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I think every male is good at some kind of numbers.

• “34D” (Women)
• “220HP V6″ (Cars)
• “1400×1050, 4X Antialiasing, 4X Anisotropic Filtering, 60 frames per second” (Computer Games)

I’m the last guy.

If I had to play Half-Life now like I played it 10 years ago, I’d probably decline. But with all those juicy image quality enhancements I can have now with the modern PC, it’s just sooooo clean, so crisp. (Look at the screenshots at the end of the post).

And all I had to do was wait 10 years!

I’ve been going on runs the last 6 months, doing things in sets, like watching the Indiana Jones trilogy in preparation for watching Crystal Skull, watching the original Star Wars movies in a row, playing FFVII and then watching FFVII Advent Children, and so on.

My current thing is Half-Life. I own the Orange Box with Half-Life 2 and all the other episodes, but wanted to revisit the original game before trying the sequel.

It’s been at least 5 or 6 years since I last played Half-Life, and I probably had gone through the expansions, Opposing Force and Blue Shift (originally developed for the never released Dreamcast version of Half-Life), before too, nonetheless I wanted to play all the Half-Life games sequentially in a short amount of time to basically live out one complete experience.

Half-Life is: (drumroll)

Stressful. Heart attack, cold sweat stressful.

Half-Life’s graphics, if you’re playing with antialiasing, are not so bad. Also, I played with the the hi-res texture pack that Valve developed for the Half-Life games in 2001, so I guess I’m really only playing a 7 year old game.

Today, however, you can still be impressed with how Half-Life looks depending on your computer video card settings:

• High-resolution- while PS3 and XBox think 720p is so wonderful, PC gamers can go way higher. This means cleaner, crisper graphics reducing the jagged edge effect (jaggies)
• Anti-aliasing- makes images even crisper, and kicks in when your monitor isn’t high-res enough (mine’s 1400 x1050 but even then, AA makes a big difference)
• Anisotropic filtering-  look at old games and notice specifically the ground textures. Then run straight and watch how the ground textures pop in or the textures very far away look fuzzy compared to the ones up close. Anisotropic filtering will help so all your textures look more natural, more crisp.
• 60 FPS- 60 FPS is way different from 30 FPS. In fact 60 frames per second (fps), especially in a first person shooter (also called fps) is more important than resolution. You just feel more in control, and you’ll feel like you’re a more skilled player as well.

As for the gameplay, what was revolutionary back then, it isn’t so special now and yet the feeling of stress and tension involved when you play is still there. After 10 years though, it’s still easy to see why Half-Life is so highly considered. It’s still very enjoyable, but in a lot of ways, it feels shallow.

The story for the games are all told to you in a way, you never hear yourself speak and you don’t interact with anyone. People talk at you, rather than to you, and so the character in the game really isn’t a reflection of you, nor is it a reflection of the person you’re supposed to be. Whether you play Half-Life, Opposition Force, or Blue Shift, when you finish, you wouldn’t be able to tell me anything about the characters you’re plying other than simple facts like “he’s a solider, “he went to MIT”, and so on.

In Half-Life, you’re Gordon Freeman, a scientist at the Black Mesa government research facility who unluckily gets caught up in a failed experiment that opens up a portal into another dimension (that means aliens coming to get you sucker!), you basically just need to survive. Who cares about saving the world when there are face huggers everywhere!

Monsters, get away from me!

Stop looking at you weirdo freaks!

The main part of the stress comes from the game’s speed. You run fast, you shoot fast. The problem is, the enemies are pretty fast themselves, especially when attacking. You may shoot quickly, but not powerfully- a shotgun to the head isn’t enough to kill most enemies, and sometimes two isn’t enough. You can bet however, during the time it takes you to fire two to three rounds, you’re being messed up in your own right. Add all that to excellent event scripting, and Half-Life keeps you feeling anxious at all times.

Opposing Force and Blue Shift, however, don’t quite stack up so well.

In Opposing Force, you’re Adrian Shepherd, one the soldiers who was sent in to cover-up the Black Mesa mess, including “handling” Freeman. The unique things about this campaign is that you can fight with legit help in your fellow squad mates.

