Burnout Dominator

Posted by ASk


Review:
Criterion's Burnout franchise has dominated the arcade racing genre for the past few years, and for very good reason. The developer essentially perfected the series' control response and feeling, it's fast as hell, looks fantastic and features some insanely cool crashes. While Criterion is hard at work on Burnout 5 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, EA UK has given PlayStation fans a reason to rev up their engines in the interim.

Burnout Dominator is quite clearly a throwback to the old days of the series. Its focus has returned almost solely to racing, what with things like traffic checking that we saw in Burnout Revenge having been removed from the game. Burnouts are back, encouraging you to keep your finger on the boost at all times, and the track design is geared more for long and huge drifts rather than Takedowns. 
In essence, Burnout Dominator feels a lot like an offshoot of the past few games rather than a revolutionary sequel, as Criterion has generally attempted to create in the past. EA UK made use of the Burnout Revenge engine for Dominator, and the (happy) result is that the game feels and looks almost identical to the last game, sans the major gameplay changes. But at its core, this is classic Burnout through and through.

The biggest change, or perhaps we should say throwback, to the series is the inclusion of Burnouts. When you fill your boost meter, the flame will turn blue and you can then begin using a supercharged boost. While you don't actually go any faster than using a normal boost, you're able to chain these together and earn multipliers. As you burn off your boost, if you manage to perform enough daring maneuvers while emptying the tank, be it by driving against traffic or drifting enough, your boost will then reset when you drain it and increase your Burnout multiplier by one. Not only does this mean that you can essentially boost infinitely around the track, this increases the score that you receive for your crazed driving, which is a major part of many events now.

Replacing Revenge's Traffic Attack challenge is the new Maniac mode. Like Traffic Attack, you start with a finite amount of time on the clock and your goal is to simply rack up points before your counter hits zero. But rather than smacking into cars, you'll want to narrowly pass right by them, drive into incoming traffic, slide wildly around corners and so on. Basically, you want to drive like a madman while chaining your Burnouts together and not smacking head-first into anything.

There are more specific offshoots to the Maniac mode as well, like Burnout, Near Miss and Drift Challenges. Each of these only gives you points for performing the challenge's namesake rather than everything.

What all of this means is that Burnouts become extremely important to your progression through the game. While it's possible to pass these challenges during the early parts of the game without amassing huge Burnout chains, you'll need to basically be perfect towards the end in order to win. While this has been somewhat true of every Burnout title in the past, this much emphasis hasn't been placed on one thing across many events. You simply can't let go of the boost button or you'll be back to square one. Some folks may like this design, though others may be a little annoyed that you can be so punished for not doing one simple thing.

As mentioned earlier, the track design in Burnout Dominator is more focused around racing rather than Takedowns, and many feel like throwbacks to the days of Burnout 2: Point of Revenge. Huge, sweeping turns are the name of the game here, allowing you to toss your car's tail end way out in front as you skid for hundreds or even thousands of feet at a time.


One really cool element of Dominator is that Signature Takedowns have been mixed a little better into the game and appear this time as Signature Shortcuts. Nabbing them is the same as the Signature Takedowns in that you need to slam an opponent car into a specific area of the course. But rather than simply gaining a mark on your progression list and a nice picture, you'll actually open up a new pathway in the course, allowing you to cut down your race times. Some courses have more than one Signature Shortcut, meaning that you can save a lot of time in later events by opening them up early as they become permanent sections of the track. This is good stuff. 
While the track design is generally great and the game is pure Burnout goodness in most respects, it's also a rather bare-bones experience, at least compared to previous games in the series. Crash mode is curiously missing from the game, which is sure to anger longtime fans of the fantastic party mode. We're told that the reason for this is so that Criterion can reintroduce the mode in Burnout 5 in a big way after having it take a break in Dominator, but that doesn't make the lack of its inclusion any easier to take in.

Likewise, Burnout Dominator is without any sort of online play. Though the past two games have had really fun online modes, you're stuck to a single console this time around. There is split-screen play to be had, and a nice Party Mode multiplayer option lets you play round-by-round with a single controller over a number of events, good for groups of up to four players.



One great return that some fans will love is a quick race mode, dubbed Record Breaker in the game. You can pick a car, mode and track to beat your existing high scores, or simply race for the hell of it. We received a number of complaints after the release of Burnout Revenge because it lacked this feature, so these folks will be quite happy with Dominator.

From a visual standpoint, Dominator largely looks exactly the same as Burnout Revenge. All of the tracks and most of the cars are brand-new, but from a purely technical perspective it's virtually identical. That's great as Revenge is one of the better looking games on the system, but there is an odd bit about the perspective in that it doesn't seem ideally suited to either 4:3 or 16:9 displays, but rather somewhere in-between. The icon circles for things like the music overlay, button icons and those sorts of things look more at-home when played in widescreen, but the cars look way too stretched this way. Swapping the system between 4:3 and 16:9 and turning progressive scan support on and off seems to have no change. One problem with this is that playing in widescreen not only seems to result in the cars looking stretched, but they "feel" fatter than normal and you'll hit things you didn't think you should.

