Built squarely upon the expectation that players probably want to see something different emerging within the RTS genre, Dawn of War 2 is as much hack-and-slash as it is tactical management. Squad sizes have been cut down and troop numbers diminished. There is no base-building anymore. You can almost hear Relic straining to force this Space-Marine-shaped peg into a Diablo-Rogue hole. It doesn’t fit. Not quite.
Although the idea behind this new direction is sound, no part of the game is furnished to the degree of excellence that we come to expect from Relic post-Company of Heroes. Promises of deeper relationships with the units, a tighter focus on combat, loot and character-levelling seem to have come up empty because there are so many ideas here that there seems to have been a sacrifice of substance.
The battles, all wonderful in their crimson-gore splendour, tend to play out in much the same way. Aside from the fact that you must repeatedly play on the same maps - with laborious boss fights marking the end of each one - the game supplies neither the terrain nor the variety of units to support deep strategic play. You’ll find yourself relying on the same few moves time after time and on top of this the levelling system has an emptiness to it that I just can’t put my finger on.
VERDICT: Fun in short bursts, but it’s not the RTS revolution we were hoping for.
Considering the mass of unexpected controversy that suddenly surrounded this game on release I felt I couldn't pass up reviewing The Path as soon as possible.
The game has so far - having only been released a couple of days ago - divided opinion so entirely that there have apparently even been calls for Valve to pull the game from Steam. You need only glance over certain internet discussions to see how the fiery, hate-propelled bandwagon may have started up and to observe the offence that has been caused to some people claiming that the game promotes paedophilia or rape.
Before I go into any detail of what the game actually consists of, let me lay straight where I feel the anger and discomfort in the community stems from.
Certain sections of The Path possibly contain allusions to rape. Depending on your mindset. The protagonists for the most part are very young girls. Those are the basic facts. However, (and it's a huge HOWEVER) I feel the game is being misunderstood. In the same way that an idiot may view a newspaper headline and immediately draw their own conclusions, I feel that some people aren't delving any deeper into the intentions of the developer, to read between the lines. The developer's reason for the creation of The Path was clearly not to make a 'rape simulator', a phrase that makes me shudder through it's inevitable misuse or, indeed, use at all. On the other hand, I feel that the developers haven't successfully dealt with the uncomfortable subject matter enough to deviate the attentions of the player from the most obvious of themes. The theme of physical abuse in the game is not based on anything solid or immediate. it's an idea that is drifting about on it's own without a simple plot to tie it to and I can see how some players may get the wrong impression. However -again- only an idiot would say that this game is solely about rape. Only a fool would conjure such a simplistic interpretation of the game. The developers, Tale of Tales, may have misfired, but you must understand where that misfire comes from.
The Path, if I were to pigeon-hole it into a genre, is an adventure game. The problem that many people will encounter -including myself- is that it's more of a statement than a game. It's a *deep breath* art game, a jumbled box of emotional responses that congeals into something not altogether savoury. It's an experience more than a game. If you hate it for any other reason than the bugs you encounter or the tedium of the controls, then the developers have succeeded in making you feel SOMETHING, in making you CONNECT with the game on an emotional level. The problem with it being such a statement of a game is that its true purpose is never revealed - or if you like, the statement isn't actually a statement.
Of course, it's still a game. Games don't need reasons to exist other than your own entertainment. The problem is, I will struggle to call The Path entertainment in the traditional sense. I will struggle at any length to find it's true purpose for existence, beside the fact that it seems to create such diverse reactions amongst its players. There is clearly something further that the developers want us to see or interpret for ourselves, but since so much of that message is concealed behind avant-garde, partly directionless, sometimes pretentious artiness, you may get put off before any consistent emotional bond is established with the characters or environment. If you want my advice: see it through.
It's one of the most inconsistent games I've played on so many levels and I have no idea whether the developers intended it to be. At times it's light and at times dark. It's adult and childish, morbid and gleeful, frightening and exciting, ugly and beautiful. Where it does remain consistent tends to be where it fails. It can be repetitive, tedious, glitchy and aimless depending on what you have come to expect from your computer games.
But I'll continue to explain the game...
The Path begins with a room. In this room are six girls, each dressed in red and each innocent in their youth and attire. Instantly, even if you have read nothing about the game prior to playing it, you'll see the connection to Little Red Riding Hood, but I won't go into the background and original folklore because this review is already long enough. However, if you are interested then Wikipedia is the place to go to see where the darkest of the themes presented here have originated from.
Clicking on one of the girls in the room will select her as your protagonist for the next chapter of the game. And so it begins. Starting at the crumbled edge of a paved highway, you are left facing a single dirt track with dense woodland converging on either side of it. You have a basket that consists of goodies for Grandma and which also doubles as an inventory. Nothing in it is usable and it serves only as a receptacle for objects and memories.