Opposing Force got really good review scores 10 years ago, but I guess that’s a sign of how things have changed. What was once called outstanding AI, I call retarded jackass AI today.

From Gamepsot almost ten years ago:

Instead of limiting you to fighting alongside no more than two of Half-Life’s weakling scientists or security guards, you can now recruit a squad of up to eight marines. The marines have the same advanced artificial intelligence as when they were your enemies in Half-Life, so that some of the large-scale battles staged in Opposing Force are simply phenomenal. Even though the game doesn’t require you to do so, you’ll want to replay such combat sequences just to try out different strategies in an effort to reduce friendly casualties.However, although the game lets you lead so many companions, you’ll likely never have more than four at a time thanks to the AI’s finicky following behavior. Opposing Force’s only significant flaw is that it’s often difficult to keep your followers in line. In some instances they simply appear to become confused, and at other times there is an invisible line they will not cross. It’s usually unclear which of these two reasons keeps your squad from moving forward, so you’ll spend too much time trying in vain to keep it assembled. This is a shame, as the rest of the game is of such high quality.

I, however, felt better off playing alone- I definitely didn’t feel any kind of sense of “real” soldiers helping me. Overall, this expansion pack is just ok. It’s fun in the sense that it fleshes out more of the Half-Life universe. Other than some nice new weapons however, it feels like Opposing Force and Blue Shift are just bonus levels for Half-Life, and by that I mean it doesn’t feel like you’re really doing anything different or taking the role of different characters- it’s more like playing as Gordon Freeman with a new skin.

Blue Shift is….well, bleh?

It’s definitely the worst part of the 3 games. In Opposing Force, you’re a soldier who is trying to take down Gordon Freeman and all the other Black Mesa staff after the experiment, but in Blue Shift, you’re a security guard (Barney Calhoun) at Black Mesa during those events.

Sound exciting?

I thought not.

And it’s not.

In the training mission for Blue Shift, you see one of your security guard buddies eating a donut at a shooting range. Sure, it’s supposed to be funny, but that’s what I think of when I think of how to describe the Blue Shift levels.

Feels lazy.

In the end, the expansion packs are worth going through if you finish Half-Life and still want more. For those people, they will satisfy that need, but if you take them as stand-alone experiences, on their own they’re not worth going through.

Screenshots (avoid clicking to see the galleries if you want to avoid screenshot spoilers) from Half-Life, Blue Shift and Opposing Force. Check out the high-res goodness!

Half-Life:

Opposing Force:

Blue Shift:

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I miss you Bioshock.

Why did I leave you?

Don’t leave me.

My relationship with Bioshock started slowly. I booted it up on my new Lenovo laptop in January. I’d heard about stories of a Big Daddy. Amazingness. When I took a peek, I was in a plane crash, crashing into the ocean, memories of parents telling me I was supposed to be something.

Ahead of me in the middle of the ocean was some kind of light tower. I went inside, going deep underwater to a Atlantean-styled city called Rapture. And then I stopped.

2 months later in March I came back to it, ready for the fight.

2 days later, including a Sunday playing from 10 AM to 3AM Monday, it was over.

I went out for a cigarette and deleted the game. I wanted to move on, I thought it was just a night of passion.

But in the time since, I’ve been thinking about you Bioshock. I should have never left you.

—-

On my laptop, Bioshock didn’t run too smoothly (30 fps), but even at 800×600, Bioshock has an undeniable aesthetic that makes you think how come life in the 1920’s didn’t go on forever. Even though the game takes place in the 1960’s, It has that classic sense of design and style that you see in those old talkies and movies like Timecop (weird comparison, I know).

I like westerns, and they look interesting in their own way, but I never think, “I wish I had lived back then”. Yet with that old-school Bioshock/1920’s aesthetic, somehow that world must have been much better than today. Rapture is an underwater city, one Andrew Ryan founded to gain freedom from the restrictions of a “civilized” society. With unlimited freedoms, however, there is risk, and when you arrive to Rapture, you find a city torn up because of a lack of ethical restraint. Genetic modifications.

A world of unlimited power (think of Neo in The Matrix), unlimited possibilities, but also a world of scary values. Change yourself until you’re not human anymore, change others so they’re not human anymore.

Nonetheless, I still wanted to live there.

