Ok so before I go on I have a confession to make, back last year I was going quite mad over the release of Prototype. I was genuinely excited about the game and the sand box possibilities that the game had. I really couldn’t wait to play it. But as I was skint uni student at the time and then people saying it wasn’t that great. I never got to play Prototype and still haven’t to this day. I Know it is a bit pathetic and I do plan to get it as one of my next games even though it has been slated a bit.

The fantastic thing though is that I do have plenty of time to play the game. A week last saturday was the Spike TV Video Game Awards in the US (or VGA’s for short). and a couple of announcements were made at the ceremony. Prototype 2 was announced at the VGA’s meaning that despite the not so hot reviews of the first game Radical Entertainment are going forth with the second installment in the franchise.

Not much is know about the game thus far. We do know that we are going to have to wait till the year of the olympics to get our hands on Prototype 2. So about 2012 we will see the game come to home consoles. But don’t fret because a teaser trailer has been released, which tells us quite a lot about how the story is going to pan out.

What I already like about this game is the fact you are out to destroy the protagonist from the first game, that is a nice touch that games don’t really do lately. True Fist Of The North Star let you unlock the main bad guy Raoh and his story was just to destroy everyone. But this seems quite in-depth, and to have a whole game dedicated to ending the hero of the first game something I am liking a lot. But will he finish his mission? Or will he tem up with Alex? and will the game play improve? These questions will be answered and more as I get them.

Right I’m gonna see if I can get my mitts on the first game.

Garv.

]]> http://www.plusxp.com/2010/12/what-we-know-about-prototype-2/feed/ 1 http://www.plusxp.com/2010/11/diverting-the-calls-of-duty/ http://www.plusxp.com/2010/11/diverting-the-calls-of-duty/#comments Fri, 19 Nov 2010 01:00:28 +0000 PlusXP http://www.plusxp.com/?p=5628

When Halo: Reach launched, I was one of the dissenters who chose to make their reluctance to continue investing in the series clear. Obviously, Reach is supposedly a fantastic game and I’d probably enjoy my time with it if I chose to invest in it, but in a gaming climate overflowing with First Person Shooters my desire to play them has declined to the point where the only FPS games I’m even remotely looking forward to are Duke Nukem Forever and Bulletstorm. Both games promise to give the genre an incredibly sorely-needed kick up the backside and hopefully revitalise it or give me an immense amount of satisfaction trying. In that article I also touched upon another series of FPS games that was readily gaining ire with me and is another series that a few months ago I decided I would refrain from indulging in again in future. Handily, I decided to broadcast this viewpoint after the release of the latest iteration in the series which has smashed sales records and so therefore anything I say is basically all for naught, and I’d readily admit that.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Call of Duty games no longer interest me.

Like with Halo, this isn’t a case of me simply disliking something because it’s cool to – a mindset that I’m still to this day confused by. It is in fact just a combination of a bunch of different factors which have pushed me over the edge and away from supporting the series at all.

The first one is what happened to Infinity Ward. What truly happened won’t be made clear until the lawsuit rears its ugly head, but it doesn’t particularly look good on anyone. It especially looks worse on Activision, who in the situation look as if they fired the heads of the studio to avoid having to pay them the money and bonuses they deserved and then withheld the employee’s bonuses until they made Modern Warfare 3. That’s especially compounded when you take into account the fact that most of those employees left and joined Respawn Entertainment (the studio created by the fired bosses of Infinity Ward) as soon as they got the chance and counter-sued Activision. No matter what happens, its horrendously negative press for Activision, especially seeing as they’re frequently demonised by the gaming media and actions like that are what make that demonisation seem deserved. Not only did they destroy yet another studio but they also did it to the people who were responsible for one of their most successful franchises.