Your options are to get to Grandma's house directly (which takes about two minutes at a trot) or wander from the path.
This is where the initial problems with the game may arise for some people. It's a free-form experience in the purest sense. There are no goals or objectives (despite the developer's attempts to parody video game achievement systems). You do as you please. You explore and encounter whatever draws your attention.
This aimless approach to play can destroy someone's interest immediately. 'Where do I go?' is the first question you'll inevitably ask yourself. On my first go I took a deep breath and turned right, heading into the uninviting shade of the trees.
The second question you'll ask yourself is 'what do I do?'. In my own experience as I wandered between the imposing trunks, I was captivated by things in the distance that were either interesting locations or manifestations of my imagination. It was amazing how many times I thought I glanced movement or a figure in the distance only to realise I seen nothing at all. Without giving anything away, because I feel an uninformed introduction to the game is the best way to play it, within the forest you will encounter items and scenes and wolves.
Many of these points of interest have markers placed around the edge of your screen so you're never entirely stuck for new things to explore. Every hundred metres you travel also causes a dotted 'treasure map' to appear briefly as an overlay so you'll usually have a rough idea of your position in the game world too. You also may be aware at times that if you leave the controls alone the character may run over to something and interact with it. It's an interesting mechanic but it's limitations are obvious within the game and can even become an annoyance when you were simply stopping to get your bearings.
In total there are three different wolves to discover within the forest and each one has a certain effect on a selected girl. These encounters can vary in subject matter and you can take them any way you like, as I mentioned above. Inevitably, however, after each encounter you'll awaken dishevelled in the centre of the path. Then you get up and walk -excruciatingly slowly- towards grandma's house and the girl's inevitable death.
I think this is where I struggle to interpret the game correctly because with each girl, up to a point, you may begin to create notions of her past life, her troubles and whimsies built upon by your experiences in the woods. To have these assumptions cut short at the end of each chapter with death can be jarring because it often doesn't follow on from the existence you may have been concocting in your head. However, that's a literal interpretation and, much like those who call 'rape' following each wolf encounter, I'd be foolish to assume that each death was anything other than a metaphor for something more meaningful. What that meaning was though, I was never entirely sure.
I found that the more I played the game, the more I liked it. Depending on how far you explore with each girl, you'll likely pick up different aspects of their characters or begin to form vague ideas about their past and what has led to their demise, metaphorical or literal. Ginger's experience in particular had the biggest effect on me. Without giving too much away, the wolf you encounter isn't quite what you may expect it to be and -I'm sorry- going back to my initial comments regarding physical abuse in the game, this contains no pointers towards such a grisly fate. If anything, unless you take it in a ham-fisted literal way, it simply points to the loss of friendship, desertion and loneliness. It's a joyful, light-hearted experience and one of the The Path's finest moments.
For the most part, the art design is fantastic (when it isn't self-indulgent enough to force itself upon you). The daydream atmosphere of the forest and the sudden feeling that you may have strayed too far from the path adds to the proceedings an uneasiness that also permeates throughout the entire game. Even the somewhat tedious ventures through Grandma's house still hold a degree of uncertainty and fear since the experience differs each time you enter it.
The sound design can also be quite effecting, becoming more intense every time you begin to run. Coupled with various uncomfortable sounds of laughter or growling you may find yourself having to sit a little closer to the edge of your seat. There are also some nice touches with music, although it can become more than a little grating after long periods of play.
In a way, I recommend going into the Path without reading anything about it beforehand, which obviously defeats the point of this review, although I purposefully tried only to describe the heart and soul of the game without poking at the actual flesh of the gameplay. To venture into it with no preconceptions and interpret each interaction in your own way is likely to get you the most from the game. It will undoubtedly create divided opinions between those who bore/offend easily and those who are fascinated by games that do things differently.
The fact that I'm almost on the fence regarding this game seems to leave me in a strangely unique position. In some ways I feel the developers have aimed too high, I feel the game can be tedious, pretentious and dull too frequently. In other ways I think it can be a mesmerising experience if played with an open mind whilst attempting to relate to the girls. I feel certain themes have been developed with a heavy hand but conversely some parts, such as the joy of watching the girls interact with the environment, can bring to the surface thoughts and feelings that anyone who was once a child can relate to.
Honestly, this is the toughest review I think I've ever done and that can only be due to something the game is doing right as much as it is about what the game is doing wrong. As such, I must recommend that every gamer with even an inkling of curiosity at least gives it a go as whether it's loved or hated by gamers or critics alike, I don't think anyone can deny that it's an interesting, controversial and perhaps important step for computer gaming. VERDICT: An intriguing attempt to try something different. A game that almost isn't a game, but something I would recommend everyone plays. As a piece of art though, it often fails.
To check out an entirely different perspective on the game and one that turned my stomach with its sensationalist content, I recommend taking a look at Alex Lucard's review on Diehard GameFAN alongside playing the game and drawing your own conclusions. I feel I have to link to this because his review made me desperate to sit down and write my own feelings on the matter.