Closing Comments
Burnout Dominator is best thought of as a "Greatest Hits, but Not All of Them" from the Burnout series. The racing is just as adrenaline pumping as it's ever been, and possibly even more so than what we saw in Burnout Revenge as you need to be afraid of traffic once again. However, the lack of standard features and modes like online play and Crash are a rather big disappointment. It's certainly worth a pick-up, but if you're looking for the true next title in the series, you'll have to wait for Burnout 5.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011
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Battlefield Bad Company

Posted by ASk


Review:
If asked, Valve will tell you that Counter-Strike: Source originally began life as an experiment, designed to demonstrate how easy it is to port Half-Life modifications to the Source Engine. But it's easy to see how it's since established itself as Half-Life 2's chief multiplayer component; given that the majority of people who own the original Half-Life and still go online with it choose to play Counter-Strike, why waste time and resources trying to reinvent the multiplayer wheel when you can just polish an unbroken concept and re-release it as a pre-order bonus?

Go, go, go!
In the end, the idea turned out to be so good that Valve also decided to remake Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic, the original Half-Life single-player and more besides in its new Source Engine, not only attracting nostalgic fans back to retread fondly remembered paths, and gathering new blood to the shiny old flag, but saving the Seattle-based developer the trouble of designing an original multiplayer component to tack on the end of Half-Life 2 at the same time.

Having given ATI coupon holders, Condition Zero owners and LAN cafés the chance to try out a one-map beta version last month, Valve has now finally launched its Steam pre-purchase offers for Half-Life 2, and given fans who pre-order the game full access to a 'release version' of Counter-Strike: Source, featuring nine maps. Some argue that it's familiarity that fuels the success of unambitious sequels; in Valve's case, familiarity is just the kindling, and it's ignited pre-orders direct from the developer in a manner that's sure to have rival firms - including publishers - nursing furrowed brows of jealousy.

As long time veterans of the original Counter-Strike, we were some of the first in line. And having spent the past few days getting to grips with CS: Source, and reacquainting ourselves with hot headed bellowing - and, in particular, screams of "Stop running with the effing gun!" and "Defuse kit? DEFUSE KIT!" - we thought we'd let you know what you're up against; whether CS: Source is worth the trouble for fans of the original; whether it's good value as the multiplayer component of a £40 first-person shooter; and whether Valve's finally managed to give newcomers a way into the seemingly impenetrable world of Counter-Strike.

Enemy spotted
If we answered each of the last three questions in sequence, we could plot the resulting graph with a backslash. Yes, Counter-Strike: Source is "worth the trouble" for fans of the original - it's the game you remember and love, where a few minor shortfalls are offset by a resounding improvement in visual quality and a number of smaller, sensible alterations that subtly improve the experience. Secondly, maybe it's good value as the multiplayer component of a £40 FPS, but we'll deal with that in more detail later. And lastly, no, Valve's not managed to give newcomers a clearer way in.


For the completely uninitiated, CS: Source's problem is that it's too exclusive. It may be simple enough to get your head round quickly - Terrorists versus Counter-Terrorists with real-life weapons, one primary and one sidearm per player per round, bought along with grenades and suchlike before the round commences, you sit out the rest of the round when you're dead, and you can win by planting/defusing the bomb, protecting/rescuing the hostages, or killing off the other team - but it's a bitch to master.

Valve had planned to include AI-controlled bots to help players practice their way into CS - an approach that almost worked with the much-maligned Condition Zero - but they're not in this build (something that's attracted particular criticism given that an illegal hacked version of the CS: Source beta has been circulating with the bots enabled). So, in the meantime, players are expected to pick up and learn the maps in hostile online environments, full of people (like this reviewer) who know how to kill them before they've worked out which gun to buy, or which way to turn to get from point A to point B, or even what they'll see when they do get to point B. Let alone the best map strategies, the right radio commands, the best way to handle each weapon, the best vantage points, and everything else that everybody else already knows.

Frankly, anybody coming to CS: Source afresh, hoping to pick up the multiplayer game all their friends rave about, is going to have their work just as cut out as ever, and may prefer to wait for Valve to activate the bots so they can practice and grasp the fundamentals - how the game works, which weapons to go for and why, the map layouts, and the best team strategies - offline, before heading online to start nailing down the subtleties, like the way crouching improves firing accuracy, how you move quicker with the knife drawn than a primary weapon, and what to expect from individual chokepoints in a live game.

Need backup
For existing fans though, CS: Source ought to provide ideal fodder on those increasingly cold winter nights. In gameplay terms it's almost indistinguishable from its Half-Life-based predecessor. Two teams race towards chokepoints and try to achieve their objectives against the clock, taking advantage of the wide variety of weapons and tactics at their disposal, and the departed troops get to sit around and spectate as they do so, chatting about the action and sharing in the pervading mood of the encounter. It makes you laugh (particularly when it's one v. one and someone accidentally kills himself with a grenade or falling damage), and it makes you cry (particularly when people run with their bloody guns), but, given time to prove itself, it's also one of the most arresting FPS disciplines in existence.

Or, to make that a bit clearer, in gameplay terms the only practical differences can be run through in a couple of paragraphs. You can smash crates, computers and plenty of other destructible items littering each level. Glass, when hit by a bullet or knife, only falls away in a small radius around the point of impact, so it now takes another bullet or somebody jumping through the frosted effect of the cracked remnants to make it through completely. You can no longer penetrate two-foot walls with bullets, and a grenade going off on the other side of a wall will no longer hurt you anywhere near as much, but you can still send bullets through boxes, cupboard doors and the like. Water now splashes visually as well as audibly, giving the defending side on maps like Aztec a bit of an advantage in locating intrepid aggressors. And hostages are now capable of following you without getting stuck every five seconds, even if they still do so every once in a while.

