Posts Tagged ‘ EA ’

Crysis 2

Info:

Developer/s: Crytek

Publisher/s: Electronic Arts

Platform/s: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Genre: First-person shooter

Release Date: 2011-03-24

Review:

I put off playing Crysis 2 for quite sometime now, after completing the dreary shit-fest that is Syndicate, I decided it was time to install this game and see what it had to offer.  In case you were wondering, the reason why I’ve been avoiding this game is because I really disliked the glorified tech-demo that is Crysis 1, not because of the ludicrous system requirements mind you, just because the first game was an empty husk of mediocrity gift-wrapped in shiny paper.  As a rule, I’m usually quite weary about any game that has ‘EA’ stamped on it (so then it’s a given that I’m weary of most games given Electronic Arts‘ apparent bid for platform domination) but thankfully, unlike its predecessor and the aforementioned Syndicate, Crysis 2 isn’t bad at all, in fact it’s pretty good.

The amount of detail is amazing, notice the realistic blurring of the out-of-focus firearm.

So this time around, the focus has been switched from a Pandora-esque jungle to an urban one, and you play as ‘Alcatraz’ who has taken ownership over the Nanosuit 2.0 from former Delta Force officer Laurence ‘Prophet’ Barnes.  Since CryNet Systems have been hunting down Prophet in order to reclaim the Nanosuit, your character – Alcatraz, is inadvertently pursued.  Needless to say, human operatives won’t be the only thing on your tail, as the squid-like alien race known as the Ceph make their return, ditching the ‘outdated’, tentacle-exo suits in favour of an armoured humanoid variety.  Crysis 2 takes place in a war-torn New York City, and if all the destruction wasn’t enough, a disease nicknamed the ‘Manhattan Virus’ has rendered most of the denizens as immobile, moaning meat sacks.

No time to look at the pretty lights, pissed-off aliens demand your attention.

You will need some pretty bad-ass hardware in order to contend with all the hostiles in Crysis 2, from CELL (CryNet Enforcement & Local Logistics) operatives – a private military contractor tasked with handling the alien invasion on Manhattan Island, to the aliens themselves, and there is no weapon better than the highly-advanced Nanosuit 2.0 that you will be stomping around in (though there are plenty of shooty-things too).  The Nanosuit has been upgraded and streamlined since the first outing and switching between the various modes that the suit has to offer has never been easier.  The Nanosuit 2.0 is equipped with a cloaking mode – enabling players to become invisible and for the most part, undetectable to the enemy’s field of vision,  this stealth mode is an integral part of the game-play and can be used to lure and ambush enemies or bypass them all together and allows you to perform melee ‘stealth kills’ though be warned, any attack while in stealth mode will cause you to decloak.

Nano vision, this thermal mode is especially handy for detecting hidden enemies or navigating through dust-laden sections.

The predecessor’s strength & speed modes have now been combined into what’s called power mode, turning the player into a veritable human tank, plodding around with this mode engaged while hearing bullet impacts on your suit gives you the feeling of what being a Terminator is like.  Power mode offers a fair amount of resilience to projectiles and limited protection against electricity-based attacks (at the expense of suit power).  The Nanosuit is also equipped with binoculars that provide on-the-fly tactical recommendations, as well as nano vision, a built-in thermal mode much like what is seen in the Predator films.  It’s up to you to use the Nanosuit’s various modes in order to outwit your foes and it is this kind of strategy that was sorely lacking with Syndicate’s DART 6.  It is also worth noting that all of the Nanosuit’s abilities drain energy (rather quickly) and will require brief intervals between use while your suit recharges, so players always have to be vigilant of the suit’s power levels as there’s nothing worse than sneaking past a group of enemies only to have your suit decloak on you midway…

Even though I played the game on extreme graphics settings, my Radeon HD4870 still couldn’t process all the detail, so essentially the game looks even better than pictured here.

