Washington Monument dominates the skyline as the tallest remaining structure. You can already tell this game is going to be extraordinary. 
And then your thoughts turn to survival, just as they have for everyThe war did more than crumble the United States government and its infrastructure. It left behind a reminder of man's transgressions. The effects of radiation are felt everywhere, none more strongly than in the water. Thirst and desperation are constants in Fallout 3 and you won't know the true definition of either until you drink irradiated water from a toilet to gain a few health points. Water and food can heal you, but almost everything has been poisoned by radiation. You'll have to use medicine to manage the levels of radiation you take in from eating, drinking or wandering into hot zones, creating an unending give and take that underscores the struggle for survival that everyone you meet faces.

Such pressure could make even a good man do bad things. For those who are already bad, it provides the excuse to do great evil and take advantage of the weak. You will have to decide where you fit in this world. If you want to be good, there are beggars to give water to and people that need a champion. If you want to be bad, well let's just say that you won't have any problem finding places to ruin lives. If you haven't figured it out yet, this is not a game for kids or anybody with a developing moral compass. Foul language is pervasive and that is often the smallest sin on screen. Fallout 3 shies away from sexual content and giving you the option to kill little kids, but that's about it. The world is filled with twisted people who do nasty things and you yourself are often presented with the option to perform terrible, terrible acts. Several times while playing as an evil character I found the situations so extreme and wholly wicked that I had trouble taking the low road.

Click the image to watch our tribute to the Fallout 3 VATS combat.But, as they say, karma is a bitch. The choices you make -- be they good, evil or neutral -- will have far reaching consequences. Take the high road and you'll anger the seedier elements in this semi-society. At that point you'll find hit men trying to take you down. Steal from a shopkeeper and they might close up shop and leave. Blow up an entire city…well you can see how that might change things a bit.

The conversations you'll have with the various people you meet in Fallout 3 range from disturbing to hilarious, but they all have one thing in common: fantastic writing. You'll want to hear everything every person has to say, but to do that you'll have to play the game more than once and likely more than a few times. While the dialogue system doesn't take the cinematic leap that Mass Effect did, it brings so much depth that the simple listed responses become quite powerful. Some perks, stats and skills add new conversation options. If your strength is high, you might be able to intimidate someone. If you're playing as a female character, you might be able to flirt your way through a sticky situation with some men. Or, if your speech skill is high enough, you might be able to lie your way to key information. The way you talk to the people you meet can drastically change the story you're writing. 
The Pip-Boy is your best friend.Unlike many games that offer the level of freedom and choice found here, Fallout 3 has an exciting, top-notch main story. It all comes together for a spectacular climax that is just flat out awesome. Rather than spoil the story, I'll simply say that it does not disappoint. What left me most impressed was how many different ways you can progress through the game. Lying, stealing, hacking, fighting; they're all open for you to use to solve problems. If you play your cards right you can even talk your way into, or luck upon, situations that offer massive shortcuts. The system is so flexible that the possible permutations are almost mind boggling. And yet it all ties back together in the end. And there is a true end to this game. Once you finish Fallout 3 and view the ending, you're booted back to the main menu. You'll have to load up a prior save if you want to continue exploring with that character.

The same level of flexibility and focus is found in the side quests of which there are only a dozen or so primary ones. That may not seem like much, but it goes hand in hand with the focused story. Each of these primary side quests can take a few hours to complete and all of them are excellent. You could easily get lost in these for hours and forget that the main quest even exists. And, like the main quest, each side quest feels organic with numerous routes to completion.

Beyond that are smaller, non-primary side quests that don't have big stories that accompany them. These are your fetch and collection quests that can be useful for building out your character and killing time, but can't hold a candle to the bigger quests

other human; for every feral dog; for everything.

When it was first announced that Bethesda would be developing Fallout 3, many assumed this would be "Oblivion with guns." While that isn't such a bad prospect, it isn't the case. The heart of the game, experience points, level progression, and character development, runs on an entirely different system. Everything is governed by the base attributes that follow the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (an acronym for each of the 7 base stats) system. Each of these, in turn, play into individual skills which can be improved through leveling up. And, of course, various things you find in the game such as bobblehead collectibles, books, and certain types of armor can further improve your stats.