It's safe to say that Activision are evil

That then leaves Treyarch as the main studio in charge of the Call of Duty franchise. Now, call this me being harsh, but I’ve long been of the opinion that the last good game they made was Spiderman 2, and even then if you analysed that game long enough you’d truly realise it wasn’t amazing, then and it’s not that great now, save for a few great moments. Call of Duty 3 was a game that I still consider to be one of the worst games I’ve had the misfortune of playing this console generation, and World at War utterly threw me off with its cheap grenade spam and relentless need to tread WWII yet again. Then there was also the Quantum of Solace game, which managed to be more Casino Royale than Quantum of Solace, not that I’m complaining, but they managed to make the film with more action only a quarter of the game, then missed out most of what happened and added loads of unnecessary clutter and made a game with lame quick-time events and broken stealth. As a developer Treyarch leaves me utterly cold with their games. I rarely feel like what they make is the best product that could have made and that’s not because I don’t think they’re rubbish developers, but I think they just don’t realise their full potential and prevent themselves from reaching a greater tier. Now that Infinity Ward are gone, I don’t think they’ll be able to reach a better level either. Why? Because Treyarch will only be able to try to compare themselves to Infinity Ward.

Think about it for a second; one of the main reasons that people complain that Treyarch’s iterations in the franchise are worse is that what they attempt usually ends up being a pale imitation of the Infinity Ward made games, and now that they’re the frontrunners of the franchise, who will Treyarch be trying to out-do or compare themselves to or know where the benchmark is set? Without another studio pushing their boundaries I think it’ll be more difficult for there to be any true progression or evolution within the series.

Though to be honest, evolution is not really something that can be applied to the franchise. The gameplay and style of the game has stayed almost exactly the same from game to game with the only differences being the guns varying depending on the time period. The same problems still fundamentally exist within the franchise with things like re-spawning enemies and enemy grenade spam still existing as well as the “invisible border” problem never being fixed – things will continue to respawn and gameplay will be at a standstill until you progress past an imaginary line the developers need you to cross to trigger the next thing to happen. They still kill the immersion and make you remember you’re just playing a game, especially the invisible line problem. The gameplay and engine mechanics are still exactly the same from game to game with no real progress or any significant updates, a problem that’s compounded by the yearly updating schedule. Even with alternating developers with each game they still came across as carrying no significant step-ups and that’s going to be compounded with the lack of Infinity Ward.
The games end up having the exact same gameplay year after year and instead of trying to make the games better through virtues of gameplay, they’ve instead descended into who can build the bigger and crazier set pieces to top each other at the expense of the already minimal story. Modern Warfare 2 is the biggest example of this; the campaign was short and left you feeling cold because despite having eight writers to handle the story, it managed to have more plot holes than plot and any excuse to have big set pieces than to actually craft a working story.
(“Okay, we’re going to kill everyone at an airport which will inspire the Russians to invade and mostly destroy America. We’ll then win because we’ll nuke a satellite and then… Patriotism!”)
In fact, Infinity Ward were trying to out-do themselves and the first Modern Warfare than they were trying to make a great game, forgetting what made Modern Warfare fresh and intelligent in the first place.

For AMERICAAAAAAA!!!!

“But Ed!” I begin to hear their cries, “Everyone only really plays Call of Duty games for their multi-player! It’s so awesome and addictive!”
I’ve heard this argued before and yes, while their primary enjoyment for many people is in fact the multi-player, I’ve argued before and I will argue again: I don’t believe the entire experience and opinion of a game should rest on the multi-player unless the game itself is entirely multi-player, many people will play the games for a single-player experience and when the sequel is out and everyone has long moved on, you’ll only be able to be judged on the single-player experience. You can’t fully endorse a game if you’re not behind a key part of the experience, which is why it continues to baffle me when people insist the increasingly lacklustre campaigns aren’t a concern because it’s all about the multi-player.
Besides, Call of Duty’s multi-player seems nowhere near as fun as people insist on making it out to be. The multi-player is unbalanced and favours those who play the game obsessively, or at least dedicate a large amount of time to it. When I present that side to people defending the games, they will always and without fail claim “That’s true, but once you’ve spent [Insert amount] hours then it really gets going!”
No, I will stop you there. That shouldn’t be an argument, let alone your primary argument. When Heroes was popular, I was encouraged to watch the first series, then I was told not to bother with the second, and then told the third was okay, but I had to watch the second in order to enjoy the third one. I wasn’t going to watch over twenty hours of bad television to enjoy twenty hours of slightly better television, and I won’t play through hours of something I won’t enjoy for the false promise that if I invest all that time, I’ll start enjoying it. You know what I can do with all those hours people want me to invest so I’ll enjoy something I don’t? Play something else.

