Jay’s Internet Log

To be honest with you, I didn’t know that DiRT3 existed a week ago. After completing L.A. Noire, I looked around for a new game and saw that DiRT3 was getting review scores in the 90% and above range, so I decided to give it a try. This is hands down the best racing game I’ve played in a long time. I’m the type of person who likes my racing games more on the arcade side rather than the simulation side, and DiRT3 seems to blend the two types together nicely. You can adjust five aspects of your car such as suspension, braking, ride height, etc, which makes it somewhat of a sim, but from what I’ve played so far, it doesn’t critique every move like one. Every race you get 5 chances to back time up and try a section again if you fail. I’ve gone off the road many times but just hit a few buttons in order to make it through a section.

DiRT3 is made up of four different racing seasons, and after going through the first season, you open up a big parking lot full of jumps, poles, and sliding areas. This reminds me of the old(good) Tony Hawk games where you had a certain amount of time to complete multiple objectives, and you can replay it repeatedly. In DiRT3, there is no time limit, but this track has about 20 different objectives to complete. It’s very cool and supposedly you can play this mode with friends. I went online and played some rally races against human oponenents, which was fun and surprisingly void of lag. It plays very smoothly, and even though I didn’t win a single event, I had a blast playing.

This game features a way to record clips from races and upload them directly to youtube. It isn’t the best quality, maxing out at 480p, but it’s better than nothing. I tested it out on my very first race, and you can watch a short clip here. Overall, DiRT3 really does impress, and if you’re looking for a great all-around racing game, I don’t think you can top it right now. Even the sound and music choices are superb. Codemasters did a great job with this title.

Have you ever had a nightmare, then woken up just to fall back asleep and have a great dream? This is what it feels like to play Crysis 2 just a week after the atrocity that is the multiplayer portion of Homefront. Seriously, Homefront feels like you went out to dinner, ordered a roast duckling, but instead was served a boiled pigeon. I may sound harsh on Homefront, but I am very disappointed in a game that feels more like a beta build than a finished product. I’ll give it another try once KAOS patches what they think is wrong with it. I doubt it’ll be anywhere near to what I think but I’ll give them another chance.  Crytek knows how to make a solid game, and they do so without trying to one-up the big shooter names. Sure, Crysis 2 could be classified as a mix between Halo and Call of Duty, but it doesn’t feel like it’s aiming to take down either one. It plays wonderfully and is a lot of fun.

I originally purchased Crysis 2 on PC, and let me tell you that it looks absolutely amazing on that platform. The next day I picked it up on 360 because of a few things. First off, on PC the game requires you to input a code every single time you want to play. It’s a bug and there has since been an update to fix this, so hopefully it will work the next time I try. The real problem I have with the PC version though is that I can’t figure out how to use the mouse and keyboard for controls successfully. I have a Razer Onza hopefully arriving sometime today, so that should fix this for me, but I’m just not good with this type of control mechanism. It’s a personal problem, not one that Crytek has anything to do with. They’ve done a great job.

I’ve played the first few chapters in the single player campaign on both PC and 360, and about 4 hours of multiplayer on the 360. It’s a solid, beautiful-looking (on both platforms) game that has a lot of depth. Upgrades are well thought-out, and the sound is engineered masterfully. The designers really seem to know what FPS gamers want. The melee system works well and isn’t too over or under powered, I can have my tactical button layout, and there seems to be little to no lag whatsoever, even though signal strengths vary. It’s all just really well-made, and I’m glad to play a game that feels this way. Crysis 2 is the first game of 2011 that I feel has a “Game of the Year” feel to it, and I’m not even a quarter of the way through its campaign. The multiplayer is customizeable like most FPS games that release these days, but it doesn’t overdo it in suplerfuous customizeable options such as how I want my face to be painted up. If you like the taste of first person shooters, do yourself a favor and eat this duckling up.