Unlike Oblivion, you won't be able to perform repetitive actions like swimming or jumping and expect to gain levels. XP is gained through combat, completing quests, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals. And that's it. All experience points go into a single pool and when you level up you get to choose how you want to distribute your skill points. These points aren't tied to your actions at all, so you're free to play as you want and then allocate the points to whatever skills you find most important.

Each time you level up, you'll also be given the option to choose a perk. These bonuses are always-on buffs that can do everything from give you a permanent skill or stat boost to reveal locations you haven't visited yet on the map. Some of these are flat-out awesome. The Mr. Sandman perk allows you to instantly kill any sleeping character and get an XP boost for doing it. The Mysterious Stranger perk causes a guy to show up occasionally and blast your enemy into oblivion. You can even get a perk called cannibalism that allows you to feed on humans after you kill them. That would be for those with bad karma only.

The game also doesn't put such an extreme emphasis on leveling up, either. There's a cap at level 20 which took me roughly 40 hours to reach. At that point, you won't even be close to maxing out all of your skills or snagging every perk, which encourages you to go back and start a new character and replay the game. Perhaps the level cap will be lifted when downloadable content releases for Fallout, at least some of which is exclusive to the PC and Xbox 360 versions, but as it stands you'll hit the cap long before you see everything. This is both good and bad. It prevents you from becoming a god-like character, at which point combat wouldn't be exciting. However, it also takes away some of the fun of combat because you don't get any experience points for killing things once you hit the cap.

Poor little Super Mutant. All he wants is love.If you want a single aspect of the game to show your friends exactly how cool Fallout 3 is, you'll go with the combat. The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (VATS) is the icing on the cake. The entire game can be played in either first or third person (playing in third person isn't nearly as enjoyable) as a straight action game. Your accuracy and damage will still be based on your skills and stats, but if you want this game can be played as a simple action-RPG. However, you'd be depriving yourself of one of the coolest combat systems to ever grace an RPG.

At any point during combat, you can call on VATS to come to your aid. This pauses the action and allows you to target specific parts of your enemy. Aim for the head and you'll do extra damage. Go for the legs and you can slow down a fast creature. If you want, you can even shoot a grenade in someone's hand to blow them up before they can throw it. You'll see how likely you are to score a hit on each part, taking into account distance, obstacles, and your stats. From there, you can queue up a number of attacks based on your Action Points and let it rip.

Each attack through VATS happens in slow-motion while the camera switches to a more cinematic angle. Occasionally, this camera switch can get confused and wind up hiding the action, but most often it delivers an awesome-looking slow-motion attack. Heads get shot off and explode. Arms and legs can get ripped off with spouts of blood pouring from each limb. I once bounced a feral dog off of the ground with an overhand baseball bat swing. The weapons in Fallout 3 are awesome and when you combine them with VATS you get some fantastic results.

One thing that surprised me is how well some of the traditionally non-combat oriented skills are incorporated into the action parts of the game. Sneak, primarily used for shady activities like stealing in towns, can be a lifesaver in combat. A sneak attack is an automatic critical hit. The only thing more effective is pick-pocketing a raider and leaving a hand-grenade in place of the stolen item. If you have a high lockpick skill, you'll find that you can open boxes to restock your ammunition supplies which can be a lifesaver on long quests. Raise your science skill enough and you can hack terminals to open doors and avoid combat entirely. Repair allows you to combine similar weapons by scavenging parts from one to raise accuracy and damage on the fly. You'll want a high level on all of these, as well as the combat oriented skills, but picking which to focus on is part of the role-playing experience.

Even once you've beaten the game and done all of the major side quests, there is still a ton to do. Upon completing the main story for the first time, I loaded up an earlier save and took a look at the world map to see how much ground I had covered. It wasn't even close to everything. In fact, it was almost embarrassing how little I'd seen at a point where I felt I had "beaten" the game. Since then I've played dozens more hours and still have yet to see everything. It took me about 20 hours, some of it spent exploring and doing side quests, to complete the story. You could easily spend over 100 hours trying to do and see everything.

