Alien Swarm is a free Source Engine adaptation of the original UT2K4 mod which was developed but the UT2K4 developers, Valve simply hired them and set them to work on this amazing sequel.

In a nutshell its a birds-eye-view strategic shooter set in a sci-fi world. Your goal in the first (and only officially released campaign) is to find a settlement and determine what happened to its residents, upon arrival you find it is overrun with hordes of Aliens and your job quickly turns from recon to search-and-rescue to obliterate.

In the game you have 4 classes with 2 playable characters from each class. The 4 classes are:

• The Officer: Buffs team, has awesome shotgun and millions of explosives.
• The Special Weapons Expert: Has heavy weapons like miniguns and the like.
• The Medic: Has access to a few pieces of medic equipment like the medic gun or medic pack.
• The Tech: A hacker designed to help progress the story in certain missions by doing some hacking mini games.

As I said each of the classes has two playable characters…typically one of the two will excel in their field while sacrificing certain other aspects while the other will be a more well rounded combatant.

This is what you are greeted with when you begin, a simple menu with 4 choices:

1. Your preferred character/class.
2. Your main weapon/class item.
3. Your secondary weapon/class item.
4. Your offhand item.

Pretty straight forward…typically you want to balance things out so you have one of each class…but in the later missions just dose up on fire power with 1 tech and maybe a medic if you’re feeling a bit noob.

You have access to over 40 different guns and items in the game and each is as good as the other in the right persons hands, however at this stage most people stick to the Tesla gun which hits and stuns multiple enemies at once. The flamer is the only gun other than the mining laser (a gun which is pick up only) which is required to complete certain missions and luckily someone thought things through with it. If you accidentally set your team mates on fire, your alt fire will spray a fire extinguishing spray which puts them out almost instantly…its a fantastic gun even if it is prone to killing team mates.

Combat can quickly get out of hand if you don’t think things through which is why the developers have given you access to turrets and Tesla coils to help slow the enemy hordes down. Eventually however your gear and skills will help you progress and you begin to create efficient tactics on the fly without too much thought.

The game also features a host of achievements that vary from speed-running maps to utilising weapons to their fullest potential, this of course pleases gamers as for some reason we no longer find interest in games without achievements…I blame the console players for this.

The only problem that I have found with the game to date is that Valve for some reason have left a huge array of console commands outside of the sv_cheats 1 parameter…which means you can effectively cheat without actually using the sv_cheats command. Because of this, you can gain a stupid amount of achievements and experience/ranks without actually trying which seems like a major flaw.

If you want to utilise this ‘cheating’ ability (I put in speech marks because technically it isn’t cheating as we aren’t doing anything other than using console commands) then save this file to: steam/steamapps/common/Alien Swarm/Swarm/cfg/ and once you are in game simply type “exec derp” into console. Be aware that this config will only work on a game that you are hosting and it will only last for one map, my recommendation is to run the config during the equipment loadout screen to save trouble in the midst of a game. Simply put, that config will make you super fast, super hard to kill and everything dies with one hit of any weapon

I won’t say much more about this game because you should already have it cause it is that awesome…if you don’t have it: HURRY UP AND GET THIS GAME!

I was to meet my brother Mega and mate Chro in Auckland and stay with them and finally return back with them instead of staying with the Xeta guys…here is the jist of what happened.

We arrive and unpack our hordes of shit into the motel…Chro brought 2 mountain bikes along and left with 3…lol. We used the same motel as last year – The Rayland:

And fuck yea its awesome! 5 minutes walk to xLan, next to Rainbows End, has a Gengy’s (which almost killed me) and an arcade in the carpark!

Fuck yea! We arrived at xLan and we got to bypass the registration as we came in on Thursday night to do it. Mega stuffed up and lost his pass and had to line up with all the other plebs while we strolled right in

Lol…look at that guys “Haters gonna hate” walk right in the middle there.

I love seeing a lan hall go from empty to full in under a few hours…just looks awesome. In our case, our setup was a nightmare because the xLan guys reseated us 3 times cause they are stupid.

Chro’s rig is set and rearing to go alongside mine on the left and Mega’s on the right.

An awesome picture of xeta|Xeno’s back…Also worth noting that xeta are now Nightshift due to clan rage

Oooo yea its filling up now baby! You can almost make out my screen on the bottom left there glowing blue with Nana-tan on it

650 players, all in one room ready to game!

The console guys got excluded to their own table at the back of the room…one guy brought a tiiiiiiiny little screen to play on…shit it was lulz

Another picture of the hall:

The xLan mainstage looked cool but the shoutcasters sucked, the crowd sucked and either the servers kept dropping people or the PC’s would crash:

This Playtech shop got some wicked business over the weekend and just kept randomly stocking their shelves with shit and sold pretty much everything off at a huge price drop from RRP. Was awesome, not sure why the booth babes were there though…most xLanners didn’t like them cause they were plastered in make up and looked hideously skanky:

I dont know who this is…but they got a photo with booth babes…who had no booth to stand at:

Fuck this, day one over…nothing happened…Me and Mega head home…holy crap it looks like I have a bald patch at the back of my head!

While we are leaving, Insom and Azure from xeta are heading back in, the entrance looks pretty sweet at night:

Even from way out in the carpark:

Day 2 ticks over after a horrible sleep due to someone outside being noisy all night long. Chro and I are heading into Auckland today to visit a manga cafe and an arcade or two.

We awake and come in to find the projector dead:

And a FUCKING REDBULL TRUCK. This cocksucker played loud music both inside the hall and outside the main entrance and ALL of it was hiphop rubbish, they managed to piss off almost everyone in xLan:

Found some awesome sleeping arrangements around the place, like this one right outside the main stage:

Chro caught up on anime over the weekend including finishing Angel Beats, a show I should really blog about:

Anyway, so we make it to Auckland – a place full of fucktards, horrible traffic, stupid billboards and parking prices that will bankrupt the world:

OMG WE FOUND NARUTARDS!!!!

NARUTARDS!!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Chro’s elite stalking skills meant we got them on camera without them noticing.

Then we saw the best drag race in the world, this noisy ass modified VW van versus a GT3RS…The GT3RS won of course but it was funny to watch these two idiots:

Anyway, we went back to the Lan after going through a bunch of shops and getting some B grade sushi…the Lan sucked…so we left again to get some god awful curry that made me feel sick.