The game-play in Crysis 2 is a bit more complex than the average shooter, and there’s far more to it than just sneaking around in an invisible power suit.  After you’ve killed an alien, they will leave behind a shimmering cloud (derived from Ceph tissue) referred to as ‘nano catalyst’, different types of aliens leave behind different amounts of the substance and collecting the stuff will earn you points that can be spent on various upgrades for your Nanosuit, such as faster regeneration, a cloak tracker (for detecting invisible foes), increased resistance to gunfire and so forth.  It is therefore vital that players eliminate as many of the aliens as possible in order to upgrade the suit as it will be needed as you progress through the game.  There is also a multitude of firearms which players can wield ranging from traditional weapons like the SCAR (Superior Combat Assault Rifle), Grendel Assault Rifle, Feline SMG, Jackal (semi-automatic shotgun), and various side arms to more exotic weaponry like the K-Volt (Electrostatic pellet SMG), M20 14 Gauss (electromagnetic anti material rifle) and X-43 Mike (Microwave Induced Klystron Emitter), these are just some of the available weapons and most of them are customizable too allowing you to switch out scopes, add silencers and so forth, all-in-all very impressive.

Some of the most mind-blowingly realistic scenarios seen in a game.

Crytek have made something of a name for themselves when it comes to the graphics department and Crysis 2 is no exception being the first game to feature the CryEngine 3 with Crysis 2 being lauded as the most visually impressive game ever created and it would certainly be difficult to dispute that claim as Crysis 2 is a beautiful-looking game.  Not since Half-Life 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 have I stopped during a game just to take in and fully appreciate how awe-inspiring the graphics are (no point in harping on about shaders, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering just check out the screens for proof, all in-game footage).  Crysis 2 had a multi-platform release, and while the console versions of the game look amazing, as Crytek CEO Cervat Yerli stated, the PC version is indeed graphically superior to its counterparts so needless to say you will require a pretty decent PC in order to run this game on extreme settings.

Not only was this scene somewhat harrowing (what with all the needles pointed in your direction) this is a good example of light-blooming done right, Syndicate could learn a thing or two here…

Conclusion

The only area that I can really fault Crysis 2 in is the linearity of the maps, and that’s only when compared to its predecessor,  though the open-world jungles are gone, Crysis 2 still offers plenty exploration in this concrete jungle setting, and a longer than average single-player campaign mode.  The addition of a multi-player mode further extends the longevity of Crysis 2,  rounding off an already impressive gaming experience.  The second and last gripe I have is that the few driving sections in the game are quite crap due to the awful handling of the vehicles but I’m really just nitpicking.  Otherwise, good AI, awesome visuals and an interesting single-player campaign make Crysis 2 a definite must for all first-person shooter fans.  Highly recommended.

Grade: A

2012
03/15
CATEGORY
Gaming
PC
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Syndicate

Info:

Developer/s:Starbreeze Studios

Publisher/s: Electronic Arts

Platform/s: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Genre: First-person shooter

Release Date: 2012-02-24

Review:

In all their wisdom, Starbreeze Studios, in conjunction with EA Games, have decided that what gamers need, in a market saturated by tactical and first-person shooters is in fact, a tactical first-person shooter, set in a dystopic future-shiny world where you play as a corporate agent named Miles Kilo, for the mega-corporation known as ‘Eurocorp’.  Needless to say, since originality seems to be frowned upon in this day and age, Syndicate also happens to be a reboot of a series of games developed by (now defunct) Bullfrog Productions who were absorbed by EA in 2004.  Sounds like a winning formula…

An example of the DART 6 X-Ray overlay in action, for a limited time your enemies are slowed down in a 'bullet-time' fashion.

Syndicate’s premise is nothing new, the year is 2069, you play as Miles Kilo, Eurocorp’s latest and greatest agent equipped with a prototype chip called DART 6 created by scientist Lily Drawl.  Free will is at an all time low, and pretty much everything in the world is controlled by über-powerful mega-corporations.  As a Eurocorp agent, you are tasked with various wetwork missions to ensure that your company stays on top, so it’s a given that mass murder and assassination will be the order of the day.  Needless to say, all does not go smoothly as the overly predictable and crappy ‘badass hero gets betrayed by his boss’ plot device rears its ugly head rather quickly.  It’s so painfully dull that being slapped in the face with a fish would be exponentially more entertaining.  The generic plot is compounded further by archetypal characters that have about as much depth as a 2D cardboard cutout.  Two of the central characters, Lily Drawl (voiced by Rosario Dawson) and Jack Denham (voiced by Brian Cox) are instantly recognizable by their distinctive voices, yet if you were still unable to recognize them Starbreeze Studios have modeled the characters on the actual voice actors themselves which is kind of weird given that for the most part, you are bombarded by faceless nobodies.