Right, well, I had planned a bigger post for tonight, but as it turns out, I'm drunk, it's 2 o'clock in the morn and I have a plane to catch tomorrow... or today. That's right. I'm off on holiday. To the Gambia. So I actually have an excuse for not posting in the next week.
As I said, I was planning a larger post because the world of PC gaming is going practically bonkers with fun-filled frills at the moment, but as it is I'll leave you with this.
Secondly, emailed to me was a copy of so-absurdly-ambitious-it-has-to-be-fantastic-or-crap, Incognito: Episode 1 (thanks to Magrathean Technologies) which I will get into reviewing as soon as I return to England, just like all those other things I promised to write about but haven't...
Whilst I wait for my thoughts on the Empire: Total War demo to digest, I thought I'd show you a prime example of how not to make a first-person shooter, or you could say how not to make a scripted scene, or even a demo, or a game in fact. All of these things apply when relating to the recently released NecroVisioN demo.
It's a given that certain games can feel a bit generic - a bit rushed - as if developers are waiting for a particular gaming craze to surface so that they can push their game into the midst of it in the hope of watching it sail along with the crowd. The Farm 51, creators of NecroVisioN, certainly haven't struggled to deliver what we as consumers see as run-of-the-mill gaming. Innovation is certainly a no-no when you're looking to flog the latest brainless shooter. The only thing pushing the boundaries here is the shift from a WWII setting to that of The Great War. Everything else is present. Zombies, Germans, melee action, dodgy cockney accents... Hell, yes.
It also looks like Painkiller's turn-of-the-century love-child.
Of course, I'm always of the mind that no matter how traditional a game's setting or mechanics may be, as long as they are implemented well I will be contented. The problem is, with NecroVisioN, everything you do is a slower version of something else. Stabbing enemies with a bayonet is akin to poking a wet flannel with your finger. Even moving around is like pushing your way through a marshmallow-filled void. That last bit makes no sense, but just try it for yourself. Or don't.
Regardless of all the above, the demo features a three-minute cutscene which has you staring at a dying mockney ally as he delivers a morbidly dull exposition. It takes so long that you begin focusing on everything you hate about games and realising that NecroVision ticks a lot of things in that list. The animation is awful, the voice-acting makes me dizzy and, by fuck, I just want to shoot things now.
So I took the liberty to record the whole thing. As you'll see, by the end of the clip, I couldn't have risked the boring bastard not ending his own life so I did it myself. Anyone who watches it that far though may want to investigate how it is that their lives became so empty, just like I have.
Okay, it's genuinely not often that I get this excited about the release of a game, particularly the release of a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a game. However, today we can rejoice as the Empire: Total War demo hits the interwebs, exclusively available to download via Steam. My nerd levels are fluctuating violently, I'm salivating like a rabid dog and all of a sudden I need to go to the toilet.
Currently I'm downloading the game through my molasses-slow BT internet connection -fuck you, BT. No, really, fuck you- and I'll provide an update of my experiences when I'm through playing it.
I've recently made a sort-of-promise to myself that I won't use this site to publish news on top-end commercial games mainly because there are bigger sites that will do that better, but what the hell. I needed to voice my stupid, nerdy excitement somewhere and this, being a PC gaming blog, is the perfect place to do that.
It's possibly the game I've been most anticipating this year and almost certainly one that will see me through til the end of it if nothing better comes along. So lock up your daughters, or at least your female offspring who have a particular interest in historical real-time strategies. Empire has arrived.
Updates to follow... and a mess in my pants... probably.
In honour of the imminent release of The Penumbra Collection this month, the developers of the series, Frictional Games, have been kind enough to answer a few questions regarding their impressive back catalogue. For those of you who aren't aware, the Penumbra series of games combine elements of horror, survival, puzzling and storytelling in equally compelling measures.
Frictional's Sound Director, Jens Nilsson and Lead Programmer, Thomas Grip provide the answers...
Much of the gaming media hailed the Penumbra series as a reinvention of the adventure genre. Was this your intention when you were creating the games?
No! We only wanted to make a survival horror game with less violence, more puzzle solving and exploration as gameplay elements. We never really viewed it as an Adventure game and we had a hard time understanding some problems we had early on when trying to communicate with the Publishers/Press when releasing Overture. They all seemed to think the game was a point-and-click adventure game and we thought it was obvious this was a first person horror game – having previously released the Penumbra Tech Demo.
For the creation of a psychological-horror game, how do you gauge whether something is likely to be scary? Fear in the Penumbra games doesn't tend to come from cheap frights so much as a build up of tension, or even a lack of anything occurring. Is it hard to tell whether you've hit the right mark for the scares during development?