And then we went to play golf!

Went back to xLan again to play some more games and we found the laser tag they had set up outside for free!

Here is a picture of Torchedhead and Gamgee gearing up

And a crowd shot of all of us that played:

So at this stage we went back to sleep and I came back on the last day to race trackmania only to find that Yam (an awesome TMNF racer) had left due to the lan sucking and I found out that half the times we raced weren’t properly recorded…we also found that our awesome scores in the gaming marathon that Chro, Mega and I clocked up weren’t recorded either! So we made the decision to ditch xLan and head home while raging.

Since we’ve been back, I have had multiple requests to crew next year – something I didn’t particularly want to do considering the amount of cash I sunk into this trip for a Lan that was pretty horrible. However I am now seriously considering it as the TMNF tournament could benefit from my knowledge (even if TM2 is out) and the Marathon games need fixing bad…something I would like to control.

So yea…great trip, terrible Lan. I honestly cant recommend it due to how badly it failed…but the socialising was awesome.

After having a fit of errors loading for the first time that required me to dick around with display settings and update various DirectX things I managed to get into the game without it loading as a plain black screen.

To start I have to quote Affian…this game is essentially Half-life 2 + F.E.A.R. + Fallout 3.

It is like Half-Life 2 in that it has various puzzle elements which aren’t necessary but can prove useful like finding all the lighting systems in a tunnel and powering them all down to force the enemy to come closer to you than they usually would. Also like Half-Life you can choose whether or not you want to strategically take down enemies by blasting barrels/pushing them off platforms or just throwing more bullets at them…typically the latter option appeals to me more.

It is like F.E.A.R. in that there are various psychic creatures that try to stuff with your head…most humans go insane at their psychic touch but you (playing as Artyom) are somewhat immune and thus you are sought after to help people out. Occasionally you are assaulted with a bright white screen which seemingly blasts you into an alternate reality that the enemy controls…in much the same way F.E.A.R. does.

It is like Fallout 3 in that everything is shit coloured and apocalyptic. There are mutant beasts roaming the tunnels and the surface and you will have many skirmishes with them which drives you mental as they come in large packs and you will use all your ammo on all your guns trying to stop them…leaving you no bullets and no time to reload and thus you end up slashing like a madman with a knife. You also have various bits of equipment like Fallout 3 that helps you to survive the deadly forces against you. One of the more fun ones is the gas mask…you have filters on your mask that constantly need replacing else toxic fumes start getting you. Not only that, it can be broken and cracked in combat so you have to be very careful when and where you choose to use it.

As far as the story goes its a strange blend of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic action, you live in Moscow Russia after the world has been devastated by nuclear war and humanity has only been able to survive there due to the metro tunnel systems underground. Much of humanity has been simply obliterated or mutated, in the cases I have seen so far we have giant clawed hunchbacked zombie things, the same thing again but with wings and some long limbed super psychic creatures designed to play with your mind.

You play as Artyom who is also the narrator and you are tasked (well initially at least) to get to Polis station to seek help from the Rangers who are elite guards of the tunnels. Along the way you will fight the creatures of the surface and tunnels, Nazi loyalists, Russian Communists and various forms of bandits. On top of that, when you least expect it you can be hit from psychic attacks which make your life difficult and throughout the game you are forced to constantly stop and assess your current situation. Should you choose not to check your approaches and your rear occasionally, you will end up making a move that will kill you or you will be flanked and eaten/shot.

Much of the metro system is dominated by old technology and various pieces of human ingenuity as the war devastated all manner of useful objects. You are forced to move around using trams powered by hand and you will have to navigate through ramshackle towns using only a compass and without a world map.

Most of the guns I have used for combat so far look pretty worn down but operational…you cant expect to find a pretty new M4A1 lying about and thus you are forced to use various inaccurate assault rifles and strange weapons like a BB rifle that is powered with a hand pump…fail to pump at the right times and you’ll be firing weak bullets.

The visuals of the game are rather stunning and impressive. When I managed to surface walk for the first time I found myself looking around in circles at all the destroyed scenery and the ruins of Moscow and the tunnels hold their own in their gritty reality. I only had one qualm with the graphics and that is there is only a possible 3 colours in the game: Bright green (signifying nuclear radiation), Light blue (signifying psychic/strange presence) and Brown (signifying EVERYTHING else). While Affian was not terribly pleased with my take on the graphics, you only have to look at the above two screenshots to see that clothes, walls, creatures, vehicles, guns and ground is all painted a horrible brown colour.

Sure it could be worse and its only a small issue but it just annoys me when all you see is one colour walking about in what could be some truly amazing scenery.

Also I need to make a note on the Physics and Gameplay aspects:

The physics: Usually they perform admirably but there are a few annoying issues. Any wall that is not dead flat can be strafed straight up giving you a massive field of view of the area in front of you as well as allowing you to dodge any passing objects. Explosives have an amazing ability to damage you through walls and sandbags…I threw a grenade over a low sandbag wall and dodged behind a concrete wall and the resulting explosion killed me even though the wall and sandbags were completely intact. There is also the occasional clipping on an object and getting stuck for a few seconds but its rare so isn’t really worth worrying about.

The gameplay: A few things that will frustrate the living shit out of you are that bullets are money in this world. If you have military grade ammo (big shiny powerful rounds) then you can trade them in for various goods as a form of currency. However you can also set your gun to fire these rounds which is costly but they are more powerful than standard ammo. What is REALLY annoying is when you don’t realise you have switched ammo and you start firing your money away into some weak enemies skulls only to have a cry later. Another thing that annoys me is that there is 4 slots for weapons: 1 for melee, 1 for pistol/sidearm, 1 for automatic weapon, 1 for pneumatic weapon. What would be nice is if there were simply 1 for melee and 3 for everything else. When you find an AK47 you are forced to either ditch your wonderful silenced “bastard” gun for it while you hold on to your pathetic pistol and shotgun. Then you get an awesome automatic shotgun with a bayonet attached but you have to ditch it should you want a sniper or specialist pump action gun like the BB gun…its just plain annoying…its like the game is forcing you to get good at all areas of combat which prevents you from specialising in any one.