The DART chip also allows players to hack into camera feeds at certain points in order to gain intel.

But it can’t all be that bad right? Well, the only redeeming factor of Syndicate is the innovation of the DART 6 bio-chip.  Apart from the stock-standard firearms (various assortments of pistols, automatic weapons, smart-guns etc) that a player can harness (in this case the player can carry two main weapons and grenades), the DART 6 chip offers a new dimension to the combat in the form of an X-Ray type overlay that slows down time similar to the ‘reflex-time’ mode from F.E.A.R. allowing you to pick off your enemies much faster as you move in real-time, though obviously this effect only lasts a few seconds and will require brief intervals in order to recharge.  The other prominent element of the DART 6 chip is the ability to hack into enemies minds – called ‘breaching’ thus presenting the player with three options; ‘Backfire’ – the enemy’s gun explodes stunning them, ‘Suicide’ – the enemy kills himself and damages nearby foes,  and ‘Persuade’ – where the enemy temporarily becomes your ally.  The three breaching abilities also require recharging after use and charging can be expedited by successive kills, however there’s not much strategy involved in picking which breach to use as it’s more of a matter of which one is available first.  Certain enemies such as end-of-level guardians or plot-sensitive characters can be ‘chip-ripped’ and once their bio-chip has been extracted it offers the player additional upgrades such as improved armour, faster regeneration and so forth.  The DART 6 chip can also be used to hack locked doors, elevators, automated turrets, as well as certain shielded enemies that are invulnerable until their defenses are breached.

Extracting bio-chips earns your player valuable upgrades.

As far as game-play goes, Syndicate is a washed-down version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, there’s no need for stealth, character building or conversation as you march from one location to the next hosing down anything that moves in a rain of gunfire.  The environments are also populated by civilians who will cower in fear the moment you start shooting, the player is able to kill them indiscriminately and without consequence, and in fact the civilians don’t even seem like people, instead merely there to occupy empty space.  The boss battles are also horribly frustrating as the difficulty spikes from being infuriating to absolutely insane to the point where any level of fun has been replaced by Vegeta levels of anger, so expect plenty rage quits.  Sadly, much like the characters, the locations seem to be horribly dull and ‘samey’ as you move from one monolithic structure to the next.  In a way, Syndicate feels a lot like F.E.A.R. but without the psychological-thriller aspect that made the latter fun and interesting. It’s also worth noting that Syndicate’s single-player campaign can be completed in a mere 5 – 6 hours so you may want to think twice before handing over your hard-earned cash.

The LTB Thermite gun (flamethrower) originally designed to quell public riots, also effective for turning people into screaming bacon bits...

Finally, the worst aspect of the game has to be the visuals.  While the graphics aren’t too bad at all, with certain sequences looking pretty awesome, Starbreeze Studio’s overuse of blooming has made Syndicate almost unplayable for the most part as the overdone lighting effects will obscure the player’s view completely resulting in severe eye-strain.  Syndicate is broken up into chapters called ‘milestones’ and in fact during milestone 13 the game was completely unplayable as whenever I moved in any direction the screen would repeatedly flash white (though in this case I’m pretty sure this was some kind of bug), I managed to get around this by using the developer console Ctrl+Alt+~ and typing the command xr_effectmodels 0, oddly enough, typing the command once more returned all the lighting effects and got rid of the flashing white screen, though in the end it’s still only a temporary workaround for a persistent visual problem.

This is a prime example of the overdone lighting effects that plague the game throughout. It's actually so bad it causes eye strain and headaches, and needless to say you can't see shit...

Conclusion

While the DART 6 feature is an innovative aspect of the game, Syndicate fails on too many levels to make it really worth any of your time, apart from the terrible overuse of lighting effects which render the game almost unplayable at times, there have reportedly been several other glitches (in one section I encountered a horrid graphic flaw) including intermittent freezing which have led many to think that Syndicate has not been compiled properly, combined with over-used plot devices, uninspired locations, little-to-no character development as well as what may be the crappiest ending to a game ever and you get a title that drowns in an ocean of mediocrity and generic tedium. Is the gaming industry really so hard-up for fresh ideas that they need to reboot a series that was last seen in 1996? Avoid.