And, of course, CS: Source adopts Half-Life 2's Havok-based physics code, meaning that barrels and limp bodies are now thrown around semi-convincingly by explosions (although they do seem to bounce a bit too much at the moment), adding to the spectacle. The gameplay benefits of this are, in practice, almost negligible (you'll be lucky to benefit from any extra cover as a result of it, in any case), but it certainly contributes to the increased believability of the whole thing.

Fire in the hole!
But CS: Source makes no secret of its intentions - it was not envisaged as "Counter-Strike 2", and as a result it doesn't attempt to overhaul the dynamic, or even augment it in more than a few subtle ways. What it does aim to do though is make the game look like a first-person shooter ought to do in this day and age, and not like the five year-old game it really is. So far Valve's revisited, overhauled and released nine of the original game's maps - Aztec, Dust, Dust 2, Chateau, Havana, Italy, Office, Piranesi, and Cobble - and it's a good mixture, from which most CS fans are bound to be able to pluck a couple of favourites.

Changes in terms of layout are harder to pick out. Dust has a couple of new routes and camping spots, but they're not mission-critical, and other changes are mainly superficial. All the maps benefit from a lot more incidental - and generally destructible - detail. Italy's market stall section now features all sorts of fruit displays, which react with great fervour to a grenade impact. Office, meanwhile, is a far more believable, um, office, complete with innumerable PC set-ups, signs encouraging employees and a well-stocked (albeit blown apart) underground car park.

Each of the nine maps has been given a lot of love and attention, although some plainly benefit more than others. Aztec, for example, takes best advantage of the new 3D skyboxes, which create the illusion of much more depth (temples rise into the sky, and banks of hills are lined with military supplies and vehicles), all harness bump-mapping techniques to make the most of their re-chiselled textures, and many make use of the engine's various showpieces - specular lighting effects on shiny floors, particles of sand dancing in the air, realistic splash effects and water behaviour, and increased detail in death animations. Then there's the blinding effect of the flashbang - the whole screen goes white, and the image gradually distorts back into focus as you twist and turn. It's a delightful agony, now, not being able to see.

Affirmative
Ultimately, then, as a package for the fans it's hard to criticise. We'll always have time for Counter-Strike which, despite having played it so long that we've past death and been reborn almost in synchronicity with the game itself, we still find does something enthralling and new every once in a while. And it's still our favourite multiplayer first-person shooter of all time, marginally ahead of various flavours of Quake.

And yet the game is still far from faultless. Counter-Strike has always been a modification that evolves periodically as the developer tackles pertinent issues, and as a freebie we were always prepared to endure that. But in using it as bait to encourage pre-orders of Half-Life 2 - in other words, charging for it - we're forced to ask tougher questions of it, and in some cases it doesn't have the right answers. Why, in what is presumably considered the final release version of the game (and the one that will ship on Half-Life 2 CDs and DVDs), are so many classic maps left off the roster? Why haven't the bots been enabled, or presumably even finished? Why is there only one character model per team, compared to the four options in the original? Why are we seeing widespread reports of crashes and missing sound files? We appreciate things like the Report A Bug option in the main menu - minor bugs are a given, and it's better to tackle them head on like this than not, polished retail code or no - but this version of CS: Source is not the finished article many expected.

Which leaves us to return to the issue of whether it's good value as Half-Life 2's multiplayer component and, in the meantime, a pre-order incentive. And it's here that Valve's attempt to avoid piling resources into a fresh multiplayer set-up arguably slips up; despite borrowing an existing game and sprucing it up, we're still forced to conclude that Counter-Strike: Source will be brilliant once it's finished, which is what we used to end up saying about most multiplayer FPS games anyway. For now at least, it needs more. Popular maps like Assault, Nuke, Militia, Back Alley, Inferno, Prodigy and Train are absent, it lacks some of the features we'd been more or less told to expect, and it's still far too intimidating for the average PC gamer to pick up anew without enduring hours of frustration and a Herculean feat of perseverance.



Storm the front
Still, none of that should detract from the reality that Counter-Strike: Source is, once you've gained a knack for it, the most consistently rewarding and surprising team-based shoot-'em-up available on the PC today. It's been dressed up nicely for its relaunch in 2004, but it wasn't broken, and Valve hasn't fixed it. But then the developer hasn't finished it either. And that does take some of the shine off a project fuelled more or less entirely by the desire to polish.

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Call Of Duty

Posted by ASk


Review:
Times change, tastes evolve, and games must move forward to meet these new expectations. Infinity Ward, in their first game ever as a development house, is attempting to do just that. Many of the ideas found in Call of Duty may have been seen first in other titles, but have been honed down to a fine point in this one. If you're looking for a thrill ride that gives you heart problems, makes your ears flap for joy, and brings you as close to a World War II experience as you're likely to get right now (or would ever really want to get), this is your game. The small problems and relatively short length of the single player campaign can't darken the brilliant moments found throughout this sweet gaming experience.