As you explore the undersea world, it’s amazing to look out beyond the glass and see a real ocean city. Think of how Blade Runner’s skyline looked the first time you saw the movie, that’s how I felt looking out deep into the ocean.

As I mentioned before, when you start the game, you find yourself in the middle of the ocean after a plane crash, and slowly discover Rapture, an underwater city. You’re looking at things from a first person view, and because of the way the world is, genetic modification is not only an option but necessary. You can choose who you are however, hacker, mental assailant, fighter. This reminds me of Deus Ex, in the sense of the openness of gameplay, but it’s truly nowhere near that level of openness. You may have similar skills as JC Denton in Deus Ex, but ultimately, you will have to fight your way through Rapture more often than not. This is a shooter.

You slowly discover who you are, and why you’re in Rapture, and what’s been going on. You’ll have a friend or two guide you, and while it seems that most people have been turned into genetic monsters, you’ll slowly flesh out the details of not only the world you are in, but its major players, even though you’ll rarely encounter any of those other major characters.

What makes Bioshock really work though, is that all of the game’s components, graphics, sound, gameplay, are made to work with the story. What I mean is that when you play it, you know whatever you are doing, what you see, hear, or experience, that’s because of the story. It has to be that way because of the world you live in when you play. No one did anything because that would be cool, they did it because that is the world. It’s a truly immersive experience.

As Mike put it, he felt like he was reading a book. I agree in a sense, but I thought that was a good thing. The level and depth of detail of a book, but you’re not reading. It’s visual, much more so than any movie can be with its limited length. There’s a magic to it that can’t be explained easily.

The story itself, from a plot overview, is not that special. Not dumb, but not startlingly impressive. How you become a character in that story, however, is how Bioshock sets itself apart from almost everything else you’ve ever played.

When I finished Bioshock, I thought that would be it. A ton of fun while it lasted, but no real care for replay. Yet, in the 5 weeks since I’ve beaten it, I find myself thinking I want to return to Rapture, not that there’s something I missed, but I just want to be there again. Just to be in that wonderful, sickly world again.

If games can be art, Bioshock is it.

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Remember when you were playing games on that [insert random old school game system] and there was that [insert game that looked bad ass for system], and just thinking about how awesome gaming was?

And then you revisit those same games 5 years later and think, jeez, what the hell was I thinking? I thought those games looked great, but they look like crap.

Of course, this happens only because of relative goodness- what seemed fantastic and perhaps qualified as “realistic graphics” is easily overshadowed by the best and brightest of the current age.

Call of Duty 4 is this type of a game, only it just came out for the Nintendo DS. I think normally, it might seem that I am trying to disparage the game, but I actually mean Call of Duty looks fantastic.

The DS is basically a N64 without texture filtering abilities. If a game like COD4 came out on the N64 7 years ago, it would have been known for its fantastic graphics.

Now, in 2008, Call of Duty probably has the best “realistic 3d”-styled graphics for the system, in the sense that the game does enough visually to feel realistic. Compare this to Animal Crossing- no one would ever say AC looks like real life.

But COD does. Oh, and it plays pretty damn well too.

To introduce COD, the title Modern Warfare pretty much tells you what you need to know. You’re in current time, kicking ass. First person shooter military action.

COD is fast with arcade-quick gameplay (in terms of realism), and it’s a lot of fun. You can’t really die if you’re careful; I’ve played a little of COD for the XBox 360, and they don’t feel that far apart. The DS version reflects the overall feel and atmosphere of its more advanced sibling. Frame rate is pretty steady, it’s not too move around and aim and change weapons (use the touch screen to aim, control pad to move), and the sound, especially the soundtrack, is fantastic. Good number of weapons (rocket launchers, sniper rifles), fun vehicle missions (helicopters and jeeps).

Only drawback to the game is some terrible AI from your teammates and enemies, but overall, it doesn’t matter for this type of game.

Now I’m wondering if I can play Call of Duty 4 PC at decent setting on my laptop.