Anyway so far I am liking the game even if it is prone to crashing randomly when I kill an enemy or am killed myself…I would honestly love this game a lot more if they had a quick save function (or even a save function at all) because more often than not you are forced to travel and fight for 10 minutes only to die and restart it…annoying as hell. I’ll likely be playing this game slowly as I really should be doing more tech work than gaming but I will give a full review of the game should I actually complete it.

Also as for Just Cause 2, I really cant be arsed playing it…it seemed like a good game but its too much of a straight buggy console port for me to care. Metro 2033 is almost a console port in that I have to play with all the mouse sensitivity settings in game set to 0 for me to be able to turn without doing full circles.

I was advised to get Mount and Blade by Budda simply cause “It is awesome”…so I got it.

I don’t know why I’m giving this review though seeing as my brother Mega plays it far more than I…but whatever here goes nothing.

I went into this game expecting nothing, I had never heard of this game nor seen screenshots or gameplay videos…so when I got in there I was in for a surprise.

The game itself is based in a fictional world where you travel around on horseback recruiting warriors into your army…the problem is, travelling is tedious and boring as hell. You spend half your life running round the map like a douche and towards the end, the game is almost completely unplayable without cheats.

The controls to operate the world map are stupid…you know when people like to try be different with their software rather than just stick to tried and true efforts? Yea that’s pretty much it…Whenever you click on a location on the map the camera pans to it and wobbles around a bit making it difficult to keep fast paced gaming going. You have to move around with the keyboard instead of the mouse (like what?) which isn’t so much of an issue but it just becomes frustrating after a time seeing as you have far more control with a mouse.

Clicking on locations is nigh impossible if there is cramped up enemies…for example, if you are camping outside a castle and you have a team mate besieging the castle, you will have 3 clickable objects right next to each other…and god forbid you want to hit the right one.

So yea, don’t go into this game expecting well thought out control systems.

Don’t go in expecting good graphics either, even the newer version Warband lacks good graphics, everything is pretty much bland.

See what I mean?

Don’t go into this game expecting good AI, you wont find any there either. I sat and watched 20 horsemen chase down one enemy horseman for about 5 straight minutes till my foot soldier crossbowman sniped him out of his saddle, I thought about joining in but I wanted to see exactly how the AI would react to the fast guy outmanoeuvring them…apparently they don’t react at all.

This is a good idea, make all of your heroes (non-common fighters) wear the same armour and helmets so you can easily distinguish where they are. It helped me immensely.

So then: The graphics aren’t good, the world map and its controls leaves a lot to be desired, the AI is terrible and to top it off you have no gameplay tutorials…you just have to figure shit out as you go along or leave the game to do the tutorials…both of which suck.

So what do you play it for then?

Well…the answer is simple. The battles.

When you are being assaulted by a force thrice your numbers and you manage to hold them off with your superior army which you trained to top level you feel a sense of excitement. You can assault a village solo and slaughter hundreds of innocent villagers and then plunder and burn their precious little town afterwards or you could smash through hordes of bandits making life unbearable for the villagers.

You can assault a King and his warband and take the bastards prisoner or you could valiantly defend your own Kings castle to your last breath.

You’d think the gameplay would become horribly repetitive after a while (which it does) but it never loses its fun factor. Charging head first into an enemy Lord with a couched Pike and taking him clean off his horse and knocking him out cold in one hit is truly exhilarating. Hacking through mercenary bands recruited to your enemies forces just to free some prisoners that could be useful to you is hilarious.

Honestly I can’t stress how ridiculously fun this game is even for all its flaws. I can’t recommend it when comparing it to other current gen games built by large companies…but I can compare it to games of old that prove fun no matter how many times you play them: RA2, Diablo 2, GTA 2 etc.

Anyway there is a lot to say about how this game is played with ranks, heroes, upgrades, supplies and levels of warriors but I simply can’t be bothered writing it all because its all boring crap.

Game gets a 7/10, Fun as hell but needs some elbow grease.

A tip though: Attack raiders that have “Peasant Woman” prisoner, level them up to Sword Sisters…those bitches just don’t die, regardless of how much abuse you throw at them. Also once you have cash handy, get lots of Hired Blades, they take a lot of punishment while dealing just as much both on foot and on a mount.

It all started with Breakout in 1976 created by Atari and was followed by the cult hit Arkanoid by Taito in 1976. I all the time since then so many clones have been made that it’s just unbelievable, such a simple concept of a game derived from Pong.

Now we have Shatter by Sidhe a Wellington game developer that has gained international renown for a game that in the beginning was based on Pong. Shatter is much more than just another Arkanoid clone though it’s taken the idea and added some 2009 polish and innovation.

What features makes Shatter standout among all the clones? First up I have never seen a game with so much polish, and by that I mean all the graphics, sounds, physics and game-play have been worked into perfection. All the graphics are 3D even though the game is 2D by nature, this is a game worth drooling over, and the graphics make it such a pleasure to watch.

In the middle of play you can shoot out as many balls into play as you want, keeping in mind that each one is a life. So if you have 3 lives, you can shoot out 3 balls making for bigger combos and a higher score, but be careful each of those balls is a life so if you lose even one you are still losing a life. You have two ways of affecting the physics in play, Blow and Suck: Blow pushes Blocks, Shards and the Ball away from you while suck does the reverse. Sucking in all the Shards boosts your power meter which powers your shields and when full lets you unleash a shardstorm destroying or damaging all the bricks it hits.

Game Modes

Story Mode

Story Mode takes you through various worlds with each one containing different styles of levels and its own music. At the end of each world there is a Boss that you must destroy before you can continue. The bosses range from nice an easy to controller throwing, keyboard smashing frustrating.

High scores are listed both for each world and for story mode as a whole, but remember, if you run out of lives you can use a continue… setting your score back to 0.

Endless

Endless mode is exactly that, endless. Waves of blocks keep spawning at the far end of the play field and slowly move towards you and it’s up to you to survive this onslaught.

Endless also sports a Co-Op version where 2 players on the same computer team up to take on the endless block hordes.

Time Attack

In Time attack you face the same challenge as Endless except with a 5 minute time limit. Same deal with Time Attack Co-Op.