Call of Duty will take players back to World War II, a period of history that has become extraordinarily familiar to gamers in the past couple of years. The trick had always been really bringing the feeling of that war and war in general to gamers. And setting players in the position where they were lone gunmen wiping out the entire Nazi threat just didn't do that. Enter Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. This was one of the first games to really put players in a position where they were part of a bigger group. That feeling of being just another soldier on a sickening dangerous battlefield was something that hadn't been experienced with such a profound impact before. Now many of the team members that were responsible for putting Medal of Honor into the hands of eager gamers moved along to Infinity Ward and began development on Call of Duty, hoping to push that same type of gaming experience to even greater heights. They are bountiful in their success.

While not every aspect of this game had me giggling like a schoolgirl, there were enough "$#!*!!!" and "Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap!" types of moments to make me enthusiastically recommend this game to shooter fans. When you find yourself actually ducking your head in front of your computer screen as "bullets whiz by your ear," you'll know you've been fully sucked into an engaging experience. You'll play as a US, British, and Russian soldiers in that order through some seriously heart-pounding missions in campaigns that move through time from Operation Overlord to the final storming of Berlin.



The game begins in stunning fashion as you (playing the part of a US Paratrooper in the 101st) fall from the sky into France to begin hitting targets before the D-Day landings begin on Normandy shores. It's eerily quiet as you fall by yourself in order to place a beacon for other paratroopers to have a point of reference to drop on. After dispatching a couple of lone guards, you place your beacon and wait for the planes to fly overhead dropping their human cargo onto German occupied territory. As those aircraft cruise past, sirens begin to blare and anti-aircraft weapons start to thrum and light up the sky in the background. As more troops join you on the ground and begin to move towards nearby buildings, all hell breaks loose. Shutters open to expose MG42 emplacements while German soldiers take up positions in the houses to fire out on your advancing squad. The sudden eruption of gunfire is truly a moment to savor.

And this savoring of gunfire and sound is something that you're going to have to get used to while playing the game. Call of Duty's sound is among the best that I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing in a game; a veritable orgy of terrifying gunfire and explosions. Those ricocheting bullets and near misses and thuds when you or a teammate gets hit with a bullet are really what make you say "$#!*!!!" and duck your head like a buffoon at your computer. This game is LOUD! LOUD! And I love it. The sounds blends perfectly when your squad leader starts barking orders, but you'll never miss any of the heart-wrenching thumps of an 88 or the terrifying stutter of an MG42 emplacement, because that will play right along with it all. Gunfire is more than satisfactory, explosions make your head shake, and the yelling of allied and enemy troops will set you so firmly in this experience that you'll have to tear your hands away from the mouse and keyboard. The only weak points were some of the voice-overs. I understand why they were done in English instead of Russian, but I somehow wish there had been a choice for subtitle or English dub like they have for DVDs. Aside of that niggling point, the sound work in Call of Duty is impeccable

Graphically, the game is very solid. It may not have normal mapping and all of that new stuff that everyone seems so excited about, but it has style and crispness, great textures, good character models with good character faces, and some great lighting and explosions. The character animations in particular are fun to watch as soldiers run from place to place shooting, sometimes covering their heads, and making hand gestures to tell you where to go. One particular moment in the game, that Steve didn't even see when he played through, shows all of your fellow soldiers being jounced around in the back of a glider as it "lands" rather harshly. They all end up falling from their seats and laying on top of each other; it's a good, fun touch.



Through most of the game, you'll find yourself surrounded by friendly AI that support your actions and add a much deeper sense of immersion than I can remember seeing in any shooter to date. When you get the orders to flank left and hear your squad leader shout "Suppressing fire!" you had better get your butt moving. Because while your squad is firing away at enemy targets to keep their heads down, you'll be able to move into a much more effective flanking position. If you wait too long and run when suppressing fire isn't keeping the Germans from shooting... well then you're going to have problems.

AI throughout the game is impressively solid. There were some moments where my buddies would step in front of my line of fire and get shot, but for the most part, they were very good about picking their positions and shooting at the right spots. Enemy AI was fairly smart in most occasions as well. They seem to like being alive and generally don't just run willy-nilly at you unless they've been put in search and destroy mode in which case they're looking to ferret out an entire building or area of enemies. You'll definitely see enemies try to advance on your position (especially in the defend missions), but will generally try to keep as low a profile as they can while doing this. They'll use cover, destroyed tanks, trenches, bunkers and buildings to stay as much out of sight as possible. They, like you, have the ability to peek around corners and fire to keep themselves as a small a target as possible. I can't tell you how nice it is to see both friendly and enemy units trying their damndest to stay alive.



The AI isn't without its quirks though. Sometimes, you'll see some of your own squad (presumably under the direction of some pathfinding AI or scripting) run right past a German only to get whacked on the head with a gun butt or shot in the ass unless you rush around the corner to protect them. It's a really odd occurrence, but something that seems to happen on both sides. The enemy AI also knows to come after you first. You'll see enemies change targets to you from time to time as well as wait in hiding until you in particular pop your head out. There was one instance in particular that annoyed the hell out of me where a German was hiding on the other side of a door that had swung out into a courtyard. He ignored all of the Allied soldiers that had already run out there, but when I came outside, he jumped out from behind it and made my skull a little softer. Now that's just not fair. I'm all for surprises, but when nearly my entire squad has already entered the area and there's no firing going on, I'd expect not to get attacked from behind the damn doorway.