Grade: D

2012
03/03
CATEGORY
Gaming
PC
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Dante’s Inferno

Info:

Developer/s: Visceral Games

Platform/s: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 & PlayStation Portable

Genre: Action, adventure

Vintage: February 2010

Plot:

Dante – a devout Christian crusader, must traverse the nine levels of Hell in order to save his beloved Beatrice and at the same time redeem his soul for past sins.

Graphics: 3/5 - Dante’s Inferno does not represent the pinnacle of video-game graphics as the character models aren’t the best that I’ve seen and tend to look a bit flat at times.  Though the game is set in Hell for the most part, the developers have managed to do a fine job of representing the nine circles of Hell as each circle looks different from the last.  The environments have some nice textures and lighting, setting the tone for the morbidly disturbing horrors that you will see throughout the game. It must be said however, that the prerendered FMV sequences were outstanding and it was nice to see the use of prerendering again in a modern game as most of the time developers

Though the in-game character models are graphically lacking, the prerendered sequences (pictured above) are breathtaking.

opt for using the in-game engine to render movies.  In between the game and FMV, the use of a more traditional hand-drawn style of animation was incorporated for the flashback sequences which reminded me of the Spawn animated series.  So while the environments look quite nice, I found the human characters to be somewhat lacking in the visual department.  Thankfully, the myriad of gruesome creatures that you face in this game are animated quite nicely (good detail and textures) and make up for the short comings of the mediocre human character models.

Gameplay: 4/5 - This is the aspect of the game that has garnered much criticism.  Dante’s Inferno plays exactly like God of War, when I purchased the God of War Ultimate Trilogy Edition (will review it soon) there was no learning curve because I knew all the controls already thanks to Dante’s Inferno (I never got to play the GOW games on the PS2).  Even though the gameplay is a blatant rip-off – the controls are the same, the way you gain health and magic is identical, Dante’s scythe handles the same as Kratos’ chains and so on – this is what makes the game so fun, in traditional GOW style, controlling Dante is easy and fluidic and executing combos, magic attacks and QTE finishing moves is very satisfying.  A feature I found to be quite nice is the Punish/Absolve play dynamic that the developers have incorporated,  certain opponents can be grabbed giving you the option to either punish them by stabbing or ripping them apart or absolve them with your cross thus sending them to the heavens.  Either choice will earn you experience points that will be allocated to unholy or holy allowing you to ‘purchase’ new abilities.  At certain points you will encounter ‘famous’ characters of history such as Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and so on, these pleading souls will provide much experience so choose wisely before sending them on their way.  Initially the unholy and holy experience levels are equal so it’s up to you in deciding whether you want Dante to focus more on unholy or holy abilities.

Characters: 4/5 - There is a strong storyline running throughout Dante’s Inferno, this is made possible thanks to the myriad of interesting people and creatures strewn throughout the game.  As you traverse from one circle of Hell to the next, new and bizarre creatures (like guardians or old friends) make their presence known.  From unbaptized babies, spirits and hellish she-demons to Lucifer himself, one can never be bored with the diverse denizens of the fiery pit of Hell.  The FMV and animated sequences throughout the game strengthen the storyline with nice character development so much so that Dante’s Inferno is almost like playing an interactive movie.

Soundtrack: 3/5 - Dante’s Inferno is filled with morbidly creepy tunes that are for the most part overshadowed by the endless cries and moans of the countless damned souls trapped in Hell.  Visceral Games have done an excellent job in ensuring that Dante’s Inferno not only looks the part, but sounds it too.

Lifespan: 4/5 - After playing through the game once, you’d probably be compelled to play though it once again in order to find missed items or perhaps to focus on a specific path (holy or unholy).  The addition of downloadable content such as the Trials of St Lucia has added a map-editor as well as cooperative online play thus greatly extending the shelf life of this game.

Overall: 3/5 - Visceral Games/EA’s ‘God of War’ clone is an enjoyably disturbing and action-heavy title filled with satisfying amounts of carnage and hours of intense gameplay.  Though there was initially speculation as to whether or not Dante’s Inferno would be the God of War 3 killer, it is indeed far from it and acts merely as a filler to keep players busy until the real champion emerges (and what a game it is!).  Thankfully, Dante’s Inferno is a great game in its own right and should be played by anyone with a passing interest in kicking ass.

2010
06/29
CATEGORY
Gaming
PlayStation 3
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