You'll want to see everything, too. Simply exploring the world in Fallout 3 is rewarding as you brave the wastes and slowly expand your horizons. Each new ruin you find tells a story of its former inhabitants (and brings a few XP points for finding it to boot). Part of what makes it so much fun is the excellent way the game scales to you. From the very start of the game, you can find any of the cool weapons if you know where to look. You can also wander into some areas with enemies that will simply slaughter you. As you progress, the enemies will get tougher along with you, though you'll still run into some low-level baddies that your improved character can simply slaughter. This system gives the satisfaction of feeling like a bad-ass without turning the game into a cake-walk.



The Rock-It Launcher lets you fire any random garabge at enemies. The weapon scaling is also done quite cleverly. Early on, the good weapons you find will be in various states of disrepair and only have limited ammo. It's sort of a tease, as you find some cool weapons but can only use them in a limited fashion. Even as a tease, it gives Fallout 3 grounding in reality that many RPGs lack (I've never understood why some RPGs have progression where each new town you visit has slightly better equipment than the one prior). It also makes the game more fun early on than most games of this length. Who wants to toy around with crappy weapons for hours while trying to level up? Fallout 3 gives you a taste of the best weapons early which helps to make the combat exciting from start to finish.

Though, it's almost impossible to say that you're actually finished with the game. Even after you've uncovered every location on the map, you'll find that some places to explore don't even pop up on the map as being found. Hidden raider tunnels, sewers that house collectibles and more are still waiting to be discovered. It's enough to make a budget gamer weep with joy. It's incredible just how much compelling content there is here.

It can be quiet out on the wastes while you're exploring and, though it may seem backwards, this minimalist approach to sound only adds to the experience. Your Pip-Boy can pick up radio stations that have a limited set of classic songs and offer some commentary on what is going on in the Capital Wasteland. Wander out of the station's range and you might find yourself with nothing but the sound of wind rustling through decaying trees and blowing dust across the barren plains. While so many games assault your ears with licensed popular music, Fallout 3 proves that less can be more. When that music kicks in to signal a battle or you catch some tunes on your Pip-Boy, it's all the more meaningful and engrossing.

This comes in contrast with the voice work which most definitely does not take a minimalist approach. Massive amounts of dialogue were recorded for conversations and, since you can play the game as either a male or female, many were even recorded twice. All of it is quite good and a testament to how much sound can add to a game. It's one thing to read text of a kid saying something so nasty that I can't write it here. It's another thing entirely to hear it.

Fallout 3 is such an engaging and fantastic experience that it's easy to overlook its few minor flaws, but they do exist and should be mentioned. With any game of this size and scope, you can likely expect a few bugs to slip through the testing process and that is the case here. I had the game crash a couple times, amongst other bugs. In all of these cases, reloading the game has been enough to fix the errors and nothing was frustrating or detrimental enough to give me thought of not recommending the game.

The larger, and far more recognizable, blemish in Fallout 3 that all versions share is the animations. Everything in the world, from the fantastic landscapes to the oftentimes over-the-top personalities therein, comes together to create a believable and engrossing atmosphere. And then you'll see a person or animal move and be given a reminder that this is just a game. The way people move is stiff and lifeless and is a stark contrast to the rest of the outstanding look and feel of Fallout 3. This is especially noticeable in the third-person view. It's great for seeing the unique armor you find, but your character moves awkwardly and doesn't even look like he's interacting with the world he's standing on.

Character animations could be a lot better.Even with the wanting animations, this game is quite the looker. Browns and grays dominate the color palette, creating a stylized and convincing post-apocalyptic wasteland. It's clear that care has been paid to giving Fallout 3 a look that adds to the atmosphere of desperation. And even as the bleak style provides clear limitations in terms of how much visual variety can put into the game (don't expect to see many greens, blues, or bright colors in this fallen civilization filled with death, decay, and remnants of former glory), Bethesda has used attention to detail to create unique locations that beg to be explored. One small bunker I found contained little more than a skeleton at the foot of a locked door. I searched the ground around him and found a book on picking locks and a bobby pin -- safety was just a few feet away, but unreachable. These little implied stories make it fun to explore every little nook.

If it's pure graphical prowess you're after, the PC version of Fallout 3 is the one you'll want…provided you have a computer that can run the game. The point where top of the line PCs outclassed current consoles has come and gone and even at the same resolution, the extra detail PCs can pump into Fallout 3 is extraordinary. Both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions look great, even if they do suffer from occasional framerate issues that cause the game to stutter. The difference in looks between the two console versions is small compared to the leap that comes with a top of the line PC.

