Tag archive for "first-person shooter"

News, PC Gaming, Playstation 3, Xbox 360

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

1 Comment 20 February 2009 | Tags: , , , , , ,

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Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, in the words of CodeMasters, is “set to deliver the most accessible, engaging and visceral sandbox shooter of the year.” Utilizing an evolved variant of the EGO Engine, which can be seen in previous games such as DIRT and GRID, Operation Flashpoint should be on the cutting edge of video game visuals. The following video demonstrates how the EGO Engine technology can power everything from minute details to entire landscapes and deliver an immersive, real world environment for FPS fans.

“Everything that the EGO Engine does adds to the experience and tension of being in a serious conflict situation where one shot can kill. Using the engine’s rendering tech and customized audio systems, we can make players feel the danger and adrenaline rush of modern combat, immersing them in the battle as deeply as possible. The realism of the game and its artistic content goes along way towards that, but having tech driving the detail and effects will give players a real sense of what it’s like to have a 80mm mortar shell land 30ft away – it lifts the playing experience to a whole new level,” said Brant Nicholas, Senior Producer, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

Some of the key features players will get out of Operation Flashpoint are;

  • Freedom of Play:

Players will have the freedom to handle military crisis situations on their initiative. Unscripted missions will task players with real objectives, such as laying down covering fire, covering a friendly unit’s retreat or conducting short-range recon patrol. Armed with cutting edge military hardware, players will need to balance brute force with intelligent use of tactics.

  • Squad-Based Combat:

As an epic single and multi-player campaign weaves the narrative, players will fight as infantry soldiers in battle, drive tanks in armored assaults, and infiltrate the enemy in covert special operations utilizing a wide variety of realistic military weapons from knives and rifles to machine guns and grenade launchers.

  • The 220km sq. Island of Skira:

Located off the eastern coast of Russia, north of Japan. This oil-rich Russian-controlled island stands on the brink of war. An airborne division of the People’s Liberation Army of China (PLA) lands to claim the island as the sovereign possession of the People’s Republic. Russia turns to the US for support aid and they’re quick to respond. Sending in the USS Iwo Jima, a battalion of US Marines launch an assault on the strung out but dug-in Chinese force.

  • Realistic Modern Military Shooter:

Authentic cutting-edge weaponry is simulated with detailed ballistic physics and players will command and control a wide variety of multi-component, multi-weapon vehicles, including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, APCs, attack and utility helicopters. The character damage system authentically depicts the terrible wounds and injury from modern weapons to communicate the lethality of combat.

FPS fans take note, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising should hit shelves this Spring. The way things look so far, this should shape up to be one of the most realistic first person shooters we’ve ever seen. Scroll through the screens to see what PS3, 360 and PC gamers have to look forward to.

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PC Gaming, Playstation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Review: F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin (360/PS3)

2 Comments 12 February 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

fear-box-shotRelease: Jan 10 2009 (US), Jan 13 2009 (UK)
Develop: Monolith
Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive
Genre: First-person shooter

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FEAR 2 is a game with an identity problem.  Since its earliest stages of development – and the whole Vivendi, Monolith, Warner Brothers war over who owns the copyright to the name and who needs to buy what from whom in order to get the sequel made – it hasn’t seemed to have a clear sense of direction.  Inevitably that same lack of direction has found its way into the final product, making it not enough of a shooter to satisfy the FPS crowd and not enough of a horror title to satisfy your fright fans.

We’d recommend that you play through the original again before setting off on this particular adventure, as you’re pretty much expected to know the prior events off by heart.  The story starts just prior to the climax of the first game, putting you in the shoes of a different F.E.A.R. squad making their way through a different location within the game’s setting.  Despite witnessing (from a distance) the mushroom cloud explosion upon which the first game ended, you never really get a sense of why you’re undertaking your set tasks, why the world is the way it is or why you should even care.  It’s a shame, considering how intense and involving the original plot was, that new players will simply have no clue what the hell is going on.

While the story may be difficult to pick up and initially sink your teeth into, the gameplay is quite the opposite; it’s extremely easy to pick up but, sadly, difficult to keep your teeth sunk into.  Everything you’d expect to find on a ‘my first shooter’ list is present and correct; from exploding barrels to health pick ups and that most quintessential of modern first person shooter collectibles, the intel item.  It follows the established rules of the genre much too closely to ever differentiate itself from its vast legion of competitors, and as a result the whole experience feels massively outdated and lacking in anything fresh or new.  In many ways (in terms of its design), considering the numerous innovative features the original bestowed upon us, it feels as though your playing a game made prior to the first.