Earlier in this I made note of the fact that Activision gain a lot of negative press and many gamers consider the company evil, much as they did EA many years ago for a variety of different reasons. Whether its buying out studios and then closing them and putting tons of people out of jobs, over-saturating genres and killing them to get as much money as possible (I’m actually surprised they haven’t yet done to Call of Duty what they did to Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero), or a lot of what Bobby Kotick says, a lot of gamers will find whatever reasons they can to dislike the Activision giant. The thing is, the popularity of Call of Duty as a franchise allows Activision to do whatever they like and introduce potentially horrendous ideas which could soon become the norm. The last two Call of Duty games came with a much higher price point than other games, the downloadable content is ridiculously expensive for a bunch of maps, especially when fully fledged Xbox Live Arcade titles cost less and last longer, and eventually the games will come with a subscription-based pay to play multi-player. As a gamer, those ideas make me despair for the way that the industry is heading and the fact that those things may likely become default in future. Why? Because we’re allowing them to. We allow companies and encourage them to do this to us every time someone buys Call of Duty at a price higher than the recommended retail price, every time someone spends so much on a map-pack for the games, and in future every person who subscribes to the pay-to-play multi-player Activision know that the popularity of the franchise allows them to get away with their plans because too many people will help prove to them that it makes financial sense for them to do so and keep doing so in future.

yeah.......thanks Activition

However, the final factor I have is probably a slightly pretentious one – I’d much rather we had a better franchise of games to help showcase why videogames are so amazing to those who don’t play them. Call of Duty, like Halo are two of the most popular franchises around currently, and if everyone sits and copies them then we’ll continue what we have now; way too many shooters with not enough variety. When I talk about videogames with people who don’t play them nowadays, they’ll just refer to “those shooting games” and also blather on about violence or something stupid they don’t really understand that they’ve picked up from daytime TV and parents who spend more time criticising things they don’t approve of “for the children” instead of actually raising their kids.

Think about how many other incredible franchises are around which highlight what the medium of games can achieve, and their relative popularity in comparison to something like Call of Duty. No offence to those games, but I’d rather we championed and stood behind games that showed true creativity, that allowed loads of potential and showcase to the otherwise uninformed just how imaginative and incredible games can be, instead of a series of games which involve moving from point A to B and shooting everything in-between while set pieces play the rest of the game for you.

I’ll leave it here because someone’s ringing me. Duty calls.

…I think I’ll just let it go to voice mail.

-Jokesound

Anyone who read my initial post concerning Band Hero will know that my personal expectations of this game were, well shall we say, just ever so slightly, just a little weenie bit low. Being a complete worshipper of the original Guitar Hero series, when Band Hero was announced I had to shed a tear at the thought of my beloved rockathons being corrupted by mainstream pop. The mere fact that It was called ‘Band Hero’ quite frankly gave me shivers, and when asked to play the online demo I will admit I took on the task limited enthusiasm. However it is my duty to report on such matters, and as many people seem to believe that where there is darkness there is inevitably light, I feel I must give this game a fair hearing. Therefore to keep it simple I present to you Band Hero, The good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good

Firstly some good points about this game. As a descendant of the Guitar Hero series this game is very well animated, easy to pick up, has enjoyable gameplay and is very pretty. Though it was not rock themed (shame) It had good venus and atmosphere, with a much more colorful pop orientated feeling than the GH series. The party play feature was also excellent allowing players to swap modes and instruments at any point, which proves very useful when the drinks need refilling. The graphics were similar to that of DJ Hero in the sense that everything was very neon and slightly trippy, which I felt was quite fitting for a pop based game. I also noticed that a lot of effort had been put into the animation of the characters, especially the movements of the lead singer which I must say brought a small smile to my face. On that note my main good point of this game is that the set-list is much more accommodating to female singers, and about time too. Often I have found that my more girly friends would prefer to sing than play guitar, and so I am guessing this will be right up their street. I have often struggled through various singing careers either pushing the notes to extreme highs to survive or imitating a male voice, both of which sound quite frankly stupid. I suppose in an odd way Band Hero solves this problem for girls everywhere, but I am no raging feminist and so the review continues…