If you're looking for more on Fallout 3, check out the Insider Head-To-Head here.

Closing Comments
It's rare that a game can hit the mark in so many different and often conflicting areas. Fallout 3 offers freedom without sacrificing a focused story. It delivers fantastic combat without forgoing a deep role-playing system. The characters you meet are engaging and oftentimes hilarious without feeling out of place in this harsh world. The game has a few flaws -- most of them technical -- but it's a case where the whole is greater than the sum. It's a fantastic game with incredible atmosphere that offers fun in so many different ways that you're almost sure to get hooked. This is one of the best games you'll play this year.
Another Take

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crysis

Posted by ASk



Review:
Crysis is one of, if not the, most stunningly beautiful games we've ever seen. But even beyond that, it's a pretty fantastic shooter. Solid weapons, intelligent enemies, and fairly open level designs mix with nano-suit powers to make this one of the more entertaining ballistic showdowns in some time.

The fact that developer Crytek has figured out how to create a story that doesn't drip with cheese helped immerse us into a "realistic" and exciting near-future. Voice acting is pretty good, the in-game cutscenes are well designed to never take you out of the action, and the aliens are actually menacing and dangerous, unlike the campy Trigens of Far Cry. Crytek has obviously learned a lot about presentation and storytelling since their first effort. I found myself caring about the story that's there and wanting to kick the aliens off of our planet. If they hadn't pulled a Halo 2 at the end, I would have been totally pleased with the story that helps the game progress forward. 
As with 2004's Far Cry, Crysis takes place on a picturesque island paradise lush with vegetation and surrounded by gorgeous blue water. The impressive visuals are so far beyond Far Cry's that it's hard to even comprehend what Crytek, given another few years of development time, will be able to come up with. It's not only the technical aspects that are impressive; it's the detail of the models, architecture, and textures. Whether it's the frost on the gun barrels or change in color of the nano-suit for different abilities, the little touches are everywhere. When you're staring up through the snow at the oppressive presence of the alien mothership buried in the mountain, wandering through the maze of rock and metal tunnels underneath its surface, tromping through the dense jungle, or simply looking into the face of one of the awesome character models, it's impossible not to be awed at what Crytek managed to do technically.

Thankfully, the art team was given the chance to expand their horizons from simple jungles to include the spectacularly disorienting innards of an alien ship and an ice-blasted mountainside. The inside of the ship is especially breathtaking. The greens and greys are spectacularly mixed with bright alien lights and the thin-skinned aliens themselves. The contrast between the rough rock walls covered in crystals and the heavy technology of the aliens is pretty striking as well. The character models which rival even Half-Life 2's are especially remarkable. There's not as much emotion, but the slight cartoony style chosen allows for suspension of disbelief and sidesteps the creepy Beowulf effect. Like HL2, there's a lot of detail in the facial textures and while the lip synching can be a tiny bit off-putting from time to time, these are some truly amazing representations of humans. 
The one thing that you're going to have to seriously consider before purchasing the game specifically for the visuals is the power of your PC. Crysis may very well kick your computer in the balls at Very High settings. It'll look spectacular doing so, but may very well turn into more of a slideshow than you'd probably prefer and in some cases become completely unplayable. On our Vista test machine with a quad core processor, 4GB RAM, and a single 8800 GTX, we had some pretty significant slowdowns with everything on very high everywhere but the most confined spaces. Tweaking the settings in DirectX10 helped a bit (you can fiddle with the settings to get just the right mix of resolution and detail in all the settings) while running the game in DX9 solved all of our problems and still looked spectacular with everything on high. We even could run DX9 on high at 1920x1200 with a good enough framerate to be comfortable playing nearly the entire time. In those rare moments where things began to chug, it was an easy enough thing to simply change the resolution for a minute, which can all be done in game, while loaded into the game, which is another terrific feature that's sadly missing from so many other titles. Luckily, for those of you without the best computers, Crysis still looks pretty fantastic on Medium. You won't get the same features, but Crysis never really gets ugly and still looks at least as good as Far Cry even on Low, though you will get a pretty significant amount of pop in at that level.