Despite what the packaging – and various trailers – may suggest, FEAR 2 is heavily focused on combat and its approach to it is traditional in the most stubborn of ways.  The action takes place in a web of corridors, or the occasional street (read: corridor without a roof), with enemies bursting out from behind corners or from small side offices.  You quickly realise that they share the most minimal quantity of brain cells between them, and the challenge (like shooters of old) simply comes from the relatively large numbers that your forced to contend with; on numerous occasions the enemy would take cover on the wrong side of a wall, giving you a completely open shot at their soon to be bullet ridden corpse.

Some elements have been added in an attempt to make it seem that some form of tactics are required in order to succeed, but you soon abandon these in favour of the good old fashioned ’shoot first, think later/never’ style of play.  For example, you have the option of flipping over various objects and ducking behind them for cover.  It’s a pretty decent idea that works to a degree, but it’s never necessary to employ the mechanic because the A.I. just hasn’t been programmed to allow you to engage them using such tactics.

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The majority of the game unfolds something like this: burst into corridor, shoot bad guys, kill bad guys, take damage yourself, use health pack, kill more bad guys, pick up new health packs, enter new corridor and repeat.  It would be a lie to say that this style of play wasn’t at least a little fun – because it can be – it’s just that it never really deviates in any meaningful way, quickly becoming an exercise in monotony.  The game does see some change of pace when you need commandeer a heavily armed mechanical ‘RoboCop-style’ suit and wreak havoc on anyone stupid enough to get in your way.  It’s enjoyable to a point but, like the rest of game, lacks a sense of innovation or excitement.

Slow-mo, as in the original, makes an appearance although – once again – it’s not really a tactical device.  Best saved for when you find yourself overwhelmed (although its easy to become overly reliant on it), slow-mo actually serves its purpose pretty well, giving you time to either remove the problem or locate a place to hide from it.  Plus, it is fun to run up to the comically slow moving Neanderthals and blast them into oblivion with a well placed round from your combat shotgun.  In fact, all the weaponry packs a pretty decent punch; it’s just a shame that you never have to think about how best to use your arsenal in a meaningful way.

The combat is interspersed with scary moments that, for their type, are fairly well executed.  They tend to take the form of sudden shocks (things suddenly appearing out of nowhere, for example), as opposed to the constant underlying feeling of dread and unease built up in something like Bioshock, Condemned 2 or the original FEAR.  Don’t take that as a negative though as the frightening moments here serve their purpose of putting you on edge while reminding you that that there is a little more to this world than simply fighting mindless drones through a set of corridors.  In fact, the game could have been significantly improved if these moments were fleshed out a little more, cutting down on the time given up to combat.

Visually FEAR 2 lacks the wow factor of its modern counterparts; Killzone 2, for example, or even COD: World at War which was built on the same engine as a game released over a year ago.  On the surface the graphics are passable and stand up to a certain level of scrutiny, but look a little deeper and you’ll see that the small – but oh-so-important – details haven’t had much attention.  Textures look rough and are repeated ad nauseam throughout the game and things like the blood splatter against various surfaces more resembles something from an early Marvel comic book than a serious, adult shooter.

FEAR 2 is not an altogether disappointing experience; it’s just not a fresh or exciting one either.  It relies much too heavily on the established rules of the genre and as a result doesn’t give you much of a reason to play through until the end; you can’t shake the feeling that you’ve seen it all before, in numerous other games, making it difficult to wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who has experience with the genre.  That being said, if you’re after something that you simply turn on and not have to invest much effort in then you might want to think about giving it a chance.  It’s more than a little disappointing that we’ve had to wait some four years for a true sequel to a fantastic game and it hasn’t delivered enough of the goods for it to rank alongside the current crop of first-person shooters already on the market.


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Playstation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Review: Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway (PS3/360)

9 Comments 06 October 2008 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Release: Sep 23 2008 (US), Sep 26 2008 (UK)
Developer: Gearbox
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: First-person Shooter
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The story of Hell’s Highway immediately draws you in. While the majority of World War 2 shooters recreate the same scenes – if we have to storm the beach at Normandy one more time the TV will find itself flying out the window – Hell’s Highway has you following Sergeant Mathew Baker and his squadron through Operation: Market Garden, a historically accurate campaign designed to end the war by capturing a highway that runs through Holland, and into the heart of Germany. Of all the WW2 shooters we’ve played, Hell’s Highway makes you understand just how bad the soldiers really had it.