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I finished Halo 2 a couple of a weeks ago, first time I’d gone through it since it first came out in 2004. I remember before that I had thought the graphics weren’t that good (higher level of graphic detail “pops” in, you can really see this during cut-scenes) compared to the original and that the game was short. On the first point, Halo 2 does look better than Halo 1. It was pretty obvious to me since I had finished playing Halo 1 right before starting 2. Also, the single player campaign for H2 isn’t really that short- it just isn’t that fun. Thinking about both games makes me wonder though, if my initial impressions of both sway my opinion too much on the replays. For example, when I played Halo 1, I thought it was the best thing ever. I still do, but in all my repeat plays, I don’t really pay attention to the story line and other details of why it was so good, I just play and get through stuff, almost like I’m trying to remind myself of 2001 rather than playing it truly fresh and seeing if stacks up the way it used to.

Then again, can anyone truly start fresh when you’re replaying a game? But it does make me wonder, do I not like Halo 2 because of the reasons I think (which will be listed below) or did my first play bias my opinion beyond recovery?

So anyway, Halo 2 does look a bit sharper than Halo 1. The framerate is solid, the visual design is still there, though I think the sense of mood is not created as well as it was Halo 1 in terms of the landscapes and level design. In terms of the music, I wasn’t a big a fan of the Breaking Benjamin/Incubus/rock-inspired stuff in the game, though everything else is fine. When you look at the gameplay, this is where the big difference for me comes. Halo 2 feels a lot faster than Halo 1- while I felt Halo 1 was more about patience, waiting for your turn to strike, and seizing opportunities, it doesn’t feel quite this way for the sequel. In the original, it felt like you were part of a bigger landscape, just 1 dude on this huge planet roaming around, and I think the scale is greatly reduced in Halo 2. Maybe I can describe this as a sense of openness in the game world. In Halo 2, I feel much more pushed on a focused path, smaller levels, whether this is actually true or not, I don’t know. Gunplay is much faster in the sequel, bullets come out a lot faster, and to me, I feel like this set up the gameplay to be more aggressive, less about taking your time and seeing what was going on.

The Flood are around (sorry, doesn’t seem like a big spoiler to me) again, but I just never cared about them (they seem like plot filler to me), while in Halo 1, I felt like I was in the movie Aliens trying to fight them off, running scared all the time whenever you’d hear that big pop, and then a bunch of other pops- popcorn of death. There are new races, characters, and creatures, and you actually don’t play as Master Chief the whole way through the game, but I don’t think that any of these additions are that noteworthy.

Shooting control feels solid, but the gameplay mechanics between gun/melee attack/grenade, it all doesn’t work quite the same way. It doesn’t have the same sense of balance and power and timing. I know this could sound like me basically wanting Halo 1 to be exactly like Halo 2, and in a sense you would be right. I do think Halo 1 is the best game of all time after all. Dual wielding is available in the sequel, but it was never something I really enjoyed in single player or back when I used to play multiplayer with Kyle years ago. Dual wielding is something I had to do to stay competitive or be effective. This lack of comfort comes from not having the same smooth feel of control when I was dual wielding compared to 1 gun. With 2 guns, I always felt I was guessing on the controls, but with 1, I knew I could be the bad ass I thought I was- I always knew exactly what I was doing, and the controller was an extension of my mind.

Story can be a nice motivator to any game, although I get the feeling I really don’t remember the details of any story in any game I play. Still, I think when I play, I can tell when I’m interested in what’s going on, and I think the difference between Halo 1 and 2 if I were to sum up everything is that Halo 2 is like the best version of all the other FPS games you’ve played. It looks pretty good, controls pretty well, there’s nothing so much wrong with it. The story and the pacing of the game can easily match that of every other FPS out there. Halo 1, however, is more than a FPS, it’s a different time of gaming experience. It’s a movie in which your point of view comes from the FPS mechanic rather than a FPS game that is trying to make you feel like you’re playing a movie. Normally, I’d say the former is bad, so I think I just don’t have the words to describe it.

This is noteworthy though; a lot of the story in Halo 2 is told through cutscenes. In Halo 1, rarely were there cutscenes; instead, you played the story out in gameplay. This is an example of what I mean above. For every other FPS, Halo 2 is just like them. Halo 1 is a different thing entirely.

That probably doesn’t make any sense, but maybe if you’re also someone who sees the big differences between the original and sequel, maybe you feel the same.