Thankfully the gameplay in Crysis, while not quite equal to the visuals, is also well worth the while. Crytek manages to make you feel like a badass thanks to the high-tech nano-suit, which has four settings to help with combat situations. Armor helps you get through straight up firefights, absorbs more damage, and helps regenerate health and power more quickly; speed will help you zip around the environment, flank enemies and run away when in trouble; strength is good for jumping up to high places, steadying aim, and beating enemies to death; and stealth, which we used the most in our time with Crysis single player, allows you to cloak for a short amount of time. Every ability is balanced by how quickly it uses the suit's power reserve, which adds some strategy to each situation. While we found ourselves using stealth more often than other powers, levels are designed with all of the powers in mind to allow you to choose your style of play. If you don't want to use stealth very often, don't. It'll provide a different pace and difficulty level. Whatever ability you become most familiar with, switching between them is easy. You can bind them to whatever keys you'd like, but can also simply use the radial menu brought up with the middle mouse button (default). By the end of single player it'll be second nature. 



The amount freedom in the level design, in terms of where you can go, is pretty comparable to Far Cry's. While the game is pretty linear for the story's sake, it's not a corridor shooter. There's a lot of wiggle room when it comes to tactics and approaches to killing enemies and the path you take through a level. If you want to simply steal a boat and jet across a lagoon to the other side, feel free, but you can also skitter around the edge near the road, head up higher into the jungle, or sneak along the shore. There are several secondary objectives that also aren't compulsory for success, but will provide little advantages of intelligence. 

The human AI in Crysis isn't perfect, but it is pretty damn good. The occasional clumping of human enemies does happen, but you'll also see patrols try their best to flank you and stay spread out while the hunt you down. They aren't really scared by the fact that you have super speed and strength even if it gives you an advantage. They'll still come after you guns blazing, calling for their friends the entire time. 

Being able to cloak gives the enemy the most problems. They won't be able to locate you if you use a silencer and use cover wisely since shooting disables the cloak. Shooting without a silencer will give up your position to the AI and they'll converge pretty quickly, chattering away the whole time. The trade off here is that using a silencer makes whatever gun you're using less powerful. When you do cloak and the AI can't see you, but is wary and knows you're in the area, they'll drop get into an alerted stance while creeping through the forest. If they see you cloak, they'll blast away at the spot you were last seen for a moment until they realize you're not there. They'll chatter to each other as well about whether they can see you, what they're doing, and so on. 


On easy, medium, and hard settings they AI will chatter in English so that you know what they're doing. On Delta, they'll chatter in Korean so that you have no idea, which really adds the immersion. It would have been nice to have the option to use the Korean barks in other difficulty levels since there are other ways to make the game more difficult. For instance, on Delta, the binoculars, which usually provide a wealth of intelligence information, don't operate as effectively, the reticule is turned off by default, and there's no warning when grenades are thrown. We'd definitely recommend that anyone who feels they're good enough at shooters to try it, use Delta for that fact. Hearing all of the North Korean army speak in English and constantly call you a Yankee dog can break the illusion. Delta is a challenge, but isn't the same ridiculous challenge that the highest difficulty was in Far Cry. It's definitely doable here. Hopefully Crytek will patch the game to make hearing Korean an option in lower difficulty settings as well.
Alien AI is a different beast entirely. The aliens themselves are very fast and use their environment to circle around and attack you from behind, which can be disorienting and frightening in the zero gravity confines of their alien ship. Outside of the ship, you'll fight mostly alien machines. The AI here isn't as impressive, but the fights are still fun since these machines are quick and can take a pounding. They'll switch between different close up attacks, popping into the air and launching themselves at you, and firing from afar. The combination can make the battle pretty intense when a group of four machines are all using different tactics. By the end of the game, you'll be blasting your way through these machines with the help of friendly AI as the crapstorm begins in full. You won't find the friendly AI to be helpful as they are in Call of Duty 4, but it's not about being part of an army in Crysis; it's about being the army.

Most of the single player will be spent on the ground in your nano-suit in the jungle, but there are some welcome moments where you'll command a tank, air ship, and of course commandeer any number of vehicles from the Koreans. Combined with fights against armor, zero-g environments, and smaller boss battles, you've got a pretty good selection of gameplay over 10-15 hours depending on your skill level. The only real frustrating moment comes inside the alien ship. It's already disorienting because it's in zero-g, but figuring out where to go can be downright confusing at times. The single player of Crysis, while similar to Far Cry in setting and core gameplay ideas, is most definitely a well-paced and exciting experience that deserves to be enjoyed. It's got stunning visuals, terrific sound (the boom of that precision rifle is so, so satisfying), a decent story, and the nano-suit really helps you feel superior for a plausible reason rather than just "I'm Jack Carver and was special ops".