There's a lot of scripting in the game, which I know is something that players were concerned with, but it does tend to blend in well with the gameplay. Deaths, for example, aren't always scripted. There are some missions that you could have three or more friends with you or none at all, depending on what they did and what you did to keep them alive. But you will be able to see certain things that will happen each time, no matter what that are triggered by your actions. For example, in that first mission I was describing, one of the buildings will only be bombed after you've managed to take down the MG42 gunner hiding within. But on the other side of the coin, some events that seem to be totally scripted at first won't always play out the same way. In the Pegasus Day mission, you'll have to defend an area against an onslaught of enemies (a great and difficult level) including tanks. If you quicksave right before one of these tanks rolls in, you'll suddenly notice that the tanks won't always come from the same direction, making things more interesting. Still, once you've played through the game once, you'll know where most of the enemies will come from and what will happen in each level. It's just integrated a bit better than the Omaha mission in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault where each of the soldiers would die in the same spot every time. 
Regardless of scripting issues, Call of Duty is still an incredibly exciting game that will have you coming back for another go at a harder difficulty level after you're done simply because of the grace and pace most of the levels are designed with. Without a doubt, the best missions in the game are those that you are working with a large squad of friendly AI to complete a goal. Some of those that put you in more of a commando role, while done well, just don't offer the same kind of balls against the wall excitement. The pacing of some of these can get a bit slow as you creep from corner to corner trying to see the next enemy. There's a bit of a lull in these types of missions through the British campaigns, but things get back on track in the Russian campaigns a bit, although some of the running through the sewers and the same type of blown out buildings in Stalingrad makes you want to get outside into the open with your friends again.

Unlike most of the missions in Medal of Honor, there is usually some good connection and flow between levels in Call of Duty. While there's really not any story aside from the war itself or real character development, some faces will become familiar as they carry over from mission to mission. But while that connection exists, the game does tend to jump around a bit. The US campaign flows well right into the British campaign, but at the end of the British campaign, the transition seems abrupt. At one point, you're attacking an aircraft field, the next you're on a boat attacking a German Destroyer with very little reason why, aside from a couple of notes on the written briefing. There definitely could have been more visual and auditory briefings between some missions like these. The first time I was on the boat I had accidentally clicked to begin the mission before I was done reading so all I could think was "Why the hell am I on a boat all of a sudden?" The jump to the Russian campaign was understandably abrupt, considering how far apart each of the fronts of the war actually were, so I can't say I have a problem there.



One area that may disappoint some of you out there (it disappointed me a little) was the length. We've actually been having this "quality over quantity" discussion around the office as of late. It's hard to tell what anybody really thinks about how many hours it should take to get through a game. It depends on level of satisfaction, whether it makes you want to play through again, if there's multiplayer... a lot of things. So after finishing the single player game on Normal difficulty in 6 1/2 to 7 hours, I can say I was very satisfied with what was there, but kind of wished there was a bit more of it. I played through again on Veteran (the toughest mode), which took me about 10-11 hours. But that Veteran mode is really, really difficult in certain parts. Enemies get to be much better shots and there are no health packs. Thankfully, there are no horribly aggravating Sniper Town types of missions in the game and enemies don't seem to know where you are at all times. Overall, I'm satisfied with the length simply because the package was so good. Would I have been happier with a couple more levels or a little more time with the game? Yes. But that's like saying I'd be happier with an extra spoon of really tasty ice cream even after I had just devoured a cone.

Besides, when you add on the delicious helping of multiplayer chaos, things get much more bearable. Multiplayer comes with a few different types of play. There's the standard deathmatch and team deathmatch, which players will enjoy quite a bit on these very fast paced maps. But there are also three different modes of play that are a bit more interesting. The first of these is Behind Enemy Lines, which sets a number of players (depending on the server size) as Allied players scattered across the landscape. The rest of the players (severely outnumbering the Allies) will be Axis. Every time an Axis player kills an Ally, that Axis player turns into an Ally. The longer a player stays alive as an Ally, the more points earned. Even more points are given for killing Axis players while on the Allied side.

The last two types of games are for teams. There's Search and Destroy, which like the name implies, challenges one team to plant explosives and destroy one of two objectives, much like Counter-Strike has been doing for years. The second is Retrieval, which challenges one of the teams to find and pick up an object and get it back to the retrieval zone, much like Return to Castle Wolfenstein did so well. Both of these types of maps are played like Counter-Strike so that you only get one life. You die, you're out until the next round.

I've had the opportunity to play all of these missions over the last week and they're all a lot of fun. Levels feel good for the most part, weapons are balanced well (I had thought the Russians might have the weakness because of the lack of choices, but I love that PPSh sub-machinegun and the Mossin-Nagant is a very powerful, if slow, rifle) and players just hopping in for a bit of fun and those more serious teams should have a blast. Some levels seem to have almost too much going on, but I think they just take a while to get used to and learn the lines and good hiding places.

One of the interesting parts of all of the multiplayer modes is the Killcam. When you're killed in a game, the Killcam will actually let you look through your killer's eyes for the few seconds before that person killed you. You'll be able to see where you are thanks to a big white arrow hanging over your position in order to see how your enemy snuck up on you, or sniped you, or just owned you in general. I really like this addition; especially it's implications in keeping camping to a minimum.