It's really hard. We have all the ideas and we do all the design, then when we implement it you never get the feeling that “oh, this is really scary stuff”. You always have the problem of having faith in that it will be scary for the actual player later on. Even in testing it is not easing the worry about not being scary, the people testing are never like a 'normal' player so they don't think the game is scary either. For them it is only a job so to speak, so they don't really set their mind to the right mood.
We try to keep it simple, ask ourselves what we think is scary and what sort of horror we enjoy and then try to create that as well as we can. Spending a lot of time analysing and thinking about what it is that we like and why/how that feeling is created.
Overture was criticised for the combat mechanics which were then removed completely from the sequel, Black Plague. Do you look to player and media response for guidance in the development of your games or was the combat something you were already not fond of? Did the subsequent changes get in the way of your initial vision for the series?
The whole idea with the episodic format was from the beginning to be able to take the feedback from the first game and adjust in the second and then again adjust in the third. It only got to be two episodes so we didn't get that third chance to adjust the game further based on the feedback.
With Overture we really wanted to make sure there was a last line of defence for the player, a weapon to use when in a tight spot. We tried really hard to make the combat difficult and cumbersome so that the player would seek out other solutions as a first choice, the problem was that we didn't expect the need of the player to hit things when they get something to hit with to be that strong! This in combination with how the combat was handled to be made difficult was perhaps not the best, there might be other ways to do a game with weapons but yet keeping them at a very low usage rate. We have some ideas that we are to explore in the next project!
The changes we made didn't really change the vision for us, on the topic of the weapons, removing them was not a big issue for us. That particular change was more welcome than anything as it changed the game more towards our goals of minimal player violence in a horror game.
The puzzles in the games generally have practical, believable solutions, such as reading a manual to get a generator up and running or spreading your weight over thin ice. Were you intentionally trying to steer away from the abstract puzzle solutions that you typically tend to find in adventure games?
Yes, we always wanted to have hands on, believable solutions to the puzzles. When the physics turned out to work so well for controlling doors, drawers and such we also started to try and come up with practical puzzles, that could be solved with a mix of items and physics usage. The idea with having believable solutions was to further enhance the players feeling of being part of the game, using physics and believable items to make the gameplay more hands on and exciting.
What were your reasons behind going for a puzzle-centric expansion with Requiem?
We had finished the Penumbra series with Black Plague and there was an opportunity to do an expansion, with less budget and development time than a full game. We discussed a couple of options of what would be possible to do as an expansion, basically we had two ideas. One was to re-use most levels and content from Black Plague but to play as a different character. The other was to do a puzzle game with much more new content, where we had levels with concentrated puzzles and everything made with physics to really try and explore how far you could go with physics in game. We decided to go with the second idea as we really felt that would be the most fun to create, be more exciting for us as it would be more new grounds to explore and solve and also that the end user would get more actual new content and gameplay for their 10 USD.
I understand that you're keeping a tight lid on the development of your currently untitled next project. Are there any details you are willing to give out?
We have been working on the game for over a year. At first only at around 10%, with ongoing discussions and early planning of the project, since around May 2008 at about 40-50% and since September 2008 we have been almost 100% concentrating on the new project.
The engine has been revamped and improved in all areas possible, tools and editor have been developed, the graphical style of the game has been tested and discussed and of course the whole design has been hammered on.
We are now at a point where everything is planned, the idea is settled, we know how the game will look and how the technology is ready to be used for implementing it all. It's very exciting as we have not had so well developed tools before, we used to only have 1 programmer in the company working full-time, but now we have had two and one has been working solely on tool/editor development. This will, hopefully, result in a game where we can concentrate a lot on making much more fun and intriguing content due to saving so much time we previously spent on the implementation of it all.
The game itself will be a 18th century survival horror experience, where you as the player will explore and old castle to learn its mysteries and unravel its terrors. There is no connection to Penumbra, it’s a brand new game and idea but much of the gameplay will be similar. There are the physics, exploring and damp ambience but there will also be a bit more interaction with enemies and continued efforts from our side to explore how to tell stories and to make a fluent gameplay.
The Nordic Game Program has provided you with a grant of 300,000 DKK (around 35,000 GBP) for the new project. Recent titles to benefit from this funding include Kloonigames' recent hit, Crayon Physics Deluxe. In the future are we likely to see a much larger quantity of Nordic games entering the mainstream markets for the rest of the world?
Hopefully! If we recall correctly the NGP funding will continue until 2012, each year with two events where funding are up for grabs. Usually 5-6 games gets funding per event, so it should result in a nice collection of additional titles that has the opportunity to get finalized and released. The funding is usually not enough to develop the whole game, but enough to get the technology and content developed so far that it is possible for a prototype to be created and demoed.
It's a great opportunity for developers to get enough money to try out their ideas and it is really good for them to be able to show either a publisher that they have the idea and competence to do a game, or come so far that they are confident they can on their own finalize and sell the game.