Bonus Mode

Bonus Mode pits you against 3 balls in play that move faster each time they hit your Bat and it’s up to you to keep all three in play for as long as possible. There are 3 levels where each one is a different shape and all have 3 balls in them and your score gets totalled up after all three levels.

Boss Mode

Boss Mode pits you against Boss after Boss until you’ve gone through every boss in story mode the challenge here is not only to survive but to kill all the bosses in the shortest time possible.

Soundtrack

This game has one of the best soundtracks for a game to come out in a long time; it both sets the feel of the game and is enjoyable to listen to.

And now I leave you with this awesome peice of entertainment to feast your eyes and ears upon.

So I couldn’t play the game…not a good start, but I’ve had worse. To be perfectly honest I knew it would happen, the BETA was so unpolished and needed more work to be truly complete…but now its becoming a Battlefield thing. Each and every game simply sucks until about 1.4 patch.

Anyway I have had a good crack at multiplayer and finished single player in one sitting to make sure it would crash, so I will do this review in two parts.

But first a quick background on what the game is:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is the typical Modern Warfare world saving sort of game. A pitched battle between super powers, the Russians and the US…every Americans wet dream. Unfortunately EA have not quite figured out that the rest of the world doesn’t really like the US marines and special forces all that much which is why Soap and Price from the Modern Warfare series were received so well.

In true Battlefield tradition this game is set over large battlefields in most cases and makes use of stationary guns, tanks, planes, helicopters, road vehicles etc. It’s not the usual Modern Warfare troop conflict which I both like and dislike…the idea to me of “battlefield” combat is that you realise that you are simply a small part of a war machine…however when this game puts you in the troop combat position you become Ramirez, the guy that has to do EVERYTHING.

If you have played any Battlefield game mixed with any modern warfare game then you will feel comfortable in how to play.

Single Player:

As said before, I had to complete the Single player game in one hit to make sure I could finish it and to be honest I was disappointed. Firstly I played on low graphics as I always did on the BETA because it means you load twice as fast as every other person in the game in MP and thus you get the tanks/UAV at the start. However there is only one setting for both MP and SP so I had to change it for both to get SP to full graphics…but who cares…my point is: Play on high graphics…its about ten times better than low, its actually amazing.

Premise: You are an elite combat force promoted to a spec-ops position on the Battlefield due to your deeds in combat. You have to traverse the world and infiltrate enemy territory to gain control of a weapon that utilises EMP technology that will basically knock out the entire power grid from the US and allow the Russians to invade. In the famous words of Robin Williams: “DE JA FUCKING VU!” We did all this shit in Modern Warfare 2! What the hell?!

Unfortunately unlike MW2 your “elite” force consists of four all-American blokes which makes for a frustrating American propaganda game. You have the cliche Texan (although not fat), the token black Sergeant, the nerd guy that talks to much and the unsung hero known as Marlowe who you play as. Somehow you are four normal soldiers that can simply “adapt” to become amazing spec ops units that can save the “world” (I shit you not, you are only there to save the US but each time they mention it they talk about “the world”).

You travel into various locations around the world and make assaults on key locations to gain information about this “world/US” destroying technology. About the only thing I enjoyed with the entire single player campaign is the Helicopter pilot who was just hilarious.

Anyway gameplay time.

It is shit…well…the first half was fun, getting into it all…but it was so frustrating that it became shit…no matter how good the firefights were. Let me tell you this, play on easy mode. I played on normal mode which is apparently for “experienced” players…which I definitely am. Problem is, the difficulty curve is out of this world. In the initial missions the only thing that could kill you was heavy MG’s, in the later missions you were being triple head shotted by guys you couldnt see.

You can have at all times two main guns as well as various tools like C4 (which never gets used) and a Gustav RPG. The thing is, in games like MW you have to strategically use guns. Typically you keep your preferred weapon as well as an enemy weapon of sorts to make sure you never run out of ammo. In this game ammo is EVERYWHERE. You will NEVER run out no matter what you do so just pick your favourite weapon of choice and take an RPG as your second weapon so that you can destroy tanks, buildings and walls.

I’m going to give you one piece of advice here: Take the QBU-88 T88 semi-auto sniper rifle with red dot sights. It kills everything in one shot, is supremely accurate and can be used like a shotgun. I used it from about 1/3rd the way in all the way to the end because it was so damned easy to use.

As I said before the whole of the single player campaign is cliche American “trooper” propaganda where they try make “heros” but end up making retards. Here is a classic example: “Bravo two (my squad), there is some heavy artillery about to rain down on your location, I tried to delay them as much as I could but they’re beginning to fire”, “Oh shit sarge! Thats where the guy we need is!”, “Well lets go get him”.

You then procede to literally run through an artillery shelling…

Then about an hour later the Sergeant is like: “I’m too old for this shit I was supposed to retire, I have two kids, wife etc…oh! mortar bombing?! RUN THROUGH IT LOL!”

I kid you not…its stupid. In fact, if you play it learn this: After the mortar bombings…everything becomes insanely hard for no reason.

Time to talk about AI. There is none. Your team mates cant hit anything and when they do, it does little to no damage. So in effect your squad is entirely useless in every form of the word. If you dont do things in order like clear an area before moving on, you will come across a vast array of bugs. I came across dead ends because I didn’t trigger a movie, I came across invulnerable enemies as I needed to trigger an event before they could die, I got stuck in buildings as I waited for my teammates to shoot and kill one guy in open ground. It was highly annoying. Not to mention that your teammates dont move smoothly, they simply teleport around the battlefield as you advance. In one of the inital missions I got pinned down by two rpg’s, a heavy MG and about six guys with rifles but my squad hadn’t triggered the “move up” command yet so just stood in safety around the corner.

RAGE OMG SRSLY WTF?!

You will come across impossibly hard missions even on normal mode, like the truck stealing mission…the only way I could get through it was to spam grenade launcher at everything that moved while they had RPG’s and heavy MG’s returning fire killing me either instantly or in two to three hits, it was rubbish unnecessarily frustrating. Apparently I am to think of it as a “challenge” when simply put it was just stupidly hard.

