Some time ago I have given up the habit of posting here trailers of the games I am waiting for. Partially because the added value of such a post is little to none (in other words, me telling you to watch out for upcoming interesting titles is not something particularly interesting), partially because some of those games turned out to be crap later on, and partially because such post is a promise that I will one day play this game and write about it on Barts News, which I manage to hold up until the playing part, but usually don't have time to write proper review and end up feeling guilty about it.
This is actually really hard - I love game trailers, they sometimes are way better than movie trailers. And there were two games recently that have captured my attention to the point where I was tempted to write about them here: Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. I have managed to resist temptation up until now, even though both have great trailers that you can see below (and they are unbelievably cool). Now that I have laid my hands on demos of both games, the latter one by Valve and the first one by Skullptura (sorry, I am not buying a game without trying it first), I have an excuse to share my initial impressions accompanied by trailers as well.
Dead Space trailer caught my eye due to excellent narration, great use of music and emotional content. While you may laugh at that last bit, I actually am quite prone to fall for a bit of the human touch in games and that includes damsel in distress cliche too, as long as it's well played out. I loved the display of USS Ishimura in space, I loved the ambient tune at the beginning and sad song later, and that huge alien thing rising over the spaceship hull with sun behind it was totally awesome.
As for the game, I have not played it a lot yet, but what I've seen so far was good, not ground-breaking, but solid. Good graphics, good use of lighting and mist to create atmosphere, interesting concept of holographic HUD being integral part of experience (so no pausing when player goes to inventory screen), some cool gameplay elements such as zero gravity fragments or dismembering enemies.
There are also some things that I didn't like too much. Ragdoll effects are completely rubbish and their lack of realism removes any sense of immersion whatsover (human corpses behave like they were really made of rags). There was not really that much of tension building, with first monster attacking openly about five minutes into game (some glimpses in shadow might be better, but I'm complaining). The following sequence with main protagonist being attacked in elevator was quite intense, though.
Later on the atmosphere is getting thicker and thicker, monster begin to be real threat, ammunition gets scarce... Yes, this game is scary when played alone at night. Yahtzee wasn't exactly kind to Dead Space in his videoreview, but I would say that it is a good game. Not without faults, but definitely a solid title worth checking - especially if survival horror is your thing.
And now for the second game with word "Dead" in its title...
I have been following the news on Left 4 Dead ever since first reading about it on Kotaku and downloaded the demo the minute it became available. I have spent couple hours playing and boy, did I enjoy it (whenever I didn't have networking problems, see below).
This game has Valve written all over it - the attention to detail is their trademark. Even the loading screen in form of the zombie flick poster is a neat touch:
Notice my name on the right :)
The gameplay is solid, especially on higher difficulty settings, where it poses just about the kind of challenge that will keep the player on the tip of their toes, without being impossible to beat. The AI Director system that Valve was loudly announcing is keeping the gameplay varied, but I had the impression that all that changed was the moments when the zombie horde would attack the group. I had the feeling that the game will throw packs of zombies at us not too often, but also will not allow players to have too much of a pause to catch their breath. On the other hand
The engine is the good old Half Life 2 engine and while some seem to bash it for being old, I think it does the job well enough. There's dynamic lightning, sufficient detail, reasonable amount of polygons, cool animations. Frankly, I do not see the need for better graphical engine for this game, not to mention that using something more advanced in terms of generated graphics would also decrease number of PC users that would enjoy the game - not a smart thing to do in case of an online game. There is a huge number of subtle visual clues and effects to further enhance the playing experience (told you it's Valve - their attention to details is legendary), but I have to say that in the middle of the action I am usually too busy to notice them and as for colour correction, it's totally lost on me, since as most men I am somewhat colour-blind.
Speaking of details, the characters will often comment on what's happening around them. Some pieces of in-game dialogue are brilliant and really serve to amplify the feeling of being a part of a zombie movie cast. As a recommendation for Left 4 Dead I can say that the week I played it was the first week since long time for me to spend playing other online shooter more than Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - and that is something.
Okay, that is not to say that the game is perfect - it is not. I totally hate how other players get highlighted when knocked down or when they have ventured too far from you - for me this totally undermines the otherwise good semblance of realism the game has. Three glowing purple silhouettes seen through the wall make the experience seem like, well, uh, a videogame. Sorry Valve, immersion goes out of the window.
The mechanism of finding new game sucks - why can't I see the list of servers and chose one based on, say, ping, like in the other games? I have seen many times the situation, where four players are waiting for long minutes, because game is happily looking for a dedicated server. Also, not sure about networking code, but when I played the game on some (probably, because there is no way to check it) distant server, the lag was making the infected run in a sketchy jumpy fashion, flickering and appearing suddenly right next to player. Obviously, this ended in player being deceased. Lags and lost connections spoil the overall impression.
So far the fun factor was really high and the game is on the whole very polished and enjoyable, I find it to be too expensive, however. To drop 45USD on this thing is not an easy decision, even more so if Valve doesn't iron out all the annoyances described above, especially networking code.