Technically speaking, the game has run well for all of us here, with little to no problems. There is one thing that potential buyers might want to be aware of before purchasing this title. We have been hearing that the game has some problems with ATi cards. After hearing this, we made sure to check it out on those cards as well, but are totally unable to verify this as the game ran well and had no problems on our Radeon 9800 Pro set-up. If you do have any problems, we're hearing that they may be with the Catalyst 3.8 drivers. But as I said, we've seen no problems and we even have 3.8 drivers... so go figure, maybe we're just charmed.

Closing Comments
You have to love a game that glues you to your seat and keeps you interested. Call of Duty did just that. I still think it may be a bit on the short side, but all other considerations outweigh that particular problem for me. I've played through the game twice and loved it both times as well as had a lot of fun with the multiplayer over the last couple of weeks. 
My complaints, aside from the length, are pretty negligible in terms of the experience as a whole. This really is a thrilling piece of software that action fans should grab a hold of and love fiercely (just watch out for paper cuts). Get ready to cuss, get ready to shoot, get ready to die, and get ready to fight the Germans back into their house. Duty is calling and you had better listen to it soldier.

Another Take



from Steve Butts
I agree with Dan that the few commando missions seem a bit superfluous and out of character when considered against the rest of the game. As with Halo or Medal of Honor, my enjoyment of Call of Duty was highest when I felt like part of a battle. Sure, there's room for individual heroics but Call of Duty clearly puts the player in the combat boots of one soldier out of many. Better still, you're not the one in charge so you won't need to worry about directing the members of your squad. 
This sense of open-ended, cooperative warfare can be hampered a bit by the game's tighter, more linear spaces. At its best, it's about moving through open environment and finding good cover that provides a nice view of your enemies. At its worst, it's about peeking around the corner of yet another hallway. Though the levels set in buildings provide a nice change of pace, I found the rail shooter segments broke up the action enough to do away with the more traditional Counter-Strike approach of the restricted levels.

But even in its weaker moments, Call of Duty is still damned satisfying. We talk a lot about the cinematic qualities of our favorite games. Careful pacing, convincing dialogue and a comprehensive visual presentation can make bring some games close to the level of interactive movies. The emotional context of the battles is quite strong here and the consequences of your own successes and failures are readily apparent and meaningful.

Till now whenever I've been yearning for some offline classic WWII shooter action, I've found it in Medal of Honor. Thanks to Infinity Ward, there's a new place to get my fix. 



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Counter Strike

Posted by ASk




Review:


If asked, Valve will tell you that Counter-Strike: Source originally began life as an experiment, designed to demonstrate how easy it is to port Half-Life modifications to the Source Engine. But it's easy to see how it's since established itself as Half-Life 2's chief multiplayer component; given that the majority of people who own the original Half-Life and still go online with it choose to play Counter-Strike, why waste time and resources trying to reinvent the multiplayer wheel when you can just polish an unbroken concept and re-release it as a pre-order bonus?


Go, go, go!
In the end, the idea turned out to be so good that Valve also decided to remake Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic, the original Half-Life single-player and more besides in its new Source Engine, not only attracting nostalgic fans back to retread fondly remembered paths, and gathering new blood to the shiny old flag, but saving the Seattle-based developer the trouble of designing an original multiplayer component to tack on the end of Half-Life 2 at the same time.


Having given ATI coupon holders, Condition Zero owners and LAN cafés the chance to try out a one-map beta version last month, Valve has now finally launched its Steam pre-purchase offers for Half-Life 2, and given fans who pre-order the game full access to a 'release version' of Counter-Strike: Source, featuring nine maps. Some argue that it's familiarity that fuels the success of unambitious sequels; in Valve's case, familiarity is just the kindling, and it's ignited pre-orders direct from the developer in a manner that's sure to have rival firms - including publishers - nursing furrowed brows of jealousy.


As long time veterans of the original Counter-Strike, we were some of the first in line. And having spent the past few days getting to grips with CS: Source, and reacquainting ourselves with hot headed bellowing - and, in particular, screams of "Stop running with the effing gun!" and "Defuse kit? DEFUSE KIT!" - we thought we'd let you know what you're up against; whether CS: Source is worth the trouble for fans of the original; whether it's good value as the multiplayer component of a £40 first-person shooter; and whether Valve's finally managed to give newcomers a way into the seemingly impenetrable world of Counter-Strike.


Enemy spotted
If we answered each of the last three questions in sequence, we could plot the resulting graph with a backslash. Yes, Counter-Strike: Source is "worth the trouble" for fans of the original - it's the game you remember and love, where a few minor shortfalls are offset by a resounding improvement in visual quality and a number of smaller, sensible alterations that subtly improve the experience. Secondly, maybe it's good value as the multiplayer component of a £40 FPS, but we'll deal with that in more detail later. And lastly, no, Valve's not managed to give newcomers a clearer way in.


For the completely uninitiated, CS: Source's problem is that it's too exclusive. It may be simple enough to get your head round quickly - Terrorists versus Counter-Terrorists with real-life weapons, one primary and one sidearm per player per round, bought along with grenades and suchlike before the round commences, you sit out the rest of the round when you're dead, and you can win by planting/defusing the bomb, protecting/rescuing the hostages, or killing off the other team - but it's a bitch to master.