At this time last week, I was not planning on buying Homefront. At PAX East I was able to play a short demo, and because it didn’t suck, I decided to buy the game. I somewhat regret my purchase. Now it should be known that I have only played the multiplayer aspect of the game, so all impressions here are from that game mode.

Multiplayer is fun if and when you can get into a lobby. I notice less lag than what I see in the Call of Duty games, possibly due to this game having dedicated servers, but I really don’t know. The problem however, is actually finding a room to play in with your friends. It works most of the time by yourself, but it crawls to a halt as soon as you add a friend to the room.

There are two game modes; one a Team Deathmatch mode, and the other a Domination type mode. There is a third mode that combines the two, and then there is Battle Commander mode, which is just an overlay on top of the first three. Confused yet? Battle Commander mode is actually pretty cool. If you are doing well with your killstreak, you become wanted, and you get a star. Keep going and you add more stars. It reminds me of the legal system implemented in the Grand Theft Auto series. Upon earning more stars, a few things happen. First, the enemy gets a yellow circle on the map showing your approximate location. Secondly, you get perks such as a tad bit more armor, or a sweeping UAV that shows enemy locations. It’s one of the nicer touches to the game in my opinion, though some of my friends abhor it. I also like how you have to buy your drones and vehicles each round with points that you’ve gathered. Some of the vehicles can also be upgraded, which is nice.

This morning I decided to start a list of issues that I’ve seen with this game in my ~5 hours of playing, most of which were spent sitting in a lobby that goes nowhere. These are all just observations where the game seems broken to me. Overall, when I am about to get into a match, I generally do have fun with it.

Issues:

• A quick read through the game manual revealed at least five grammar or sentence structure mistakes. I don’t know if it was proof-read or not.

• Hitting the Back button makes your character stop moving whatsoever. This is a huge hindrance. Hitting the Back button shows the room’s scoreboard, but you can only do it when you’re alive, and all of your movements stop while looking at it. You can’t check the score after you’ve been shot and killed. You have to respawn, then check the score while you’re completely vulnerable.

• Speaking of vulnerability, it seems that if you call in an airstrike, but someone kills you during it, you’ll lose your airstrike and die. I’ve had it happen to me twice already, once in an airstrike, and the other in an expensive helicopter. I was not pleased. The game should allow you to continue your airstrike or give it back to you.

• There is no Tactical button layout. This is just a personal one. I like clicking the right stick and crouching instead of knifing. I think it should be standard for shooters by now, but again this is just a personal complaint.

• Matchmaking is completely broken.

• Sniping is insanely overpowered. The handful of maps are mostly geared towards sniping, and the game makes it so easy that a lot of people snipe. You die in one or two shots from a sniper rifle. They have little to no sway, and you don’t have to hold down a button to hold your breath. It’s amazingly easy and annoying when you are up against a full team of snipers.

• Why do I have to confirm if I want to veto the map? Just let me veto it with a single button press.

• Parties don’t stay together when they back out. This kind of goes along with my matchmaking statement.

• When a room says 16/16, it is not Joinable.

• When I see that a friend is in a room with 22/24 players, I shouldn’t ever see the following message: “There are not enough available slots in this game session.”

• You have to hold the X button to enter a vehicle. The game just says “Hold to enter vehicle”

• Do I have to select my hard drive EVERY time I start the game? The answer should be no, but unfortunately, it isn’t.

I am giving this game a shot, but I don’t think it can hold up to the bigger FPS titles. I am really looking forward to seeing what Crysis 2 will bring to the table next week.

Two demos came out yesterday, a single player BulletStorm demo that lasts 10 minutes per playthrough, and a multiplayer Crysis 2 demo that I’ve put a few hours into already and am enjoying.  The first thing that comes to mind when playing Crysis 2 is that it feels and plays an awful lot like a combination of Halo and Call of Duty.  It seems to take more bullets to down an enemy than Call of Duty, but less than Halo.  You can customize your classes, and get upgrades for killing with specific skills active.  The spawning system is not perfect as you can see in the video I posted of my first game, but I’ve been having fun with this one.  I’ve maxed my character rank out but am still enjoying the game, even when not unlocking new abilities.  I really enjoy the aspect of going in and out of cloaking, but the menus are a bit cryptic to follow.  Also, I notice that the HUD seems rounded in the corners, so scrolling banners seem to move a bit diagonally.  I will be purchasing Crysis 2 on the PC instead of the Xbox 360 as it is supposed to really shine with a good rig.  This will be my first PC FPS since The Descent, many years ago.