You know how games are generally tiresome, dull affairs that are more likely to bore you stiff than entertain you? No? Well, regardless, there are ways to enliven your experiences within these 'electronic worlds' that will help pass the time until you thankfully have to wash the dishes or wash your armpits or wash the dog or something.
In particular, you may not realise that there is a way to actually have fun whilst playing your fourth favourite post-apocalyptic RPG of all time - Fallout 3. And that way is... to hurt your friends!
Do you hate the way the characters in this game speak hammy lines like emotionless androids? Then give them a hefty right-hook!
Do you despise the combat engine with all it's stop-start repetition and heads that slide off bodies as if they were held on by wet sellotape? Then punch them in the face!
Laugh as your teacher and classmates tumble to the floor and then get right back up again like nothing happened! Feel your sides split as you incur no consequences at all for beating down your fellow vault-dwellers!
Honestly, after leaving Vault 101, I felt even more disappointment than the usual 'what the fuck have Bethesda done with the Fallout licence?' guff. Where do I go from here? What can possibly excite me more than murdering everyone in my childhood home with my bare fists (apart from the ones that just wouldn't bastard die)?
I'm a man on a mission and that mission is to destroy everyone in this world... with my knuckles. Will I succeed or can I not be bothered to? Only time can tell and, in Fallout 3 - if nothing else - there's a whole load of that.
'Playing Metal Gear Solid 4 was the most fun I’ve had in my life but sometimes I caught myself feeling guilty for using a combination of tranquilizer gun, strong arsenal and the NV mod...' - Anon, The Sixth Axis
If ever I think one of my reviews is leaning towards the realm of unerringly applauding fanboy, I look towards this Metal Gear Solid 4 review and realise that I'm not quite there yet.
If only half the passion this person had could be put towards some sort of charitable purpose, I think we'd all be living in a better, happier world. Never before have I seen such overtly hyperbolic sentences. Never since have I witnessed such strenuous attempts to evade realistic criticism of a game. I think we can all learn something from looking at this review, if only that we should never read or write anything like it ever again. Not that you could easily replicate something of this particular standard of writing... It reminds me of the beauty of words in the same way that a freshly-coiled turd reminds me of the miracle of life.
Dyson is beautiful. Not in the classic, photo-realistic, multitude-of-polygons way that so often permeates critical analyses of games, but in a more poetic sense of the word. There is beauty in the way it moves, the way it sounds. There's beauty too in the way it influences the player, the calming effect it has. It could almost be a form of meditation.
Am I getting carried away? Perhaps. But there is something truly refreshing about the way this game plays and the way it feels to play it. Just look at it:
Created in a single month for entry into the TIGSource Procedural Generation competition, Dyson is a real-time strategy set in space. The premise is unusual though - no starships or evil galactic emperors here. You start off with an asteroid inhabited by Dyson trees and your only objective is to spread their growth across asteroid belts by utilising their seedlings and firing them off into the ether to capture further ground. It sounds a bit wacky admittedly, but once you get a grasp of the rather simple control system it all becomes completely natural.
Without going into to much detail -because you'll pick it up quicker by playing the game than reading this- some trees attack and some trees defend. Defence-trees shoot out homing spike-balls to destroy incoming foes and attack-trees produce the seedlings mentioned above. All asteroids in a level provide different quantities of three resources. Energy determines the size your seedlings will grow to, Speed determines their speed of movement and Strength determines the attack power they will have when fully grown. Simple and effective, but strategically open too.
Looks good? Too good? Well, have no fear, there is bad news too. No multiplayer is planned at the moment for the game, which is a great shame as the AI can certainly have it's moments and I would love to battle it out with someone in such a unique setting. But still, I will complain no more. At the moment you can download the game here and, for free, it's an absolute steal. Get on it.
Working along the same lines as Trials 2, your objective is to travel - in a monster truck this time - from one end of an obstacled course to the other within a time limit. It's physics-based, foolish fun. Taking place on a familiar two-dimensional plane via the above-average three-dimensional graphics engine, it's something that fans of Red Lynx will likely snap up without a second's consideration. However, I would like to issue a word or two of caution...
Monster trucks plus jumps plus stunts plus physics plus nitro-boosts should amount to a game that is more fun than this actually is. It's a good distraction for sure, as long as you're content with racing the same twenty-something tracks repeatedly in order to gain medals through faster finishing times, but MTN slips below the addictive, biker-maming pleasure that was apparent with Red Lynx's previous product. Although a faster and more fluid game than its predecessor, it's in the lack of features that the problems lie (not to mention the unforgivable omission of a broken bone counter).
I will detail the issues in a way that the developers will surely appreciate:
3 There are no online leaderboards to spur you on once you hit gold for each course, so there's no reason to go back to them besides competing with yourself. This sort of thing can only provide so much entertainment, particularly when many of the fastest times are set due to good fortune on the track rather than the product of skilful precision.