So I dont think I’ll go into the single player more, in a word it was frustrating. The difficulty curve was all over the place and the story didnt make sense, not to mention the all-American HOOAH-ness of it all which no one bar Americans cares about.

Multiplayer:

In all honesty I got this game purely for the multiplayer. Unfortunately however it retains many of the bugs that the BETA had, the rego is still dodgy, searching for servers still takes forever, video lag still exists even on highend systems, crashes, no “hold” on ironsights – only toggle. However the core gameplay carried on through and the multiplayer is still hugely intense and fast paced and I love it.

I raised a point in my BETA impressions post that your level pretty much told you were you would be on the scoreboard. In MW you could still top a score board with low level perks and guns like the M16 with penetrating rounds or something, in BC2 you will struggle. We take in a squad of four experienced guys, usually two medics, one assault and one engineer and we all work together on vent but one high level guy will simply have too much cool stuff for us to be useful against him. I came across a medic with flak jacket and full level LMG, I unleashed about 30 bullets into him close range and he simply turned around and shot me dead…and walked off. So my point here is, expect to suck. Once you start getting unlocks you will get better.

The one level we have come to enjoy (I have forgotten the name) starts as a beach assault on small islands and ends up in your team assaulting up and over a large hill. The battlefield is littered with stationary weapons and vehicles and it is small…so the fighting gets REAL intense which makes the game so worth it.

There are many types of Multiplayer gameplay most of which you would expect but the game lacks in proper team management so most of the time you will be against a stacked team…which sucks.

Quick outline on the game types:

Rush: 16v16 match on a large battlefield where the attackers must smash through the defenders and destroy communications stations and force the enemy back. Typically the assaulting force will have the best firepower to start with but by the end the defenders will have some serious fire support to aid them.

Squad Rush: 4v4 troop combat without vehicles. Similar type to Rush but involves much more squad orientated combat, you need to work together to advance/defend.

Conquest: Typical capture and hold mission. Whoever holds the most points will force the enemy tickets down meaning they have to move harder and faster to gain the points back. This gametype involves a LOT of stealthy flanking missions which will drive you nuts when you’re on defence.

Squad Deathmatch: Squads of 4 will get together and battle it out for kills until they reach a kill limit, simple combat and usually has one light vehicle for a single squad to command.

I’ll keep talking if I’m not careful so I had better cut myself short here. Essentially if you’re going to get the game, get it purely for the multiplayer and make sure you are prepared to stick it out and put time into it as you will get sick of having crap weapons. If you can, try organise to play with friends on vent/TS as this not only makes the game a lot more fun, it also allows you to make tactics on the fly. The guys I play with (budda and co) always proves funny. Budda causes havoc, especially when he tries to fly, Gamgee is the pub hero who just wins all the time, Fairy rages too much, Fredzz is a good team player though

See you all on the battlefield!

Game gets 8/10, Multiplayer is buggy but really fun, stuff the single player.

As most of you know by now, I love me a good RPG and I hate me a bad console to PC port. The original Mass Effect had me raging due to its console-ish feel and its supreme bugginess that basically made the game completely unplayable unfortunately.

But dammit, I’m a sucker for torture…so I got Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 for the PC

Two words: Fucking Love.

At 11gbs unpacked, I had high hopes for this game content-wise and it didnt disappoint. Lets do this in an orderly fashion:

Story:

When it comes to RPG’s, you expect a solid story with unique gameplay to back it up. If it fails at achieving this then its simply not worth playing (obviously).

Mass Effect 2′s story can be a wee bit dodgy and thin at times but mostly it holds strong. A quick summary is as follows (spoilers inside):

You are the Legendary Human “Commander Shepard” who led the assault against the now infamous Geth in Mass Effect 1. Some time after the first story you are floating through space in your ship the “Normandy” when suddenly some half asteroid/half ship appears belonging to what are known as the “Collectors” which are a forcefully evolved ancient Prothean race. The collecters blast you clear out of the sky but most of your crew escapes through escape pods, Shephard however is not so lucky.

You are killed.

A company who’s sole focus is the dominance of humanity in the galaxy appears and spends a fortune reviving you back to health by basically turning you into some sort of super-human android. The company is led by an individual known as the “Illusive Man” who is fucking awesomely acted. Seriously, out of all the conversations I had in this game, the ones with the Illusive man were the best. The Illusive man needs Shephard to gain a team to take back the Galaxy from the threat of the “Collectors” who are harvesting human colonies.

And away the fights go.

Combat:

At first the combat sucks, its tedious, boring and does not add anything to the game. Enemies have a combination of Health, Armour and Shields. It is up to you to tactically decide in battle which ammo types, powers and guns you and your team should be using to try combat the diversity of the enemies. Its frustrating as you run out of ammo on the guns you like and are forced to use guns you dislike just to get through a mission.

Oddly enough, the game gives you the option of focusing on “tech” (engineer powers), “biotic” (Force powers) or “Combat”…but the combat is almost useless, you increase the damage on your guns…FOR WHAT?! The assholes have shields, your super powered heavy pistol is USELESS until you remove it…its hugely frustrating as you have about 25 shots only on your pistol before you run out of ammo if you are unlucky and dont get any ammo drops.

I have not tried “tech” gameplay simply because I never used tech teammates and I was a Biotic specialist myself so I really cant speak for the gameplay there. The powers I granted myself was some teleport leap at the enemy to get me nice and close and powered up guns (I was a class known as a “Vanguard”). Here lies the biggest flaw in the game I played. I could teleport at the enemy, presumably so I could nail the pricks with heavy pistols and shotguns…but NOOOOO! Shields stop pistol and armour stops shotgun, you have to change guns in melee range against 3-4 enemies with more spawning to kill them efficiently…so Bioware…Why oh why did you make such a useless skill.

I look to Halo (God forbid) for a good example here, if you cant kill an enemy with the guns you have, you simply go and get bigger guns. Sure you could be more stealthy and go snipe him for a bit, but its preferable to shot him with rockets and then get nice and close and blast the shit out of him with shotgun. Its tried and tested combat…if people want to be a brute, let them be a brute…let them have dickloads of ammo and big guns but no powers…its their choice.

