Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Please note this is not quite a full review, as I have not played the multiplayer (and from what I've seen, do not wish to) and have had... another problem which I will explain.

The full-blown tactical military simulation genre is not an easy one to pull off, I'll admit. Having very reliable AI, decent tactical maps and realistic weaponry are all vital and it takes a good dev company to get this done, but OF:DR falls down in a horrible number of ways.

Before I get to that, I'll throw in the good parts of the game. One is the map, a fictional island called Skira off the coast of Japan, which in the almost non-existant storyline has been overtaken by the Chinese and the Americans and Russians have combined to re-invade. Think that's just a setting? Nope, you genuinely get the whole island. One of the biggest maps in game history, it's a truly impressive sight - and you genuinely get the sight, no foggy environments WHATSOEVER, you can see as far as the human eye can - when you stand atop a hill preparing for your raiding of a PLA outpost. They did a lot of work on the aesthetics, so day/night scenes look brilliantly tangible. Thankfully, for it being a squad simulation, they also included a huge number of commands, from formations to orders of when to fire, and as it is mainly aimed at the hardcore gaming audience, they made the intensity of shoot-outs very sudden and tense, instead of your ordinary 'they come blasting out the treeline, you mow them down'. Every bullet can kill you, and you have to think tactically and make the right decisions for your squad. 

All that is nicely done, but just about everything else went horribly wrong. This may take a while...

Firstly, this is where realism goes wrong. I understand that it's not meant to be easy, and that you're meant to be as vulnerable as every enemy, and I actually like the idea. But that isn't what you've got here! Why does every enemy have more health than you do? Yes they're not as clever as you, but that doesn't mean they should be able to take 5 bullets when you can take 2 at most. Speaking of AI not being clever, this game is a masterpiece of the moronic bots, in particular you friendlies. I've had numerous occasions where I'm shooting at the distant blob of an enemy at the other side of a valley, and my medic has thought it an incredible idea to jump in front of my barrel and get his brains blown out. They'll do what you tell them, but they don't do it well so for example while they will hold fire when you tell them to, when you tell them to open fire again they'll sometimes take about a minute to react and completely miss. Whilst desperately needing to escape a base I planted a bomb in, I was sprinting up a hill escaping enemy fire and there was my squad, crawling on their bellies after me. They were wiped out within 20 seconds. 

Another is the general bugginess of the game. While playing co op, I died and the usual thing to happen afterwards is that you view the surviving player and respawn after a minute (at least not on Hardcore difficulty). I got a nice view of the sea and never respawned. I've also experienced one which many others have had where at the end of a mission my squad and I board the extraction heli, which then never takes off. The mission can't end. You have to restart. Last and certainly not least, my Flashpoint is effectively broken because of this bug, I can't play my last two missions, and will probably never be able to. Why? My game doesn't save any more. I have 60gb free left on my hard drive so that's not the problem, it simply won't overwrite. And despite the good environmental look to the game, get near anything at it looks jaggedy and too PS2-like, especially the character models who all look incredibly angry/constipated. 

Apart from that, monotony will usually kick in, either from samey 'take out a mortar team' objectives or having to retry countless times because of enemies who apparently have skin made of kevlar. A couple of good sniper/stealth missions break the mould, but it's never long before you're back with your unbelievably dim fireteam. I rate this 3/10, Codemasters (surprisingly enough)  don't seem to know what a code is, let alone how to make a game out of it.

Update: Out of games...

Sup non-existant readers, I have successfully reviewed all my Xbox 360 games, and now I have a problem which is twofold.

1. I have no money.
2. I don't want to do any more reviews of old games that I played years ago, unless I buy them now, I want the focus to be on stuff coming out at least recently.

Soooo I am now on a short hiatus from game reviews, with the exception of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising which should be within two/three weeks. After that I might be able to get Assassin's Creed II before Christmas but I can't be sure. After Christmas the old money problem should be solved but this is all until then.