Thankfully multiplayer isn't useless this time around. While only two modes are available, both team based players and deathmatch lovers will have some action to enjoy. The team-based mode, Power Struggle, can have a steep learning curve for its complication. There are several objectives on the map, players have to purchase their weapons, energy has to be stored, vehicles can be purchased, and enemy bases have hardcore defenses. Working in a team is a must to get anything done. But once you understand the premise and can coordinate with your teammates to complete the specific goals, it does get pretty exciting. I don't know that it'll steal me away from Team Fortress 2 or Call of Duty 4, but the fact that you can purchase mini-guns, freeze rays, and tactical nuclear weapons (both handheld and vehicle based) is hard to back away from. Of course, in both modes, powers are still available, which is also much of the appeal. Enemies can jump up to high locations, sprint around the field, and even cloak. The suit regenerates at a much slower rate to balance the gameplay a little better and cloaking thankfully becomes less effective (though almost too much so) since you can see the light-bending form of cloaked players. I can see wasting more than a few hours learning the ropes and then having some serious multiplayer games. Nine maps total between deathmatch and Power Struggle isn't a huge number, but it is already more than TF2 and likely to get bigger once dedicated fans have a little more time with the extensive game editor that's included with the game (and actually is included with the demo). 
Closing Comments
Overall, Crysis is definitely another win for Crytek and another one of those games that's more than the sum of its parts. They’ve created some amazing technology that’s scalable enough that many gamers will be able to play it on some setting, even if it isn’t the best, and have a good amount of fun. Those that have computers to run the game at DX9 on high will find that the amazing visuals definitely enhance the amount of immersion and enjoyment Crysis can provide. This is some fast, well designed gameplay with enough options to allow players to use their own style of attack with satisfying suit abilities and weapons. Crytek has upped their attention to detail in presentation and dropped the worst parts of Far Cry’s story. The multiplayer, while probably not enough to draw players away from their favorites, is also worth the time. While the Halo 2 type of ending for the single player left a bad taste in my mouth, it wasn’t enough to deter me from heartily recommending action fans pick this one up

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Company of heros

Posted by ASk



Review:
Company of Heroes is an excellent RTS. Relic is at the top of their game here and have set the bar high for any future World War II strategy titles and RTS games in general. Focusing on company level combat has allowed for lots of attention to detail, adaptable play, and fast action. Completely destructible environments are used to enhance gameplay and create some of the most satisfyingly war torn landscapes seen in video games. A fulfilling campaign, addictive gameplay, detailed visuals, and powerful use of sound make up a complete experience with very few problems. Real-time strategy fans would do well to pay attention to this game and, if they're not already, to the development house at Relic. 

Anyone who has played Relic's most recent RTS hit Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War will understand the style of play here. The developers have simply improved on and adapted the rules of the previous game to fit the subject matter. Instead of simply grabbing generic resource points and constructing power generators, players will capture points (to raise their population cap and rate that manpower pours in), gather ammunition, and boost fuel supplies. Those three resources are what keep an army functioning. What's interesting is that the three resources can have pretty different applications: manpower is used in all unit and building construction, fuel is necessary to raise structures and purchase new vehicles, and ammunition is generally used to equip units with special weapons or activate special abilities on individual units like grenades or command tree abilities like air strikes. Maps often have larger amounts of certain types of resources making the way a mission progresses pretty unique. 


Having three different capture points, all governing territories that are different shapes, creates a new level of strategy in all forms of the game. In order for one of these points to generate resources, it must be captured and connected back to the HQ territory via other friendly territories. If not, that resource is cut off and all benefits are denied. This gameplay mechanic comes into play more in skirmish and multiplayer, but does come into play in a few of the single player campaign missions. 