2 The front-flips and back-flips that can be performed by the trucks are a simple pleasure and seem to serve little purpose other than to slow you down mid-air and evoke a cheer from an invisible crowd. Something as simple as a boost on landing a trick would have added another strategic layer for squeezing out the best times, but as it is I managed to play through the entire game without somersaulting once.
1 For the love of all that is holy, please provide us with a track editor for this game! I can only imagine what this could become with a huge community following, swapping tracks and time trials. There's a scope for complex and varied maps that just isn't expanded on satisfactorily in the game. Go! So, there you have it. It should be more exciting, the scale bigger, the jumps faster and it lacks the maming of a computerised puppet every time you accidentally (or purposefully) fail a jump. Perhaps if there were explosions and fireworks every time you made a wrong move it would be more appealing, but as it is, MTN sits firmly in the middle ground awaiting evolution and expansion.
I can only hope that Red Lynx will see to updating this game with some simple adjustments in the near future because the bare bones of a classic indie time-waster are present. They just need to be expanded on or, dare I say it, broken in several places...
VERDICT: Currently at half-price on Steam, it's worth a pop.
It's not easy for me to explain the pleasure I get from playing Sid Meier's second incarnation of Railroads! without sounding like the kind of person who sits at train stations on cold weekend mornings with a hot flask and a notepad. But the thing that differentiates this game from other rail simulation/strategy games is that it feels more like a child's toy than anything else.
The strategic elements only go so deep, having been stripped down to concentrate on fast-paced business rivalries and building up your empire. The focus is on creating an efficient, profitable business without sacrificing too much of your cash or shares in the process, but never ventures far into the realms of micro-management and train nerdery. And believe me, when you first connect up two cities in the beginning of a game you'll get an instant feeling of gratification, watching the little thing puffing backwards and forwards, loading and unloading, transporting its cargo across the map and you'll realise that this one line will eventually lead to an entire cross-country network of bustling freighters and switching signals, of booming cities and… now I'm beginning to sound like an anorak.
But it is truly interesting to watch. The land deforms like soft clay to accommodate your track as you lay it down as simply as clicking where you want it to begin and where it should end. The route finder will do the rest, excavating hills or cutting through the larger ones with tunnels and constructing magnificent bridges over waterways. It leaves you to worry about battling the competition and not the interface.
The game is split into various campaigns across America, carrying through from the first steam-driven locomotives to the speedier modern age. It's a history lesson for sure, but its subtlety is remarkable. As your business grows and time moves on, you'll notice that cities have changed depending on your interactions with them. They'll expand and evolve, the wooden shacks will be replaced with concrete skyscrapers and new technology will arrive to quicken your transportation of goods. Cities will swell and you'll have moved from steam to electric-powered in a couple of hours, but it's almost seamless. Throughout this transformation you'll wonder how the land used to look in the past, when you laid that first piece of track and how on Earth you've come so far.
At its heart, Railroads! is a simple management sim. Your primary objective is to destroy all competing rail tycoons via the transportation of goods and people. Various places on the map provide certain resources such as meat or wheat or trees and, if you manage to link these up to a city where the relevant industry is present, you'll begin to make some profit from the goods. Processing trees at a paper factory for example, will give that settlement a sustainable quantity of paper, which you can then turn into newspapers if you build the right factory or transport it to somewhere with a printing house.
When you're not fighting with your opponents for resources on the map, you'll be fighting them in the auction houses, bidding for new rail patents or industries. Couple these basic mechanics with the usual Meier™ victory conditions and you've got enough on your plate to make for a very busy meal.
So, ultimately, Railroads! is a weekend waster which should suck you in after just a few minutes of tutorial. It's best described as an arcade Railroad Tycoon and shouldn't be criticised for not being anything more. It's certainly not a stupid game, with enough underhand tactics and tricks you can employ to swing the game in your favour, but the strategic elements may be too simplistic for some and the game does tend to become a bit of a slog once you've amassed enough of a yearly turnover to demolish your opponents. But for those who have always wanted a model railway in their attic but never fancied admitting it to their partner/friends/parents it's one to have a look at.
It's a white nothingness. White walls, white ceilings and white floors. You run along them, you jump about, you fall... you repeat. It's like limbo, that uncomfortable transition between normality and heaven, except here it's also a transition between the roof of a skyscraper and the ground below. It's repetition, repeated over and over again. Again. It's as beautiful as it is blinding and as stupid as it is clever.
Mirror's Edge simulates the sensation of parkour on your computer monitor. It's innovative and strikingly fun at times. But then, conversely, it's sloppy and evokes feelings of despair. The bad story, the awful enemies. Shoe-horning tired FPS mechanics into this game is like taking the time to nurture the most beautiful white dove before slicing its wings off and throwing it out of a window.