In the meantime, please check out my game RANTINGS at

www.failboatskippersgamerantings.blogspot.com

and my/EnglishCarBomb's general thought blobs and rantings at

www.brain-remnants.blogspot.com

If you actually read ANY of these 35 reviews, thanks a lot.

Red Faction: Guerilla

Destruction. We all love it right? There's few things as satisfying in a game than blowing the crap out of stuff, and it coming down in a way that obliterates as much around it as possible. No doubt this is the selling point in Red Faction's third installment, and it does it damn well.

Ok, the whole game isn't just 'blow this up, and this, and this, and you're done. But it was fun right?'. It's a sandbox game based on Mars and you're a new member of the Red Faction, overthrowing the fascist Earth Defense Force who are oppressing your people. The game works in a very similar way to Mercenaries 1, just with a slightly more bleak landscape and more futuristic weaponry. The feeling of a tense, harshly dominated country is there; the civilians go about their business and manual labour quietly whilst EDF patrols of armoured cars fly past regularly. Your job is to help the Red Faction take all the sections of colonized Mars and eventually throw the EDF off the planet, which will be no easy task considering the lack of weaponry the Red Faction own. This means you have to resort to guerilla tactics as the title suggests, and at the beginning of the game you definitely get the feel of this as you haven't much more than your rifle, sledgehammer and charges but as you get upgrades - a system this game has done VERY well with ways to upgrade just about everything about you and everything you carry - this becomes less of a need as you become able to blow the crap out of most things they can throw at you. This is a bit of a disappointment considering the title, as there are plenty of one-man-army type games out there but not so many Fidel Castro-type ones, but you shouldn't find this hampers the game's enjoyability too much. The game should take you about 20-30 hours to complete the whole storyline - yes, a sandbox game released in recent times with appropriate length!

And now I come to the highest point and what everyone knows the game for: its glorious physics/destruction engine. Remember when Pandemic said for Mercenaries, 'blow up anything and everything?' They were lying. Yep, damn good as it was for its time, trees remained indestructible and buildings were destroyed in scripted ways and would leave the same rubble every time. That was all well and good considering it was on PS2, but we're in the 7th generation now, and it just gets better and better. Take a swing at a wall with your sledgehammer and you'll smash a hole in it, and plates and shards of metal will fall away. Place charges around the foundations of a building, blow them up and watch it collapse in on itself, or drive the biggest truck you can find through the ground floor of a building and watch it slowly lose balance on the remaining supports it has left, until it inevitably tumbles, crushing everything near it and leaving thousands of individual pieces of rubble on the floor and remains of pillars, furniture, EVERYTHING. This is the most realistic destruction simulation you'll have ever seen, Geomod 2.0, and it will undoubtedly blow you away, if it doesn't crush you first.

It’s worth noting that whilst Red Faction does make a good impression with the impressive physics and bringing a new ‘guerrilla’ type gameplay which has not been done many times before, it has a fair amount of problems which tend to make some of the experience less enjoyable. The most notable of the problems is the difficulty; I played through the whole campaign on Normal and many of the missions took far too many tries and did not have anywhere near enough checkpoints. Even when you upgrade your armour and get more and more powerful weapons, the amount of enemies you are put against in some of the later missions gets simply ridiculous, and it becomes very tempting to knock the difficulty down to Easy. I like a challenge in games, which is why I don’t play on Easy, but this got plain frustrating. The particular example I have in mind is the final mission, and though I believe this should be difficult, there is one checkpoint in the whole mission, AFTER which you have to drive a tank for five minutes just to reach the final boss which you then have to defeat. If you fail, do the driving again and try to beat him again. Doesn’t help one bit that the loading screens are about 30 seconds, even if you install it on the Hard Drive (for you good old Xbox 360 users out there...).

Apart from this which will generally affect the gameplay all the time, there are a few things that could have been fixed with a bit more work, such as the sparse cut scenes making the storyline sometimes hard to keep up with. There is also very little character in any of the people involved in the storyline, so really what you're left with is a visually impressive action game with a fair amount of playtime, but only running on a skeleton of a storyline. As such, it's never worth knowing WHY you're doing a mission and how it advances the storyline, you'll just want to know what you have to do.