The campaign in general is wonderfully designed and follows Able Company and Fox Company Paratroopers from the storming of Normandy to the defeat of the German 7th Army as Polish, Canadian, and US troops closed the Falaise Pocket. Fighting will take players from open roads and farming communities to the dangerous hedgerows of Hill 192 and tight city quarters of Cherbourg and St. Lo. Campaign missions are prefaced by excellent briefings that give a tiny history lesson and explain the situation using animatics and maps of France. Some striking in-engine cutscenes serve as bookends to most scenarios. The occasional mid-mission cut adds in extra detail. While usually unimportant to actual gameplay, they serve as exciting and rewarding intermissions mid-action. 


Out of the 15 missions (which can take longer than you would imagine) there was only one I didn't particularly care for. Most of the missions are excellent and include objectives beyond the typical seek and destroy you find in so many RTS titles. Some missions will ask to capture and hold a road for a convoy while others charge with setting defenses against a German counterattack. Others still assign the duty of crushing lines of retreating Axis forces. Often times missions will begin with smaller objectives such as the capture of a forward base after which a mid-mission briefing will set up the action for the remainder of the scenario. 



Maps are interesting, create real challenges for players (especially before tanks are available), and provide an amazing experience from start to finish. The difficulty of missions ramps up as some of the more complex gameplay mechanics are introduced piece by piece. Side objectives that aren't necessary to finish a mission also help to push the action forward by providing timed challenges or to kill a certain number of enemies (sometimes in a certain method). Completing these side missions provides medals that testify to your extreme bravery -- and your ability to use a keyboard and mouse effectively. By the end of the campaign, players should be ready to try their luck at some skirmish and multiplayer games. 

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Need for Speed Undercover

Posted by ASk




Review:
EA's Need for Speed franchise has been in an odd position the last couple years. While the franchise often worked to mix up the formula from year to year a decent bit, the release of EA's own Burnout Paradise posed a bit of a conundrum for the publisher. With Burnout switching to an open world setting, it meant that it competed directly with Need for Speed in that space. Last year's Need for Speed ProStreet was a diversion for the series from recent years, going to track-based racing, plenty of tuning options and focusing entirely on the events than exploring the city or running from the cops.


ProStreet didn't turn out too well, so Black Box went back to the drawing board and returned to an open world setting with this year's Need for Speed Undercover, but that wasn't the only design change. Undercover also seems to be directed right at the casual market, both in terms of presentation and its extremely relaxed learning curve. 
The end result, however, is a game that has practically zero redeeming qualities. It fails on almost every front and is a major step backwards not only for the franchise, but racing games in general.


Part of the reason for this is the game's complete and utter misuse of its open world setting. The major reason for having an open world is to allow gamers to explore their environment, find new challenges, perhaps some hidden locations and generally hunt down people to race. That doesn't happen one bit in Undercover. You cannot even drive to an event to start it or enter your garage. To begin an event, you can either head to the overhead map, which requires a couple of seconds of loading despite its utter simplicity, or simply press down on the D-Pad. This will load up whatever your nearest event is, or in some cases, the next major event you're supposed to take part in.




All of this means that unless you're running from the cops, there's absolutely no reason to drive around the city when not in an event. You can't come across any hidden events, new racers or anything of this sort. Unless just feel like testing out your ride or just feel like exploring, there's no reason to drive around on your own.


The open world setting is also ignored in many of the game's events. When you take part in any standard race, the game closes off the streets so that you can only drive on the correct route. It's the game's way of putting you in a pre-defined track and not letting you veer from the beaten path. While transparent arrow walls would have been fine, this restricts not only you and your competition, but the traffic to the set race course as well. In other words, there's no cross traffic to deal with. How can you have an open world game and not have any cross traffic to contend with in races? 
Click on the image to watch this video.Not all events are like this, but they don't get much better. One event type challenges you to get out in front of your competition and then stay ahead for a minute or so (or just pull away entirely). Once you're able to get ahead, it's an absolute piece of cake to dominate them, especially if you head to the highway since they'll likely crash into someone and leave you with such a gigantic lead that you can come to a complete stop, start again and still have plenty of breathing room.


This brings me to my next issue - the game is incredibly easy. It was fairly often that I'd win events by a good 20 seconds or so, and I'd have the worst car in the pack. In fact, I've been able to smoke a lineup of Lamborghinis and Corvettes with an Audi TT, and that should never happen. If your car's ratings are half of what your competition has, you can probably win with ease.