Other than me having a blast playing these games, they will probably add some fuel to the incoming final post on fear in videogames, so stay tuned!
This is actually really hard - I love game trailers, they sometimes are way better than movie trailers. And there were two games recently that have captured my attention to the point where I was tempted to write about them here: Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. I have managed to resist temptation up until now, even though both have great trailers that you can see below (and they are unbelievably cool). Now that I have laid my hands on demos of both games, the latter one by Valve and the first one by Skullptura (sorry, I am not buying a game without trying it first), I have an excuse to share my initial impressions accompanied by trailers as well.
Dead Space trailer caught my eye due to excellent narration, great use of music and emotional content. While you may laugh at that last bit, I actually am quite prone to fall for a bit of the human touch in games and that includes damsel in distress cliche too, as long as it's well played out. I loved the display of USS Ishimura in space, I loved the ambient tune at the beginning and sad song later, and that huge alien thing rising over the spaceship hull with sun behind it was totally awesome.
As for the game, I have not played it a lot yet, but what I've seen so far was good, not ground-breaking, but solid. Good graphics, good use of lighting and mist to create atmosphere, interesting concept of holographic HUD being integral part of experience (so no pausing when player goes to inventory screen), some cool gameplay elements such as zero gravity fragments or dismembering enemies.
There are also some things that I didn't like too much. Ragdoll effects are completely rubbish and their lack of realism removes any sense of immersion whatsover (human corpses behave like they were really made of rags). There was not really that much of tension building, with first monster attacking openly about five minutes into game (some glimpses in shadow might be better, but I'm complaining). The following sequence with main protagonist being attacked in elevator was quite intense, though.
Later on the atmosphere is getting thicker and thicker, monster begin to be real threat, ammunition gets scarce... Yes, this game is scary when played alone at night. Yahtzee wasn't exactly kind to Dead Space in his videoreview, but I would say that it is a good game. Not without faults, but definitely a solid title worth checking - especially if survival horror is your thing.
And now for the second game with word "Dead" in its title...
I have been following the news on Left 4 Dead ever since first reading about it on Kotaku and downloaded the demo the minute it became available. I have spent couple hours playing and boy, did I enjoy it (whenever I didn't have networking problems, see below).
This game has Valve written all over it - the attention to detail is their trademark. Even the loading screen in form of the zombie flick poster is a neat touch:
Notice my name on the right :)The gameplay is solid, especially on higher difficulty settings, where it poses just about the kind of challenge that will keep the player on the tip of their toes, without being impossible to beat. The AI Director system that Valve was loudly announcing is keeping the gameplay varied, but I had the impression that all that changed was the moments when the zombie horde would attack the group. I had the feeling that the game will throw packs of zombies at us not too often, but also will not allow players to have too much of a pause to catch their breath. On the other hand
The engine is the good old Half Life 2 engine and while some seem to bash it for being old, I think it does the job well enough. There's dynamic lightning, sufficient detail, reasonable amount of polygons, cool animations. Frankly, I do not see the need for better graphical engine for this game, not to mention that using something more advanced in terms of generated graphics would also decrease number of PC users that would enjoy the game - not a smart thing to do in case of an online game. There is a huge number of subtle visual clues and effects to further enhance the playing experience (told you it's Valve - their attention to details is legendary), but I have to say that in the middle of the action I am usually too busy to notice them and as for colour correction, it's totally lost on me, since as most men I am somewhat colour-blind.
Speaking of details, the characters will often comment on what's happening around them. Some pieces of in-game dialogue are brilliant and really serve to amplify the feeling of being a part of a zombie movie cast. As a recommendation for Left 4 Dead I can say that the week I played it was the first week since long time for me to spend playing other online shooter more than Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - and that is something.
Okay, that is not to say that the game is perfect - it is not. I totally hate how other players get highlighted when knocked down or when they have ventured too far from you - for me this totally undermines the otherwise good semblance of realism the game has. Three glowing purple silhouettes seen through the wall make the experience seem like, well, uh, a videogame. Sorry Valve, immersion goes out of the window.
The mechanism of finding new game sucks - why can't I see the list of servers and chose one based on, say, ping, like in the other games? I have seen many times the situation, where four players are waiting for long minutes, because game is happily looking for a dedicated server. Also, not sure about networking code, but when I played the game on some (probably, because there is no way to check it) distant server, the lag was making the infected run in a sketchy jumpy fashion, flickering and appearing suddenly right next to player. Obviously, this ended in player being deceased. Lags and lost connections spoil the overall impression.
So far the fun factor was really high and the game is on the whole very polished and enjoyable, I find it to be too expensive, however. To drop 45USD on this thing is not an easy decision, even more so if Valve doesn't iron out all the annoyances described above, especially networking code.
Other than me having a blast playing these games, they will probably add some fuel to the incoming final post on fear in videogames, so stay tuned!