So Red Faction:Guerilla did a good job, especially for the physics engines of future games, here's hoping this kind of technology will be used in something else soon. 7/10 for an explosive experience, albeit with little depth.

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction

I noticed to my horror while I was writing the Just Cause review that this hasn't been reviewed here, despite it being one of the games in my life that I have spent the most time on...

Mercenaries is freedom of exploration mixed with ultimate destruction. Simple as that. Simple, but very, very fun. Unlike the sequel, this game takes a fairly more serious tone to overthrowing a government (in this case, North Korea) and this works a lot better and doesn't slowly reduce the game to a complete laughing stock. The storyline is pretty long and will take you at least 20 hours to finish, and it is absolutely fantastic. Each mission is unique and will take you to new places to do new things, be it assassinate targets or blow a lot of stuff to bits, I can't say it better than expect fun of the highest standard. The more you do, the more you unlock and this slowly builds up an impressively huge armoury of vehicles, weapons and airstrikes which are kept neatly in your PDA system. You need to use these tactically due to them being increasingly expensive but there are so few things as satisfying as blowing an NK bunker to bits with a bunker buster and watching tanks and cars blow up in chain reaction. You also are faced with many different factions which you can choose to follow or oppose; each with advantages and disadvantages, thus meaning if you play the game more than once (and I damn well did) it can be different the next time around. Factions begin to rival each other too, and not to mention you're faced with a whole new map at the half-way point of the game, so expect the game to keep changing as you play. 

Of course, you're not ever forced to do any of the main missions. You can roam North Korea: find and capture high-profile government members, raze enemy outposts to the ground, steal expensive vehicles and sell them to the Mafia, do side missions or just explore, it's all great fun and will keep you hooked even if you don't want to continue the story just yet. Destruction is a high point, somewhat obviously as it is the game's focus. Buildings are all destructible and have varying amounts of damage they can take, and although things like trees cannot be destroyed it doesn't weigh down the gameplay as it's in the context of early destruction engines and there are no points where you need to get past any huge forests or anything.

I can't find many criticisms, I enjoyed Mercenaries fully for the 100 or so hours I spent addicted. I find it is pretty much sandbox perfection for its time, I think maybe the side missions could be a little better rewarded, with new vehicles or something, and the big map would benefit from planes and a parachute (hello, Just Cause...).

So yeah, 9/10, for great originality, freedom and plenty of things that go boom. Would still recommend these days, for anyone with a PS2/XBOX.

Battlefield 1943

Having beaten the hell out of Bad Company, though not to say it ran dry, and having passed my GCSE exams I decided to be spontaneous and download Battlefield 1943, the recent remake of 1942 for the Xbox 360 arcade and Playstation 3 (PC version coming soon). It's a download-only multiplayer game which proves that time and time again Battlefield games will always be a success, with it already breaking the record of fastest downloaded game of all time.

For anyone comparing this to Bad Company, it is different in a few ways. The health system is no longer a bar which goes down and will only come up again if healed, it is regenerative in the same way as CoD, Halo etc. This may disappoint some as it admittedly takes a bit of skill out of it - at least that's my opinion. It's also using the classic Conquest game type; to anyone who hasn't played older BF games it's the same type that you play in the fairly-disappointing-yet-free DLC for Bad Company, or in the Star Wars Battlefront games. It's also limited to three classes (Rifleman, Infantryman and Scout) and no buyable upgrades or weapons, due to its download-only form which means there isn't a motherload of data, and this restriction can bring the game down in places.

The good parts of the game mainly consist of variety in playing styles, good maps and graphics. By variety I mean that you are able to use the many different vehicles - tanks, cars, boats and to my delight, planes - to get to your objective, and each class REALLY has strengths and weaknesses. For example, while you're able to take on a few men at some range with your M1 Garand with the Rifleman kit, you'll be screwed if you find a tank coming up to you, nor will you be able to fix vehicles. The vehicles work the same way, while a tank is great for capturing flags because of its firepower and it being hard to destroy, it's also a slow mover and is a sitting duck for planes. Flying in general is a strong point, once you get the hang of it it's great fun doing barrel rolls, and weaving around in elegant dogfights. This is even better with the new Coral Sea map with a planes-only gametype.