It's a blessing then, that the time trials are where the true fun is to be had. No shit enemies, no poor plot, just you bettering yourself again and again. The repetition's there, but it's fun now. You take your time and learn the courses, watching the clock and honing your skills and then you realise what it could have been...
It's a great game, but it's a bad game.
VERDICT: Worth playing for what it could have been.
So, as the memories of last year's mostly mediocre high-profile releases crumble away into a fine, forgotten dust - one that is briskly swept aside by this year's promising big guns - most gaming websites are looking to the future, trying to scope out what the next World of Goo will be or wondering who can better Braid*. We want to know what indie treat we'll be able to feast upon in the coming months, that we can proudly hold aloft and say "What ho! Take that major developers!" and we'll all feel very proud of ourselves because it's the game critics equivalent of walking up to a marvelously intelligent and attractive homeless person in the street and screaming out "This guy is just fantastic! He's a real good egg!" and then walking away.
Well, you might have seen recently that IGN claim to have already found their Holy Grail of indie-pop for the year. Crayon Physics Deluxe, you may have read, is rather good. But I'll be willing to argue that it isn't great. It's new and interesting, but it doesn't spark that flame that was lit when you clobbered your first raptor with a mace attached to the rear of your jeep in Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. It doesn't tickle that fancy in the same way that realising your Tremors-based fantasies did in Death Worm. Despite it's beautiful appearance and crafty puzzling, the magic is missing somewhere.
But I'm not posting here to discuss the pros and cons of Crayon Physics Deluxe. I'm here to announce a plan to create the world's greatest, praise-inducing, indie classic for 2009 myself, with my own head. Not only that, but I'm going to take it to the masses, to some of the greatest indie developers of our time to see if they are willing to create a work of such blinding genius, or at least approve of its creation. Okay, so to begin with I need ideas that involve some or all of the following: originality, absurdist humour, a political message and more importantly, physics.
Check back for some mind-blowing synopses...
*Yes, I know Braid hasn't been released for PC yet, but it's been such a long time coming, all the anticipation has dissipated because we all know how good it is. Plus, I've already played it on 360.
Considering the current economic climate, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Dead Pixel Post has been put into administration, that its loyal labourers have downed tools and headed back home to their wives, their heads hung low, their pockets empty and hearts heavy.
You might be thinking that if Woolworths went down the pan - England's greatest one-stop-shop for penny chews and bargain-bin CD singles - then why not too your favourite internet reading site as well? What's to stop that from occuring?
What would it be like, looking back as the factory gates swung shut for the final time and a young orphan child, his face blackened with chimney soot, raised one finger towards the iron sign?
'D-Dedd...' he would whisper slowly. 'Um... Pick-sell... P-P-Poast'
And I would follow where that finger pointed and, with my own eyes witness the irony of it all.
'Well, she is truly dead now.'
As the new year pokes its ugly head around the door of our wintery discontent we let out a sigh, not of relief for the coming of better times, but of our begrudging acceptance that nothing will change. It's a world of armed conflict, of grudges and death, capitalism and human rights infringements.
And through all that, you can't help but think: Still though, at least we've got fucking computer games.
Or at least that's how I go about about ignoring world events and my responsibilities as a human being.
Oh, and you can put down that razor blade. The Dead Pixel Post is open for business. And, yes, I'm well-aware that any reader-base I may have built up is now squandered on lesser, more shit blogs. My advice: flee them! come back and read this, if ever you existed. It's much better. Even if it was like the father that was never there. Or the one that would beat you when he was...
I've been a bad daddy. There will be only cuddles and kisses from now on.
Here's an interesting look at what started off the whole motion-capture scene in gaming and, more importantly, the fantastically original (original) Prince of Persia games. Taped by the older brother, Jordan Mechner, you can have the pleasure of watching a genius at work and... a little boy running around in his pajamas.
1up recently posted this and it's too good a piece of late eighties gaming nostalgia to miss. Just to know what came of it all and how we are where we are now. If you're interested in what the hell is going on, Metchner made these videos so that he could render the pixels in the game as an entirely lifelike and groundbreakingly fluid game character. It was a technical marvel at the time and if you haven't previously been aware of it's existence or are just after a nostalgia kick in the nuts then check out this fancy browser-based remake.
The new Prince of Persia game is to be released soonish and if it's anywhere near as entertaining as watching this footage then it will be a great game. Oh, I know... it'll probably just be okay...
Just a quick post to disclose what's on the blogging agenda for next week as I'm entirely bogged down with playing these games. I know, life is awful...
You can grab both of the demos via the links below:
There's going to be a lot more reviewing over the coming weeks due to the massive influx of games at the moment, but I'll try and keep up with the occasional news snippet. Stay tuned for fun with percentages...