This feeling of intimacy and immersion is perhaps the game’s biggest strength; it’s a refreshing change as the majority of videogames have such poorly portrayed characters that you can never see them as in any way real. Each character feels like a real, living, breathing person creating a significantly richer experience as a result.

Take cover!

The gameplay is where Hell’s Highway shines. Most WW2 games allow you to plough through the Nazi’s ‘Hulk-style’ killing every solider before Hitler can take a breath, something not possible on this highway. Combat in Hell’s Highway takes a Gears of War style cover, suppress, flank, kill approach in which you’ll need to intelligently command your squad to succeed.  Encounters generally go a little something like this: see Nazi, order your guys to lay down suppressing fire, flank Nazi while pinned down, end Nazi’s life.  The system works surprisingly well and is a blast to play.

For the most part the friendly A.I is solid, but sometimes suffers from a few path-finding issues; getting stuck on bridges for instance, or moving to the wrong side of cover (leading to a quick and messy death). Enemy A.I. is also a little hit-and-miss.  Enemies will poke their head up from behind cover while you’re shooting them to see if you’re still around.

Hell’s Highway’s health system has been tackled in a rather strange way. Rather than losing health whenever you get hit, the screen turns red whenever you’re close to the Nazis and not in cover, even if your not getting shot at. If the screen goes completely red you die, even if you’ve not been hit… weird. While most of the gameplay is squad-based, your character ‘Baker’ often decides it’s a great idea to go into buildings whose entrances have the unfortunate tendency to close up as he enters, forcing you to go it alone.  These sections are in no way as immersive as their squad-based counter-parts.

On occasion you’re ripped from your squad and dropped into the role of a tank commander.  These sequences involve any destroying any unfortunate soul that has the horrible luck to be caught out on foot. While these sequences do a good job of adding a little variety to the gameplay, they’re not particularly exciting to say the least.

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Boom Boom Bang Bang

The soundtrack is truly great, and brings the Saving Private Ryan memories flooding back, especially in the cut-scenes.  While Baker is giving a speech, or during one of the game’s other equally key moments, the music accompanies the action perfectly.  This success is echoed during gameplay as the music changes in a dynamic, natural way as you progress; helping you to feel and relate to the action that little bit more.

Sound effects, such as gunshots and explosions, sound amazing and every now and then you’ll flinch when a bullet gets little too close for comfort.  When a round from an .88 destroys the cover right in front of your face the sound alone makes you want to crawl under your bed and hide. If nothing else the audio alone is enough to make you fall in love with the game.

Graphically it’s all a little hit and miss.  You can easily get lost admiring the attention to detail that has gone into buildings and the soldier’s uniforms, and the slow-motion zoom that accompanies a head shot allows you to see the carnage in all its visceral glory. The game makes full use of its ‘M’ rating by unleashing torrents of blood from the slightest graze.

The misses are primarily reserved for the organic objects.  Grass is particularly ugly and the fire effects look more Xbox than Xbox 360. Character models are plagued by a horrible sheen effect that makes them seem like they’ve just come from the wax museum.  For the most part you’re so immersed in the storytelling that you don’t notice it, but about halfway through the game these graphical deficiencies become glaringly obvious.

WW2 with a headset

Hell’s Highway’s multiplayer consists of one mode, ‘Capture’; possibly the most generic game-type ever created. Capture is similar to capture the flag but with a few key differences. Each map holds two capture points that are located on opposite sides of the map, one team defends the points while the other attacks. Rather than capturing a flag and returning it to your base, one attacker starts with the flag and must raise it at either of the capture points while his teammates protect him from the defenders onslaught.

Each side is broken up into three, three man squads each consisting of a specialist (who can select a rocket launcher, sniper rifle or heavy machine gun), and two rifleman armed with a semi automatic rifle and two automatic weapons. Additionally, the attacking team gets command of a tank that can only be destroyed by using the rocket launcher, or sticking a satchel charge directly onto it. A few more maps would have been nice but the multiplayer is still a decent, and often addictive, experience.

In the end, Brother’s in Arms: Hell’s Highway’s annoying technical issues stop this tour of duty from truly impressing.  As it stands now this is a great shooter with an engaging single player campaign, and a fun multiplayer component that is let down by a few niggling problems.  It wont cause your copies of COD4 or Halo 3 to gather dust completely, but it’s a great distraction.

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