Despite the great Battlefield experience, something is still lacking. After a good 7-8 hours gameplay I can really no longer be bothered. I understand that it's a download-only game and as such it has its limits, but the lack of more than 3 classes and no upgradeable or buyable weapons, along with there only being 3 original maps and one extra, the fun will run dry at some speed, despite the fun being plentiful. The theme is great, and the gametype works well, not to mention fighting on what seems to be a real battlefield with a thousand things going on at once, but they should make a 'full' version of this on disc, with the same - if not bigger - amount of classes as Bad Company, and THEN I believe it will be what CoD WaW could have been.

So in all it's what Battlefield should be aiming to be with a WWII setting, just painfully limited. Worth the 1200 points, but don't expect to be hooked for weeks. 6/10

Battlefield: Bad Company

Bad Company, like Fallout 3 before it, has absolutely dominated my Xbox for a while now so I might as well review it. In fact it's been a while since a multiplayer game has been so addictive...

The Battlefield franchise is hardly known to be a bad one. There have been loads of installments around for a long time, varying quite a lot with each one. The latest, instead of taking place in a real war eg. Vietnam, World War II is more similar to Battlefield 2, with a modern day war going on (only with the Chinese replaced with the Russians).

The single player campaign was not a bad experience, while it lacked in variety and a lot of features that FPS games need to really rise above other games of their ilk, it had many things hard to find in a lot of today's games. One of those things is decent, light-hearted comedy throughout. This is hardly to be expected in a war game, it has been pulled off very well, and as well as making you laugh it shows you that war is not always doom-and-gloom, to many it is just a job they have to endure for the sake of money - or in the case of these guys, getting out of trouble by serving their country - and that they will make light of it to keep it bearable. The characters have been made purposefully rememberable; anyone who has played the game through will be able to remember that Haggard is the dim-witted redneck who enjoys nothing else than blowing everything up, Sweetwater the bullied nerd always fighting with Haggard, Redford the classic tough black guy who doesn't care to joke around, and your charcter, Preston who plays the timid new guy who just plays along. In this way it works very cinematically and really pulls you into the storyline, however basic it is. The environments won't vary hugely but the destruction physics of the game really turn anywhere into a battlefield; walls will be blown to bits by rockets and grenades or crumble from heavy vehicles smashing into them, trees will collapse with impact, and all this is both hugely immersive, and brings a little more tactical approach to fighting with cover not being an infinite life-saver any more; so the trick is to keep moving. Another thing which I found made the game very immersive, though not usually a hugely important point with games, is the audio. I don't even mean the soundtrack; guns sound so incredibly life like that people should be forgiven for thinking a mob war is going on in your bedroom, explosion will make your ears ring and reloading has never sounded so satisfying.

Keep in mind that although the campaign isn't perfect, everything good about it is used in multiplayer, and THAT is close to perfect. In my opinion, CoD can suck it, THIS is the ultimate army shooter. Battlefield is known for its huge maps and large scale battles, and I find it hard to describe how much fun this is. The game type is Gold Rush, one not yet used in the Battlefield series and it's a lot of fun. There is a defending and an attacking team: the defenders must protect the gold by killing all the attackers, and the attackers must destroy four pairs of gold crates before being wiped out. This can last between 10 and 30 minutes and although it doesn't sound like a realistic warfare experience, the atmosphere certainly is. You have to use tactics and teamwork, and there's an armoury of vehicles and class upgrades that can be used in different ways to help your team. All this goes towards one massive, balanced multiplayer experience which you'll find yourself playing for hours on end. Don't pass up on this, this is one of the best multiplayer games I've yet seen of this generation.