Valve had planned to include AI-controlled bots to help players practice their way into CS - an approach that almost worked with the much-maligned Condition Zero - but they're not in this build (something that's attracted particular criticism given that an illegal hacked version of the CS: Source beta has been circulating with the bots enabled). So, in the meantime, players are expected to pick up and learn the maps in hostile online environments, full of people (like this reviewer) who know how to kill them before they've worked out which gun to buy, or which way to turn to get from point A to point B, or even what they'll see when they do get to point B. Let alone the best map strategies, the right radio commands, the best way to handle each weapon, the best vantage points, and everything else that everybody else already knows.


Frankly, anybody coming to CS: Source afresh, hoping to pick up the multiplayer game all their friends rave about, is going to have their work just as cut out as ever, and may prefer to wait for Valve to activate the bots so they can practice and grasp the fundamentals - how the game works, which weapons to go for and why, the map layouts, and the best team strategies - offline, before heading online to start nailing down the subtleties, like the way crouching improves firing accuracy, how you move quicker with the knife drawn than a primary weapon, and what to expect from individual chokepoints in a live game.


Need backup
For existing fans though, CS: Source ought to provide ideal fodder on those increasingly cold winter nights. In gameplay terms it's almost indistinguishable from its Half-Life-based predecessor. Two teams race towards chokepoints and try to achieve their objectives against the clock, taking advantage of the wide variety of weapons and tactics at their disposal, and the departed troops get to sit around and spectate as they do so, chatting about the action and sharing in the pervading mood of the encounter. It makes you laugh (particularly when it's one v. one and someone accidentally kills himself with a grenade or falling damage), and it makes you cry (particularly when people run with their bloody guns), but, given time to prove itself, it's also one of the most arresting FPS disciplines in existence.


Or, to make that a bit clearer, in gameplay terms the only practical differences can be run through in a couple of paragraphs. You can smash crates, computers and plenty of other destructible items littering each level. Glass, when hit by a bullet or knife, only falls away in a small radius around the point of impact, so it now takes another bullet or somebody jumping through the frosted effect of the cracked remnants to make it through completely. You can no longer penetrate two-foot walls with bullets, and a grenade going off on the other side of a wall will no longer hurt you anywhere near as much, but you can still send bullets through boxes, cupboard doors and the like. Water now splashes visually as well as audibly, giving the defending side on maps like Aztec a bit of an advantage in locating intrepid aggressors. And hostages are now capable of following you without getting stuck every five seconds, even if they still do so every once in a while.


And, of course, CS: Source adopts Half-Life 2's Havok-based physics code, meaning that barrels and limp bodies are now thrown around semi-convincingly by explosions (although they do seem to bounce a bit too much at the moment), adding to the spectacle. The gameplay benefits of this are, in practice, almost negligible (you'll be lucky to benefit from any extra cover as a result of it, in any case), but it certainly contributes to the increased believability of the whole thing.


Fire in the hole!
But CS: Source makes no secret of its intentions - it was not envisaged as "Counter-Strike 2", and as a result it doesn't attempt to overhaul the dynamic, or even augment it in more than a few subtle ways. What it does aim to do though is make the game look like a first-person shooter ought to do in this day and age, and not like the five year-old game it really is. So far Valve's revisited, overhauled and released nine of the original game's maps - Aztec, Dust, Dust 2, Chateau, Havana, Italy, Office, Piranesi, and Cobble - and it's a good mixture, from which most CS fans are bound to be able to pluck a couple of favourites.


Changes in terms of layout are harder to pick out. Dust has a couple of new routes and camping spots, but they're not mission-critical, and other changes are mainly superficial. All the maps benefit from a lot more incidental - and generally destructible - detail. Italy's market stall section now features all sorts of fruit displays, which react with great fervour to a grenade impact. Office, meanwhile, is a far more believable, um, office, complete with innumerable PC set-ups, signs encouraging employees and a well-stocked (albeit blown apart) underground car park.


Each of the nine maps has been given a lot of love and attention, although some plainly benefit more than others. Aztec, for example, takes best advantage of the new 3D skyboxes, which create the illusion of much more depth (temples rise into the sky, and banks of hills are lined with military supplies and vehicles), all harness bump-mapping techniques to make the most of their re-chiselled textures, and many make use of the engine's various showpieces - specular lighting effects on shiny floors, particles of sand dancing in the air, realistic splash effects and water behaviour, and increased detail in death animations. Then there's the blinding effect of the flashbang - the whole screen goes white, and the image gradually distorts back into focus as you twist and turn. It's a delightful agony, now, not being able to see.


Affirmative
Ultimately, then, as a package for the fans it's hard to criticise. We'll always have time for Counter-Strike which, despite having played it so long that we've past death and been reborn almost in synchronicity with the game itself, we still find does something enthralling and new every once in a while. And it's still our favourite multiplayer first-person shooter of all time, marginally ahead of various flavours of Quake.


And yet the game is still far from faultless. Counter-Strike has always been a modification that evolves periodically as the developer tackles pertinent issues, and as a freebie we were always prepared to endure that. But in using it as bait to encourage pre-orders of Half-Life 2 - in other words, charging for it - we're forced to ask tougher questions of it, and in some cases it doesn't have the right answers. Why, in what is presumably considered the final release version of the game (and the one that will ship on Half-Life 2 CDs and DVDs), are so many classic maps left off the roster? Why haven't the bots been enabled, or presumably even finished? Why is there only one character model per team, compared to the four options in the original? Why are we seeing widespread reports of crashes and missing sound files? We appreciate things like the Report A Bug option in the main menu - minor bugs are a given, and it's better to tackle them head on like this than not, polished retail code or no - but this version of CS: Source is not the finished article many expected.