I haven’t played much of the ACB single player story, which is the reason I bought the game in the first place.  I’m probably about an hour into the story, and so far, what I’ve seen has been very fun and cool.  I have however played a few hours of the multiplayer, so this writeup will focus more on that side of things.  When Ubisoft announced that ACB would have online competitive multiplayer, I thought “Great, here’s another tacked-on multiplayer experience that doesn’t need to be there and just took resources away from polishing the single player story”.  I still can’t say if the previous statement is true, but what I can say is that the multiplayer in this game is vastly different than any I’ve played before, so for that, Ubisoft wins.  I’ll try to explain it here, but I wasn’t able to understand it until I played it for myself.

Like other multiplayer games, you rank up as you earn XP.  XP is earned by making assassinations, but more is earned for doing so with style.  Each time you rank up, you earn new abilities and custom classes, and these new abilities really help you get an edge over your foes.  An example of an ability is to be able to change your character skin to another one, so when you are being pursued, you can round a corner, throw on a disguise, and be incognito for a few seconds.  Another one is a smoke bomb, which can get you out of a difficult situation more quickly.

I’ve played two game types so far, and I think there are four total.  Both of the gametypes I played were very similar, the only difference being one is free-for-all, and the other team-based.  Here’s my best description of how the games play, though as I said earlier, it’s tough to describe in words.  8 human players start a match and choose what character skin they want, be it male or female, a nicely dressed Captain or a long-nosed Doctor, it doesn’t matter.  They all play the same.  The map is then populated with AI robots in these same skins and you’re set loose in it.  You are given a single person to assassinate, and another human is given you to assassinate.  You follow a compass of sorts around the map, looking for your target while trying to stay incognito in order to hide your location.  Incognito is the important word here.  You should be trying to blend in with the AI robots, especially those that resemble your character skin.  The AI robots tend to just walk around, so if you see somebody climbing onto rooftops or sprinting around, you can tell that they are a human player, so that’s what you’re looking for.  It’s very slow-paced, but when you get a kill and the target has no idea beforehand, it’s very satisfying.  You get bonus points for staying hidden whilst killing, so running around to your target is generally not suggested.  Once you kill someone, a new target is given.  You can have up to four people vying for the same target or following you as a target, and it can get pretty crazy.  The pacing is extremely slow as you’re trying to blend in with a crowd while looking all around for someone who’s not walking in the same pattern as everyone else.  It’s a lot of fun and I hope to level up all the way, though I’m not sure how difficult that will be.

The multiplayer is by no means perfect.  It would be nice to be able to customize your classes after ranking up without having to drop the whole party and go back to a menu.  This effect is a double-edged sword.  Not only is it aggravating to me, but when dropping me back to the menu, it breaks up the party which requires them to find another player.  The fact that higher ranked people are effectively stronger than lower ranked people is a balancing issue that seems like it was an oversight in the design phase.  I have little chance as a level 7 player to compete with a level 30 player, and this was proven a few times yesterday.  An ability that you unlock at level 14, which allows you to morph NPCs around you into your character skin is extremely powerful, and I look forward to using that when given the chance.

Overall, I’m really liking ACB.  I think that I’ll need sessions of a few hours with the single player in order to experience and enjoy it fully, and the multiplayer is nice if I’ve only got 20 minutes to invest.  It isn’t perfect, but for a first shot at multiplayer with this franchise, I think that Ubisoft did a wonderful job with it.  Overall, the game appears to be top-notch.