Negatives for Bad Company have mainly been noted already, the campaign could have been improved with some different mission types (hate to say it but they could have taken a leaf out of CoD4's book and done a sniper mission) other than just the ordinary formula and one helicopter mission. It also didn't have co-op, which I think it really should have, it being a squad-based storyline, and it would have topped off the multiplayer brilliantly. Graphics also weren't diamond, even if the colour scheme made the environments beautiful. There's also something which stops it being an all-time 'best game ever' type, perhaps because of the rather generic modern warfare genre which can be improved and improved, but perhaps never perfected - though I suppose that's not what Modern Warfare fans say...

I give Bayyyyyyddddd Company an 8/10. It hasn't got everything but I would say anyone who does online gaming should buy this and give it a go, even if you're not an age-old fan of the Battlefield series. You'll be getting at least 30 hours out of this and I doubt very much you'll regret it.

Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is a real love-it-or-hate-it in the gaming community; although it is constantly criticised with the claim of being hugely repetitive to the point of considering suicide, it also is one of the biggest games to represent this gaming generation, in the same way Halo 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 and GTA IV have. It's a game everyone's bought or at least played and despite this it's still hated on.

I'll start with what I think really excelled in Creed. Let's be honest, even if as a whole it didn't offer an incredible gaming experience, the idea it is based on is fantastic, and the potential it had is huge. It's not your average Splinter Cell-type stealth assassination game (no discredit to Splinter Cell, it's a good franchise) and it really takes this genre of game to a new level. You don't have to silently walk through shadows, needing to wait for minutes on end for your target to get close enough for you to grab him and drag him into shadows. If you're seen, you're not instantly overwhelmed by a million enemies much stronger than you. No, you play the role of an actual medieval assassin; you take down your enemy wherever he is, even if he is in the middle of the street. This makes the whole game much more intense, whether you're trying to get him in the middle of a crowd so smoothly no one notices, or when you're being chased at full speed through streets or on top of buildings, using the incredible freerunning mechanic to hop from building to building, and climbing houses, mosques and churches. In this way, the game has been made superbly. The framerate is just about perfect, and every action is smooth as silk. The sword fighting is also a high point, and when you get good enough there's nothing like having a huge brawl with twenty guards on top of a building, elegantly dodging their attacks to return with graceful thrusts, and throwing others off the edge with gleeful satisfaction.

The game progresses with a variety of targets to be taken down to slowly reveal the secret of a Templar gem. The storyline really didn't capture me at all, as the cutscenes are really one of the parts that could have been worked on. They're hardly even cutscenes, you just stand in a room (you're able to move about and change the camera angle but that's it, you can't even skip them) listening to your contractor talk about who's next. The dull voice acting doesn't help...

This is where the reptitivity cuts in. To take down one target you need to scout out the area to find out more about him, this includes interrogating certain people, helping out an informer by killing someone for him, pickpocketing and eavesdropping. Sounds ok? It won't when you have to repeat this whole process for every single target in the storyline. Being an assassin during the Great Crusade is a great concept, but I'm sure assassins didn't go through an exact routine of conveniantly available recon missions before every victim was taken out. Needless to say this brings down the whole game to mediocrity I find; Ubisoft shouldn't have been so damn lazy when this could have excelled.

A final point to make is that this, as well as being an action/stealth game it's also set in huge sandboxes, as there are a few cities that you visit throughout the game: Damascus, Jerusalem, Acre and Masyaf (this is not really a city but a castle that the assassins operate from). Once all of these have been explored there is, in total, a huge area to work in. However, there is nothing to do! I'm not saying it should be an RPG but apart from the main missions that you HAVE to do, you have only to tediously find flags dotted around the place, and that's only if you're really desperate for the achievements (even I didn't lower myself). Finished the game? Well good luck having any fun apart from killing some guards, or civilians if you want to be a bastard.

I give Assassin's Creed an overall 6/10. It could have been absolutely amazing, as the combat and stealth was perfectly balanced, but horribly let down with easily avoidable traits.