The game's upgrade and general car acquirement system also has its problems. Most of the cars are locked until you get to certain driver levels (which I'll come back to in a second), so you have to wait for them to become purchasable even if you have the cash. I'm not a fan of the system, but that's fine. The car upgrades work the same way however, and things are not unlocked in an order that makes sense. I've had low tier cars in my garage that I've only been able to purchase the first of three upgrade packages for, while I've also been able to buy significantly faster vehicles. Why would I ever upgrade the lesser cars at that point? Why wasn't I first allowed to fully upgrade them before earning the right to buy better cars? The whole order of things is very screwy. 




Press down on the D-Pad to win the game.
As for your own personal level, you'll earn driver points for winning races and performing stunts like drifts or near misses and so forth. Every time you either dominate a race (which means beating a set time in addition to winning) or gain a level, your driver abilities increase. Many of these stats don't make much sense to be assigned to a person. Things like a discount on parts make sense, but why would you have a Forced Induction rating on your person rather than your individual vehicles? Also, since you gain points when you dominate, that means racers who are already good (or even just competent given the very low difficulty level of the game) will just get better, while people who are struggling (which will be about three people) will only be able to rely on the new level upgrades to help them out. 


It's worth noting that while the game retains the slick Autosculpt customization feature of the past couple titles, unlike last year, it doesn't have any effect on your performance. It's still cool to see it return, however, as it's a very cool customization feature unique to the franchise. 


One of the bigger things hyped about the title since its first showing is the presentation and its live action cutscenes. By and large, these fail to do what was intended in a pretty big way. Most of the scenes feature one of two sequences - a bunch of jackasses in a back alley talking trash to the camera before or after a race, or Maggie Q sitting in a room and telling you what you should be doing next. The whole thing winds up being pretty laughable and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maggie will tell you that you need to do to get on the inside of a racing group in order to get dirt on them, and then after a race she'll say "We have enough, let's move in." How did that help at all? They're going to just bust someone for street racing while they're tied to drug trafficking? You do run missions where you steal cars, make "special" deliveries and things like this now and again, but you never actually see any sequences that show how the cops are putting the evidence together or anything of that sort. It could have been so much better, but it falls very flat. It's also so overacted that you can't help but wonder if there was any sort of scene director on site because this is the stuff you see on the first day of acting school. 
While the gameplay is a big miss, the graphics don't help the case either. The game is very bland looking, with only reasonably detailed cars and a city that almost entirely lacks a sense of life. There are no pedestrians, there's very little traffic and on the whole there's very little to convince you that people actually live and work there.


While the game certainly isn't a graphics powerhouse, it can look decent at times. The lighting design can look cool, though unfortunately there are some issues. Shadows are only drawn at certain distances at times, so you'll see them appear on building sides as you cruise along. You'll also find lit polygons appear near the front of your car when they should be dark, especially when you drive through a tunnel, and it's most certainly not supposed to be your headlights. It's just another shoddy glitch that goes to show that the whole game lacks a feeling of any sort of refinement, both in terms of production and overall design. 




The sense of speed can be good, but that's about it.
The online component is competent, but very simplistic. You have three modes, which are really only two - Cops and Robbers, circuits races and dashes. The latter two are straight-up races, one of which has multiple laps and the other just having a separate start and finish line. Cops and Robbers is essentially a variant on one flag Capture the Flag where the robbers are trying to deliver the cash to their hideout while the cops are trying to bust them (which resets the cash). All of these work reasonably well and can be fun, but there's not much variety here, as you can tell. 


The only two positives I can speak for about the game are its sense of speed and its great sound samples. When you get into a fast ride, like a McLaren F1 for example, you really get a sense of absolutely flying through the city. This part was at least done well. The sound samples for the cars (and tire screeches for that matter) are also quite awesome, though they're not mixed as well as could be. When you hit the gas the game sounds awesome, but letting your foot off the gas results in a dulled engine sound that's barely audible at times. So the sound is good overall, though it isn't perfect by any means. 




Click on the image to watch this video.
Closing Comments
Need for Speed Undercover is a poor game with a ton of problems, both technically and in terms of design. The open world design is completely lost as you can't actually drive to any event, many races are closed off which means no cross traffic, and it's incredibly easy. The presentation could have been good but winds up feeling totally contrived and confusing at times. The game could, and should, have been leaps and bounds better than it is.

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