I guess the good news is that with Halo 3, what I’ve been reading is that it’s much closer to Halo 1 than Halo 2. Just reading the gaming news this week, it’s all Halo 3. Excellent reviews have been making me think about a XBox 360, despite the high investment I’d have to put in. I guess it’d be no different for me as with the original XBox. I lined up for launch and bought the XBox just for Halo, no other reason. If there were no Halo, I would not have an XBox.

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I’m not scared. I’ve been through this before. I’ve got the weapons. I’ve got the skills. When they come for me, I will lay them down. Equipped with the most powerful weaponry known to man, I laugh at them as they hide in the shadows. I’m not scared of the dark. I laugh, cursing under my breath as I pull the trigger. I keep pulling, they keep falling, but more keep coming.

I hear the screams. Slowly, my mind unravels. They are coming for me. I am not scared. I glance around. I am NOT scared.
I run.

—-

Doom 3 for the Xbox is a technical marvel. Fantastic graphics, tight controls, and bone-chilling sound effects make Doom 3 a slick, easy-to-play, production. After you play try it for a few hours, you’ll have no doubt that you’re in for a fantastic experience. Unfortunately, while there is nothing that feels wrong about the game, when you beat it, you’ll find yourself thinking, “well, that’s over with finally,” more than “wow, that was fantastic!” Doom 3 can be a lot of fun, and oftentimes, downright creepy, but there’s something missing from the gameplay that would make the game truly memorable.

Doom 3 is a sci-fi horror first person shooter (fps) from ID Software, the makers of the Doom (of course) and Quake series. When you first start the game, what immediately stand out are the incredible lighting effects. As you get farther in the game, the lighting does more than hide creatures or make things tough for you to see. Shadows convincingly create a certain mood in the game, and shadows are used to frighten rather than just look good; when you see a shadow of a swinging body overhead before you actually see the body, you’ll understand what I mean. The character models are well-detailed, while the faces and mouth-syncing look realistic as well. Overall, Doom 3 looks spectacular, and you’ll marvel at a lot of the special effects (all in-game) that you’ve seen before in movies but not video games.

The sound in Doom 3 is very good, but doesn’t distinguish itself as the graphics do. For the most part, I didn’t notice the 5.1 effects that much, though the surround definitely establishes itself more towards the end of the game. I liked the bass effect used to create a feeling of tension and unease. Music isn’t really part of the game, but like the surround effects, is more present at the end. Voice acting is solid as well- most of the voice acting is used in voice and video logs rather than in character interaction.

As mentioned before, there is nothing inherently wrong with Doom 3. It looks great, sounds great, and the controls are tight. When you first start the game, everything seems great. As you progress in the game, though, nothing much changes. You’re essentially going from corridor to corridor, room to room, clearing each room of monsters, then moving on. I suppose this sounds like every fps out there. After all, what fps game doesn’t involve shooting everything in sight? I think the best way to explain is that 75% of the game feels exactly the same. What you do in hour two is what you do in hour eight, and if you asked me to plot out the game, I would just say, “That’s all I really did the entire game- I cleared a room, the lights turned off, a demon spawned out of nowhere, roared, and I shot it. The lights came on, I got some armor, repeat cycle.” There’s no real feel of progression in the game other than a new loading screen. It’s fun, but straight-forward.

The last parts (10-25%) of the game are slightly different though. The pace picks up, ammo is always a problem, and there’s a constant feeling of unease. The best parts of the game are definitely towards the end. For some players, however, they may find themselves not caring enough to keep playing past the first few hours.

There isn’t much of a story to the game. You’re a nameless marine who’s just arrived on Mars. Things are kind of weird, and suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a disaster. As you progress, you’ll pick up logs from dead characters and by reading their emails or listening to their logs, you can learn a little more about what’s been going on. Essentially, though, there’s nothing interesting in all the extra stuff you pick up; they all say the same thing: there’s been a lot of weird stuff going on, and people are scared.

The monsters that you can encounter can be genuinely creepy. While I didn’t find myself in spots where I was “scared,” the art design, screams, and creepy laughs all helped me feel a little antsy at times. I would find myself thinking, “What is that dripping down?” look up at the ceiling and think, “Oh,” and then “Ugh.”