The biotic powers are kinda fun to start with but turn out to be game winners by the end. In the end I maxed out loyalty on Miranda to get her “Slam” biotic attack. Couple that at heavy level 4 with heavy level 4 shockwave and I didnt use ammo at all in the final mission…Husks die one hit and the end-game collectors died one hit or were knocked of the edges…it was too easy. So max out dem biotics…especially Slam and Shockwave…Slam for many enemies scattered as its spammable and shockwave to hit those spawns coming in.

The Ship:

The “Normandy” (rebuilt by Cerberus to keep players happy) is deceptively large as once you get in it, its rather small. But its still large enough to keep you entertained without making travel between crew mates tedious. It looks amazing and has some cool features like when you walk from the main floors terminals around the side, it will change the image in the centre from a galaxy map to a ship map…its neat and really adds to the atmosphere.

Dont get fish either, you need to feed them or they die apparently…

Anyway, you use the Normandy as your home and its your battlestation, your upgrade centre, your personnel carrier, your miner and your mission centre. Lets talk about mining:

What you can do in this game is fly to planets all over the show in various systems throughout the Milky Way galaxy and essentially scan them for 4 minerals that you require to upgrade your ship, guns and equipment. Element Zero, Iridium, Platinum and Palladium. Palladium is by far the easiest to obtain, and Element Zero is an absolute asshole to find. Heed this advice, when you come to upgrade, don’t upgrade things you dont need like ship fuel, its a waste of Element Zero and you will regret it when you suddenly can add 40% Biotic damage instead. The mining itself is made thousands of times easier on a PC with a mouse that has a sensitivity button, I was able to scan through planets at very fast speeds due to the speed I could move my mouse. Oh yea, on that point…in typical console port style, even on the lowest sensitivity, you still zap around so damned quick you cant see what you’re doing…I had to go down to 400dpi on my G9 to be able to play which is just annoying.

The upgrade centre is straight forward, spend resources, get cool shit…Nuff said.

What I loved about being on the Normandy though was that it was a social hub. Every person you help on missions will mail you to your inbox which you can read on ship and you can chat with your team members while on board about various events in life and whatnot and gain a real feel for whos who…Eventually you will come to love 2-3 people and just take them everywhere. Mine (and Budda’s) was Miranda and Grunt/Garrus. Miranda’s full level Cerberus Operative skill offers a 15% bonus to squad damage and Grunt fully upgraded wont die (I managed to kill him in the last mission, he solo’d 2 Collector Scions in the open…goddamn it was funny).

The team:

Major spoiler alert here as I will be listing all the available characters. You start with two humans Jacob and Miranda, two Cerberus operatives. Miranda is a vat born super Biotic human and Jacob is a biotic in his own right specialising in combat. Jacob loves doing things the military way and following orders, Miranda has a tortured past as she was not born, but created to fulfil a legacy for her power hungry father. From there you gain Garrus and Mordin.

Garrus is a Turian Guerilla specialist. He uses snipers and assault rifles to basically be a heavy firing pain in the ass. He’s also as tough as nails and is the man in every right, if you dont like him from the moment you meet him, then you’re a pussy. You also pick up Mordin, a Salarian Tech doctor. He’s a massively intelligent genius doctor who has an odd way of talking and struggles to get what he is thinking into words, I loved talking to him because of it. Then theres Jack and Grunt.

Jack is another Biotic test subject. She is known as Subject Zero and was part of a rogue Cerberus operation to create a super-Biotic, basically they tortured kids with biotic experiments and the ones that proved useful would be pumped into Jack. Unfortunately they hit a point where they had too many powerful Biotic kids and they broke free, Jack included. Grunt on the other hand is an instant favourite. He was a vat-born pure Krogan warrior and he IS the man. He will kill anything and will not die as well as be purely loyal. He is a must have on the team and he will make even the hardest mission seem survivable. Next is Tali’Zorah, Legion and Thane.

Thane is a Drell Assassin/Monk thing. He’s awesome in every way and you will only understand this once you get him. Tali’Zorah is a whiney little teenage Quariann bitch who will make your life a living hell but use her for the tech mission at the end and she will survive, as it happens, Mordin will not. Also its worth noting at this point that “Legion” is Geth…Thats right, Geth. As it happens, the Geth you fought in the first game (and throughout the second) are a rogue sect of the original Geth and Legion (a hiveminded Geth Tech warrior) informs you that Geth also wish to stop the plight of the rogue Geth on the galaxy. Legion gets his name from the quote: “We are Legion for we are many” (I think it was) as he represents all Geth, not an individual…He’s also very cool.

The graphics:

Pretty, beyond belief. Seriously I played on high graphics and am fortunate enough to be able to get a tolerable frame rate out of it. Each planet landing gave me a new spectacle to marvel at, and each new city boarding would stun me with its visuals. Its the sort of thing you would just drool and stroke if you had it in your own house. Unfortunately this game cant escape bugs…from graphical glitches like my green haze getting stuck on permanently even when I went back to the Normandy to the bonus mission where you have to do a lazer puzzle…ALSO NOTE: If you come across this mission, move the mirrors first, then activate the lazer…Then LOOK AWAY. This way the game will not crash to desktop…its basically the only solution at this stage. Also at many points you will randomly get stuck walking, its annoying as fuck, moreso when you cant escape. So save often.

Anyway, I’m not going to write too much more. This game was awesome, the combat might suck in the start but its such a small part thats its barely worth mentioning as you will master it and conquer all. The end mission is fucking amazing (nothing else describes it) and is based on how you did throughout the game. If you upgrade your weapons and hull it will make sure to have cutscenes showing this…you will also have to lead several teams at the end which is awesome as pretty much all of your team will come in handy.

This game easily gets a 9/10. If they had a handle on combat and simple PC controls like mouse movement, it would be a 10/10. It was an amazing high quality experience that makes me want to go back and play again. RPG games in 2010 have a huge marker to step up too if they want to overcome this machine of a game.

First things first…I KNOW THIS IS A BETA AND I KNOW I SHOULDN’T BE JUDGING IT UNTIL RELEASE! Seriously, there’s always someone that points out the obvious…and to that someone I need to say that because I am aware of the Beta status, I am also able to predict somewhat what will be seen in the final edition…so stfu.