So as the day on which Bethesda unleashes Fallout 3 into our lives inches closer, I figured it's time to reflect on what our PC gaming brothers and sisters of the netherworld might be anticipating at around this point in their own time-line. You know, them over there in their fancy-schmance alternate universe where they'll probably have computer monitors implanted into their eyeballs by now or something. Oh and Fallout 3 would have been developed by Black Isle Studios, the creator of all those credible and incredible RPGs. Still, I'm not here to have a dig at Fallout 3 (or the parallel plains of existence), because from this point on I will not pass judgement until I have played the thing. Plus, PC Gamer magazine did reward it with 90% in this month's edition, citing it as 'worthy of the name' so there must be something there. I have faith. I will endeavour to look positively upon this game.
Anyway, right back on the point. Thinking about all this reminded me of the tech demo created way back when, prior to the Black Isle project being cancelled. It was released about a year or so ago onto the interweb as a playable version. The project was called Van Buren and, at the time of cancellation, the developers had completed 95% of the engine, 75% of the dialogue and at least 50% of the maps. The engine used to create the demo was one originally designed by Black Isle for the creation of Baldur's Gate 3. Of course, this never transpired either due to the development team being disbanded. It's a depressing thought that so much work can go into such a worthwhile project to just have it cease and be dispelled into the ether.
Well, if nothing else it is an interesting nugget of gaming history and, having never played it before, I'm going in, hard and fast. Prepare the interspatial-molecularnisational warp-gate, captain!...
...Ouch. Well, that was a painful and fairly nostalgic experience. No... it didn't go particularly well. I was going to create a character properly, but then I discovered that if you make a female player character she's all naked. So I made her fat, gave her a white afro and called her Derek Balls. She proceeded to die after my first encounter with a ruffian and then glided around the map on her stomach. I think I'll hand this over to someone smarter. Thanks to No Mutants Allowed for this wonderful montage:
Every time a trailer is released for Alan Wake I have even less of an idea of what this game is all about, or how it will play. Still, it's very cinematic and Remedy can surely be trusted not to release a bad game what ten, twenty years after announcing it?
Still, dead wife, secluded town, main character's an author. It's all so Stephen King. No, it actually is almost identical to the synopsis of his book, Bag of Bones. I remember reading it when I was about fifteen. Here's the plot introduction on Wikipedia:
"After the sudden death of his wife Jo, author Mike Noonan is plagued by writer's block, with his dreams haunted by the summer house he shared with her, he reluctantly decides to return to the isolated lakeside retreat."
Copyright infringement or not, this pre-release teasing has gone on for far too long for me to be truly excited about this game. Still, may as well check it out anyway...
Regardless of what some people may think, The Dead Pixel Post wishes to encourage peace, love and understanding just as much as it does cynicism and loathing. In fact, it wishes to encourage it so much that it's sprouted an extra, wholly unobtrusive tool in the sidebar there. Indeed, you can now see the most recent comments displayed by your kind selves to the right of the page. Isn't it breathtaking in all it's glory?
The intention of this spontaneous new limb is to get people talking. So, if you hold any sort of opinion on any post made on the site then you now have the power to hang it up for all to see. Alternatively, if you see an already made comment you disagree with, take the time to formulate a dashingly witty retort. Agree with something? Go ahead and pummel that keyboard with your unrestrained man-love. Not a man? Let us know.
According to IGN PC, Epic Games have announced a "major expansion" for Unreal Tournament 3. I assume this move is to protect the flagging sales of the latest addition to the series due to the game being overlooked in place of more forward thinking multiplayer experiences (namely Team Fortress 2 and CoD 4).
A little defensively it seems, Epic's Vice President Mark Rein told Eurogamer that they were working "on a major expansion to Unreal Tournament 3 that we expect will excite and grow our UT3 customer base which, incidentally, now numbers over a million units sold-through world-wide." Methinks the [developer] doth protest too much...
The mention of UT3 has actually reminded me of my bafflement at the way they shoe-horned a single-player campaign into the game. It made no sense at the time and it still make no sense to me now. I can only hope that this expansion they're planning will include a full league-based singleplayer deathmatch campaign with teams transfers, injuries and tournament matches. Everything they should have included in UT3 in place of that nonsense about a war and field lettuce generators.
The DPP is a blog dedicated to providing PC gaming news and reviews from a consumer's perspective, focusing primarily on the indie scene. If you have any suggestions for content (review codes, trailers, screenshots etc.) then don't hesitate to contact me at manintheshack (at) gmail.com
All of the awesome reviews contained within this blog are extracted from gameplay on a Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz CPU with 6GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 4890 running Windows 7. The rubbish reviews can be ignored.
Built squarely upon the expectation that players probably want to see something different emerging within the RTS genre, Dawn of War 2 is as much hack-and-slash as it is tactical management. Squad sizes have been cut down and troop numbers diminished. There is no base-building anymore. You can almost hear Relic straining to force this Space-Marine-shaped peg into a Diablo-Rogue hole. It doesn’t fit. Not quite.