Doom 3 is not a game for kids. The violent and demonic themes present throughout the game definitely make it a game suited for mature audiences only. The game is of medium length, and while I enjoyed the game, I can’t imagine wanting to play through it again. I might want to take on the later levels on a higher difficulty, and a nice feature that the game has is a level selector that enables you to do just that. Based on my experience with the single player, I would recommend this game as a rental or a discounted purchase ($30). If you have Xbox Live or are interested in the bonuses present in the Limited Edition, Doom 3 may warrant a full-priced purchase for you. It’s a very good game, with outstanding production values, but it doesn’t do quite enough to establish itself as a must-buy.

Note: I didn’t try the Limited Edition version that comes with Doom 1 and 2 or any of Doom 3’s online modes.

(originally published in GamersInfo.net)

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While I was busy saving the universe at 15 frames per second, I wondered why anyone would even care to attempt to do so, especially on a world as ugly as the one I was on. But when I found myself sitting back and watching the credits roll for Gearbox’s PC port of Halo, I realized that, despite whatever sluggish graphical performance the port suffers on its introduction to PC gamers, Halo for the PC still retains its original magic that made the Xbox version quite possibly the best first person shooter of all time.

In Halo, you are Master Chief, the last surviving member of a group of super soldiers the human race developed to help fight off the Covenant, an alien species attempting to destroy humanity. You are resting in a hibernation-like state on the starship Pillar of Autumn when the Covenant catch up to your ship and prepare to board it. Captain Keyes, the captain of the Autumn, has you woken up so that you can help the ship fight off the Covenant boarding parties and prevent them from grabbing Cortana, the ship’s AI. And so as you wake up, your adventure in Halo begins.

Halo is a direct port of its Xbox counterpart. While multiplayer now supports online play, and the control system is now mouse-driven (though the game supports game pads and joysticks as well), the game is essentially the same. This, as with most ports, is both good and bad.

Halo run at its highest detail settings looks the same as the Xbox version other than for the fact that PC Halo at high resolution looks extremely crisp. You won’t find, however, anything like improved textures or better special effects. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean Halo looks like trash. But while Halo was the best looking FPS ever upon its release for the Xbox, it now ranks only slightly above average for a PC FPS.

The real issue with I had with Halo is on a performance level. I don’t have a strong gaming PC, but I can run most games moderately well. For me, Halo, despite it being released close to a year ago, runs on par with games that were just released (Doom 3). I ran the game at the worst possible detail settings at 1024×768 (with low sound quality as well), and I averaged 15 fps (for comparison, gamers consider 30 FPS playable with 60 FPS being optimal) throughout the game. While I found that I could play through the game at that rate even though I was playing at a harder difficulty level, this may have been because I know the levels of the game well. The loss in visual quality for me was quite significant as well. The game at its lowest settings often looked like an early Quake 3-engine game, which is to say that it can look like a 4-5 year old game at times.

The visual quality settings actually have a significant impact on gameplay. On high settings, in a situation where you have a Covenant who is partially invisible and difficult to fight, on low settings, that same Covenant becomes gray and easily dispatched of. Lighting and special effects are affected so drastically that explosions don’t really explode (you cannot see explosions or fire) and the flashlight, which is supposed to be absolutely necessary in some levels, becomes an afterthought. Halo actually becomes easier on its low detail settings. Some might say these types of issues occur with all PC games; if you don’t have the power to run a game, you’ll have to sacrifice certain things in order to play it. I would argue, however, that because Halo runs much more sluggishly than it should in terms of its ratio of performance to visual quality, this is an important issue that needs to be voiced. If you have a slower PC, the performance is definitely something you should consider because it may really damper your enjoyment of the game.

Unlike Halo’s graphics, its music, sound effects, and voice acting don’t suffer in the transition to the PC. While Halo supports surround sound, I ran the game in stereo and found the sound positioning to be very strong. I actually heard a lot of sounds I had never noticed in the Xbox version as well. Sound effects and voices are crisp, in sync, and distinct.