Im gonna keep this simple by simply listing what I like and dislike:

Pros:

• Intense and fast paced gameplay. The rush mode (only one available in the beta) is super intense and requires strategic attacks and retreats.
• The voice acting while I didnt really like the “quality” of voice acting, I really liked its placement. I mean you could be walking along and your teammate gets sniped next to you, your character will instantly yell out: “OH SHIT THERE’S A SHOOTER OUT THERE!” or something similar…its wonderful and frequent without the same voice saying the same thing over and over.
• One button to rule them all. Pressing Q will do a vast host of things…at least most of the time. If you’re looking at an enemy it will declare his location for your teammates, if you’re looking at an objective it will declare that objective as a priority target…and so on.
• Bullet fall. You shoot a bullet over distance and it will fall…you shoot a rocket over distance and it will most likely land about 20m short of your target…this makes for a challenging experience.
• Shit blows up yo! If some asshat sniper is camping in a room with a tiny window, shoot a rocket at the wall…et viola…larger window.
• Anyone can blow up the objectives by planting a timed charge on it, however a scout class can dump hordes of C4 on it and take it out in one go (seriously no one realises this).
• Vehicle gameplay…in most games that you have tanks, you use it as a tank. In this game if you charge your tank in, you will lose it…You need to play it strategically.
• No Prone! I HATE proners with a passion…so this is one thing I am supremely happy to see gone
• Upgrades. You know how you love to upgrade and get new guns in the Modern Warfare series? Well BC2 has you well covered with a vast array of perks, weapons and gadgets for you to use.

Cons:

• Upgrades. You know how you hate those assholes in Modern Warfare that had all the awesome guns that you didnt? Well BC2 does exactly the same…but I believe it does it worse. The initial gun for engineer (my preferred class) has 20 rounds…and due to the useless hitreg in this game those 20 rounds will not be enough to kill anything…which is just plain stupid.
• Lag. While this issue is being sorted out its still a raging nuisance that apparently only occurs on PC’s. Put it this way, I play all my games on 1920×1200 on full AA and I still manage about 60fps which I am happy with. In BC2Beta, I have to put all my graphics settings to low to be able to get a managable FPS from the game…so retarded.
• Hitreg. As stated before, the hitreg in this game (the beta at least) is beyond shocking…You will waste entire clips to kill someone and god forbid if they are any sort of distance away from you…cause NOTHING will hurt them. Rockets can go off right next to you and you will stand unharmed…knifing is next to useless unless the enemy is standing dead still because if they even flinch…you’ll miss. It’s frustrating and annoying and a game killer if the dev’s are not careful.
• Adding to the above point, ‘double-KO’ scenarios are annoying…when I’m right in front of an enemy and I blast him with my shotgun and he retaliates with a few rounds of his rifle…only one of us should die. I will shoot him clean off his feet yet somehow even though he is dead, his bullets magically lodge themselves into my chest post mortem. Ugh
• Knife. It has no reg, its slow, its autoaim sucks. Useless.
• No tap out…I am not a fan of suiciding, if I run out of ammo I will charge the enemy in hopes to do as much damage as I can before I respawn…when I die however I do not have the option to “tap out” and wait for spawn…so if some maniacal medic charges in to rez me when I only have 3 pistol rounds left, I have no choice…I have to fight on…and die again.
• Helicopters are back! I love piloting helicopters and all…but when you simply cant shoot one out of the sky, it starts getting ridiculous. At one point, 2 guys in a chopper simply flew around our spawn killing our tanks and antiair weapons before we could use them…and unless you have a high level engineer with targeting optics or w/e they are, you cant use homing missles on the damned thing. SO YOU CANT KILL IT! Rockets travel too slow to hit such a small target in the air. Annoying.
• No “aim down sights”. You can “toggle” iron sights as with Modern Warfare…but you cant opt to simply look down sights when you right click…which is hellishly frustrating because you constantly have to slam right click as well as left click to get the correct firing mode in a close quarters firefight.

Anyway there are a few more Pros and cons but I shall leave it there…I love the gameplay but theres just too much left to be desired. EA did their typical thing of focusing on fancy bits and pieces and less on core gameplay which is annoying…but I still have hopes for this game as if they fix a few little niggles then it would be largely playable.

That said however, I doubt it will be fixed in time for its March release…so expect to run into trouble

The former marks one of the best RPG’s ever made that even spawned an anime, the latter you all know about so I wont talk about it.

The game itself features in much the same as every other old school RPG you can think of…you gain a party of mixed individuals and skills, you pick the group you like the best and you go off to kill everything and save the world from impending doom.

The doom in this case is a meteor-thing which contains and powerful and sinister power. It smashed into the planet and is causing chaos and turning people/creatures into demonic beings and naturally it’s your goal to save them all!

You can start the story as either Rena (pictured above on the very left) or Claude (again but on the very right). I’ve played this game twice through as each character but this time around I started as Claude again which means I am a space traveller under my fathers stern rule travelling about the galaxy surveying planets under rule of the Earth Federation. He ends up on Milocinia studying an alien ruin which he, in his retardation, thinks is a playground. So he jumps on it even though his commander and father says no.

So he gets teleported to the aforementioned planet named Expel who apparently speak the same language as he. He finds Rena being attacked by a demonic creature and rushes to her aide using his Blaster pistol which spurts out huge rays of light as it shoots. Unfortunately for our poor lost hero, the townfolk believe in a prophecy where a “hero with the sword of light” will appear which means he’s now going to be raked into helping these poor sods look after themselves.

(The above picture is part of the anime not the game…but w/e…ACTUALLY! I just found out its from the PSP version of the game! I NEEDS THAT VERSION!)

Anyway as it turns out Rena isn’t from Expel either and that she was found and adopted by her “Mother”…which explains why she has mystical healing powers…powers which make her a highly useful companion. So the town tells Claude and Rena to go fix the world…you can probably fill in the blanks from there…GAMEPLAY TIME!

The outdoor areas are about as indepth as you’d expect a game this old to be, they’re mostly empty with simple paths and forests and you control your main character as you run between cities performing various quests. As with most JRPG games, random encounters feature heavily in this game…everywhere you move outside and in dungeons, you can expect to encounter various groups of enemies who can either be pathetically weak or could severely out number you and on top of that they can enter battle from behind, front or even above you in some sort of fucked up air assault or something. Naturally these surprise entries can force you to move your characters out of certain danger lest your weaker spell casters and healers get eaten alive making combat highly difficult.