The Bad

Now for the bad stuff. Its too easy! I may be being a GH snob here, but I was able to play through this demo whilst taking happily about dinner at the same time. I had it on expert mode for all 3 songs, but it simply didn’t require that much concentration. I suppose this game is aimed at the younger, less experienced market (Aww bless their cotton socks) however this makes it a step down rather than a step up for experienced GH ‘musicians’. I suppose it’s to be expected, but its a bit of a shame. Also, since when could a guitar make a sound like a saxophone? Look I know with the right effects pedals it can be done, but there are points in this game where you are constantly switching from being a keyboard, to a trumpet to a guitar. I know GH5 did this a little too, but this game does it to the extent where it becomes completely ridiculous. At this point I find myself asking the question, Why make a game which is an offshoot of Guitar Hero and then include songs where there is simply not enough guitar to make the game playable? Its simple really. Its called ‘Guitar Hero’ because It includes songs with strong guitar riffs. Pop songs do not often have such strong guitar riffs, therefore why include them in a game where the whole concept is based around a guitar shaped controller. Think through your concept more thoroughly next time people!

The ugly

Now for the ugly part of this game. And my is it ugly… For me this game seems to be completely lacking in theme and identity. Though it boasts a diverse set-list I found the mixing of the genres in the demo made the game feel disjointed and very strange to play . For example the demo moved from happy clappy pop, to modern country style pop, to soft rock, with the same band members and gig set up. Now I know previous titles also did this, but not to this extent. To be honest I found it a little unnerving to see a massive heavy metal rocker happily singing along to ‘Walking on Sunshine’ By Catrina and the waves, especially seeing as this was a standard part of the demo not someone’s personal joke. In fact the completely random mix of band members chosen for the demo put me off a little too. When I played, my band consisted of 2 mature characters, (a sexy punk lead singer and a heavy metal lead guitarist) and two very young looking young teens (an Avril Lavigne style drummer and an alternative base player). This random combination of band members to me looked very odd. More worryingly still, with the differences in age and genre leading me to question weather if this band truly existed, it would actually be legal for them to go to the bar after gigs for drinks, let alone ever want to play together. Though the characters were probably meant to be diverse to show the diversity of the character creation feature, the lack of consistency in characters was to me direct proof of this games lack of direction. After reviewing the set-list more carefully I have come to the conclusion that it would have given the game more of an identity if older, more famous pop acts had been used. If the set-list had been more cheesy with more famous pop acts they may just have got away with the pop theme, however the mismatch of pop and rock chosen lead me to think that it might have been more appropriate to just bring out another true guitar hero with some pop songs on it, call it ‘Guitar Hero Pop hits’ and do away with the ambiguity. I imagine that if this would done it would feel a little like Guitar Hero Rocks the 80’s, which in my opinion worked a lot better than this confused little title. I hate to say it but in comparison DJ Hero has much better theming. I don’t want to be a DJ but at least the Characters, sets and music all fit together and create a real atmosphere.

Though I did to some extent enjoy playing this demo, I feel that it is very obviously aimed at the younger teen market, and not the true GH worshippers. The combination of younger band members,colorful settings, easier gameplay and tame pop set-list make an experience associated much more with the young teen scene than the heavy metal and grunge fantasy lands we are used to. Though this is not for me, I suppose not all games can be everyones cup of tea. Therefore if you are a 13 year old girl with a Taylour Swift poster on your wall you will love this game, and more power to you for buying it. As for everyone else, try it yourselves and see what you think. Oh but be sure to get the drinks in first, your really going to need them…

Until next time

GuitarGirl24

P.S. On an Un-related note, I have finally completed Gh5 (Work has been keeping me VERY busy!!) Its not as difficult as I expected, though I did have to re-play 3 of the songs in the end set-list through twice. The highlights for me were definitely “Sultans of Swing” Dire straits, “No one to depend on” Santana, “Do you feel like we do” Peter Frampton and “American Girl” Tom Petty & The heartbreakers. Not the hardest songs but definitely the ones I enjoyed plying the most. Shame its not as difficult as expected, but still as good play and definitely one to add to your christmas list if your not into DJ/Band hero and haven’t splashed out already.