Which leaves us to return to the issue of whether it's good value as Half-Life 2's multiplayer component and, in the meantime, a pre-order incentive. And it's here that Valve's attempt to avoid piling resources into a fresh multiplayer set-up arguably slips up; despite borrowing an existing game and sprucing it up, we're still forced to conclude that Counter-Strike: Source will be brilliant once it's finished, which is what we used to end up saying about most multiplayer FPS games anyway. For now at least, it needs more. Popular maps like Assault, Nuke, Militia, Back Alley, Inferno, Prodigy and Train are absent, it lacks some of the features we'd been more or less told to expect, and it's still far too intimidating for the average PC gamer to pick up anew without enduring hours of frustration and a Herculean feat of perseverance.


Storm the front
Still, none of that should detract from the reality that Counter-Strike: Source is, once you've gained a knack for it, the most consistently rewarding and surprising team-based shoot-'em-up available on the PC today. It's been dressed up nicely for its relaunch in 2004, but it wasn't broken, and Valve hasn't fixed it. But then the developer hasn't finished it either. And that does take some of the shine off a project fuelled more or less entirely by the desire to polish.

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About IGI-2

Posted by ASk



It features a blend of stealth, covert surveillance, and high-powered firefights at secret military bases, though the game also has several significant shortcomings.
The awkwardly named Project IGI: I'm Going In follows in the trend of the Rainbow Six series, the Delta Force series, and SWAT 3. It eschews the outlandish futuristic weapons and imaginary settings of many traditional shooters and focuses instead on contemporary realism. In the game, you play as David Llewelyn Jones, a former Special Air Service member who now works as a freelance operative for both the British and American governments. The game features a blend of stealth, covert surveillance, and high-powered firefights at secret military bases, and it has much of the thrill and daring of the James Bond films of the late Cold War era. But it also has several significant shortcomings.
In Project IGI, your mission is to help retrieve a stolen nuclear warhead and prevent an act of nuclear terrorism. The action begins in the former Soviet Union, and your first goal is to rescue a contact who has vital information about the nuke and who is being held and tortured at a military airfield in Estonia. The narrative is primarily told through in-engine cutscenes at the beginning or end of each mission, and they're visually stylish - their dramatic camera angles and lighting effects approach film quality at times, though the flat dialogue can be a bit tedious and the cast of characters isn't very interesting. The tone of the missions tends to be realistic: While you're a skilled agent, you're just one man - not a one-man army. As such, you'll need to do a lot of creeping through the shadows, sneaking around security cameras, hacking computers to deactivate surveillance systems, and using binoculars to scout the area. When you run into the inevitable confrontation with guards, fast and furious firefights ensue. The game's general emphasis on realism means you'll need quick reflexes: Even if he's wearing body armor, a few shots can still put a painful end to the hero's career. You can restore health only by grabbing a medical kit from an infirmary - if there even is one in the area.
Project IGI is a strictly single-player game with 14 missions that are often large and complex, but they're divided into smaller, more manageable objectives. Unfortunately, there's no way to save your game during a mission, and even on the lowest difficulty setting, some missions can be quite hard, and they will inevitably require you to restart from scratch a number of times before you achieve success. Since you'll typically be infiltrating military installations, you'll run into swarms of guards, many of whom stand waiting in towers with their sniper rifles. Death awaits at every corner. The abundance of guards is necessary because the game's enemy artificial intelligence is spotty if not downright poor, as enemies sometimes stand obliviously when you kill one of their comrades, who is only a few feet in front of them. Also, the game sometimes cheats by making guards appear out of thin air or from buildings that you've already cleared.



During missions, you'll have access to a large arsenal of weapons, some of which you're equipped with at the start of the missions, and many of which you pick up from dead guards. They run the gamut from a combat knife for silent kills to antitank weapons for the occasional armored fighting vehicle. Other real-world weapons in the game include the Glock 17, Desert Eagle, MP5, M16 A2, Minimi, Spas 12, Uzi, Pancor Jackhammer automatic shotgun, Dragunov sniper rifle, and others, along with flashbang and fragmentation grenades. Weapon physics are generally believable: Automatic weapons have a noticeable kick that hinders your aim, and bullets will penetrate walls and doors of varying material and thickness depending on the caliber or muzzle velocity of the gun.
Since much of the game is about stealth and careful observation, you'll get to use some clever gadgets in addition to your weapons. Your binoculars have night vision and a digital compass, and they smoothly zoom out to very long ranges. You also have a PDA that lists your mission objectives and visually keys them with numbers to a live satellite video reconnaissance feed. You can zoom and pan the readout, and since it's shown in real time, you can actually watch guards advance and attack you if you neglect to turn off the PDA map at an inopportune time. The PDA also logs your communications, which include both status reports and tips from Anya, your advisor back at headquarters who's watching your progress. Frequently, reports from Anya, including those that advance the game's plot, appear when you're busy avoiding or fighting guards, so the ability to read them later on your PDA helps make up for that flaw.

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