The map itself is very simplistic and chances are if you are like me you simply wont use it other than to get your bearings (ie…head north)…I just remember where towns are and map it out in my head as it seems a hell of a lot easier.

Inside towns you will meet NPC’s and be able to traverse through buildings by walking straight into doors that give way when you faceplant them. NPC’s show emotion by using speech bubbles which you can see with the whistling kid above. Moving around is pretty easy but occasionally you get stuck on objects/cant find a way to a particular place you need to go which can prove highly frustrating as you cant move the camera.

By now anyone that has played the game will realise that these Screenshots that I have are from fairly early on in the game…Anyway the combat is very JRPGish, click a button to choose your attack (you can set up to 2 special attacks to be used on L1 and R1 buttons) and then choose your target. The major problem you will come across in this game when it comes to combat is the AI.

You can program your teammates to follow certain routines when it comes to attacking, the problem lies in that the commands lack diversity…I like Celine (my spellcaster) to blast the living shit out of mobs while I go through and mop up…what I dont like however is when she waits till I kill off most of the mob and approach the last living creature where she casts a full screen aoe attack…when I can easily kill it without trouble. Note: This scene is pictured above.

Oh yea…at the end of every combat your heros will say something based on how the combat went…ie: “That was TOO easy”…It seems so trivial…but really when I picked up this game and heard Claude and Rena claim their victory I was taken aback at the onslaught of nostalgia…the voices and the music stuck in my head for years between play and I could still remember the names of most of the characters which made for an awesome nostalgia conversation on xfire with Fireryda who also played the game.

To sum the game up I cant really go much further than to say its very typical of a JRPG that is to say the gameplay is familiar and the game focuses highly on the characters, music and dialogue over the actual story line. But to an extent I like that, in fact I would say that I enjoyed this game far better than the Final Fantasy series (albeit I’m not a huge FF fan really but I still enjoy it).

Anyway, that is my gaming experiences as of late thrown into a quick summary of the game. Time to go find some cash to get Global Agenda…somehow

Recently I’ve spent alot of my time on a relatively mediocre game called Overlord. While it has many features of what makes a good game, it’s riddled with so many shortcomings that you’ll end up feeling extremely unsatisfied before you reach the end of the game. The guilty pleasure of raiding anything in sight may keep some to the end but it’s largely a forgettable experience.

Overlord sounds like a good game on paper. A third-person RPG / RTS hybrid where you control little gremlin monsters to wreck havoc across the country-side? Who wouldn’t be at least even slightly interested in this concept. Sadly the potential isn’t reached on so many fronts.

The story starts off quite well. You arise from a deep slumber only to find that there seems to be evil in things other than you so you go around to set things right until you encounter a village oppressed by halflings where you’re told to go free some prisoners. That’s when things start to get wrong. An evil overlord going to free oppressed peasants? At least theres the allure of gold being involved. Saving the elven race by killing a berserk elf-tree hybrid? Well he was the supposed saviour of the elves at some point. Stealing back a sacred elf statue for the elves? Now things are really starting to become questionable. There really isn’t a feeling of evil in Overlord apart from the rampart killings you decide to partake in when proceeding from one quest to the other. Even then there’s no feeling of accomplishment when doing an evil deed. Sure you’ll be hated by the peasants if you slaughter a few but that’s about it. The enemies feel a little bit lacking in the good versus evil department as well, pitting you against succubi, zombies, black ninja knight guys, sand worms, beetles of doom, troll, rock golems, undead unicorns and etc. You could just slap on a hero sticker on your character and the story will resemble a generic RPG. Hell there’s even an achievement for having no corruption and being an all-round good guy, in a game which promotes itself by being evil. At least you get evil spikes for being evil though.

The controls don’t lend a helping hand either. For the most part it controls competently but sometimes the game enjoys having random control spasms. For example: To send a minion to attack in the general direction you’re facing you press left-click. To call back a minion you press right-click. To “Sweep” (remotely control your minions) you hold left and right click at the same time. Now this would cause a problem if you want to send and call minions at the same time but generally you don’t do that. The problem is prevalent in that the game constantly gets mixed up on whether the left or right mouse buttons are pressed down sometimes refusing to acknowledge that you’ve let go of the problem. So many times I’ve ended up clicking both buttons like mad just so I can stop sweeping my minions instead of calling them back because I accidently sent them into a death-trap. While this isn’t much of a problem nevertheless it  is extremely frustrating at times. The main problem is how sweeping is used. While “Sweeping” you use your mouse to control your minions, that sounds pretty simple other than the minions don’t stop moving. This is an exercise in frustration until you get used to it during those soup can locks. At least you get a minion respawn nearby incase you fail.

The combat handles pretty well and it’s always enjoyable to see your minions swarm all over a creature and beat it to death but it generally comes down to spam certain minion at enemy. It’s even easier to just go up to the enemy and beat him to death with your own sword and you get it done faster that way too. It’s hard to feel that the whole minion thing isn’t just a gimmick. While they do have their uses at certain places and offer that little touch, they’re easily replaced by other game mechanics. Most of the time the minions feel much too fragile to be of any use but at least they serve as decent temporary meatshields (until they die.)

What this game does right is it’s style and that’s evident from the voice clips of the minions as they rape and pillage houses and mount sheep like a rodeo. Most of the game is played for laughs which isn’t a bad thing as it’s quite easy to just pass time running around destroying everything in sight. Unfortunately this gets old after a very short time as there isn’t much variation on what you’re able to do. To pillage an area it generally comes down to: look at area, send minions to attack. Replace minions with yourself if they’re all dead.

While the game is fun, it’s largely forgettable. There isn’t much reason to play this other than it somehow managed to land in your hard-drive after International Pirate Day. You’ll be more evil by stealing this game than anything within the game. At least it’s better than Oblivion though. While the ambition and potential are there, sadly it hasn’t be reached which is a shame because if it got past the really buggy control schemes and was a little bit more evil it might’ve been a great game. Sadly it’ll have to settle for good at the time of playing.