Now I know for most people this probably wont be as big a deal, but for me guitar hero releases are the highlight of my year and I’m pleased to say this new addition is no disappointment. With a set-list of over 80 songs and stunning graphics this is a must buy for any fan of the Guitar Hero series. After Guitar Hero Metallica (mainly for Metallica fans) and Guitar hero greatest hits (lets face it a cop out really) this is a real breath of fresh air. The set-list is diverse with a good mix of modern hits such as ‘Sex on fire’ by Kings Of Leon and classics like Nirvana’s ‘Smells like teen spirit’ making this a game exciting and fresh throughout. I must admit I also got very excited when I found out they had included ‘Plug in Baby’ by Muse. One of my all time favorite bands so I had to mention it somewhere.

Now a bit about the gameplay. I have a theory about Guitar Hero. In my opinion with every GH release the note streams get more complicated but the reaction time of the game speeds up allowing you to keep up. In effect the games are slowly getting as fast as the people who play them, and to me this is no exception. The notes come thick and fast from the onset, but due to the slick programming this is not a problem, in fact it’s a joy to play. The difficulty level is in keeping with that of GH Metallica, with tricky solo’s and the promise of some really challenging levels nearer the end. A nice addition to the game is the opportunity to complete additional challenges within each song. These challenges are instrument specific and set you a range of different tasks to gain additional stars. The tasks range from whammying the most notes to getting the longest note streak or hitting the most notes of one color. I find these challenges really bring out my extremely competitive nature and so add great replay value to the game.

And now for a quick moan, skip this paragraph if you want a happy read.

Only one thing is annoying me about this game, and it’s a big problem. When you create a band and start your solo career it only displays the overall best star rating you have achieved for all instruments you have played. For example, when I started my guitar career and went through the songs it was easy to keep track of my place within the game, I just looked at my star ratings. However when I repeated my career with the drums the fact that I was a drummer this time and not a guitarist was not obvious from the song selection screen. This made it extremely hard to track how I was progressing within my drum career. GH Metallica had the same problem and I would have hoped they would have spotted it before this game was released, sadly no luck.

That’s it, Moan over!

Onto the Visual stuff. The character movements have been improved and you can now play in a band comprised entirely of Traditional GH characters which is a novelty. All of our favorite characters are still there, even if Judy nails is looking a bit skinny for my liking (I wonder if she is eating enough) alongside the opportunity to create your own characters much the same as in GH World tour. I feel that Guitar hero has the edge when it comes to character customization and this game is no different. I have always been able to create a good likeness using the GH rock-star creator, something I have never managed to fully achieve with RockBand. In this game you can create the real you as well as many other random creations which in itself leads to hours of fun. Alternatively if real life doesn’t float your boat, why not take a step back and let your XBox 360 Avatar play for you? A quirky feature more than anything but fun nonetheless. One way this game differs greatly from its predecessors is that the screen layout has been cleaned up, with all of the information such as the star power bar and score bar consolidated around the fret board area. At first I found this a little odd, but once I had become used to it I began to appreciate how much of the screen this frees up for the graphics.

As for the graphics themselves, they are stunning. In fact I am now lusting over a larger TV as I feel it would be really worth having to fully appreciate this game (at least that’s what I keep telling myself). The menu screens have the usual doodled rock theme which I have always loved and the layout of the set lists in career mode is clearer and more exciting than in world tour giving the game a clearer, more structured feel. The game graphics themselves are still cartoonish and exaggerated in style, but with a more electric, dramatic feel which I love. The fret board is less fussy but has a new texture, and I love the way that blue lights sweep across the board when star power is activated instead of the usual electricity. It is for this reason I would urge everyone to play this game in the dark. The bold colors and use of blue light within the game really lend themselves to the real gig experience when set against a dark background, it is darkness makes this game truly great and I promise…you won’t be disappointed.

I’m off now to dim the lights, close all the doors, slip into something a little more comfortable, pick up my beloved plastic guitar and rock out.

Until next time.

GuitarGirl24