Having mouse control, as you might expect, is a huge advantage over the analog sticks of a gamepad. In the Xbox version, the aiming reticle was slightly magnetized; as you got closer to placing your reticle over the enemy, your aiming sensitivity would get slower. Therefore, it was easier to “lock on” to an enemy once you got your aim onto him. For mouse control, Gearbox just removed this aiming help. I did notice that when you’re manning a turret, you’ll still get a little bit of help, however, and so I’m not sure how much exists (if any) in other situations. Mouse aiming controls well as you might expect for any PC FPS. An odd thing is that the maximum mouse sensitivity that you can set through the game menu will likely be too low for the experienced PC gamer. This, however, can be tweaked externally through information you can find on the Internet. If you’re migrating from the Xbox version, you’ll find that sniping and grenade throwing is significantly easier with a mouse despite how well the Xbox version controlled.

Halo separates itself from other games due to the level it immerses the player in. From the start when you wake up on the Autumn, the game setting almost seems realistic, or at least plausible. You can only carry two weapons, just like a normal person might. You’re a super soldier, part man, part machine, so it’s no wonder you’re stronger than everyone else. You have a rechargeable shield which allows you to survive encounters that would normally wipe out an entire human squad. The characters around you act real and treat you like you would expect for a person of your stature. If humans are fighting around you, you’ll notice that their mood picks up when you arrive. They recognize who you are and what you’re capable of. They’ll chatter during fights and you’ll know it when they’re scared or confident about the current situation. They’re human.

Enemies are no different. There is a hierarchy system where if you show the lower grunts that you can defeat their higher ranked warriors, they’ll become scared of you and try to run. If you throw a grenade at them, they’ll panic in an attempt to escape from it. You’ll always feel that you’re powerful, but that doesn’t mean you can just walk in and kill everyone Rambo-style. The enemy fights you together as a coordinated team, not just a bunch of AI bots trying to kill you on their own. It’s hard to understand what this means until you play Halo. In other games, it seems that characters fight you the same no matter what happens around them. In Halo, however, the environment and situation always dictate how the other soldiers and enemies fight.

The sci-fi storyline is great, and the dialogue is consistently good as well. The voice acting is never cheesy, and the music always creates a great sense of atmosphere. The soundtrack picks its spots; it’s not just always looping in the background. Instead, it always seems that, at the game’s most exciting moments, that’s when the soundtrack is primed and getting you ready for what’s coming.

The magic of Halo is that it never lets you break from its grip. There’s nothing that reminds you that you’re just playing a game. From beginning moment to end, you are Master Chief, the super soldier. You’re fighting an alien species for the survival of all mankind. It’s all perfectly normal, perfectly natural. When you die, you won’t think “Hey! That’s CHEAP!” Instead, and even at the hardest difficulties, you’ll always know you can beat a particular section- you just need to limit your mistakes. And as a super soldier, that’s all you’ll ever want because, after all, you can only control what you do.

What makes Halo such a great game is that it is the closest thing to a cinematic experience in gaming. Usually, a “cinematic experience” means heavy use of beautiful pre-rendered cut scenes and high production values, such as what you’ll see in the Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings games. In Halo, however, you’re not playing the movie or reliving the movie, you are the movie. If you’ve ever watched movies like Predator, or Aliens, or even Starship Troopers, the pure adrenaline rush you feel in the best moments of those movies is what the entire Halo game creates. In Halo, there are no puzzles or slow moments- Halo is pure action (without boring repetition) mixed in with a fantastic storyline, strong AI, excellent voice acting, and an epic score. Like Half-Life and Goldeneye (N64), Halo will always be considered one of the true classics of the genre.

Test System: Windows XP SP1, Intel M 1.5MHZ (approximately equivalent to a P4 2.0-2.2), 512MB, Radeon 9200 (64MB).

Note: Multiplayer was not tested

(originally published in GamersInfo.net)

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I had a nightmare once. Something about vampires? Some lady kept following me, she was helping me, I think…blood was splattered everywhere, and I had an awful headache. I just wanted to escape….the carnage….and the bodies….I tried to fight those…things(!) off, but eventually, I just grew numb to all the pain. I kept pulling the trigger, trying to stay alive. It was insane, I didn’t know what was going on. When I woke up, I tried to remember the details, but at the same time I was too scared to think about it. With time, the dream faded away from my mind, but the fear and desperation from that night would always be entrenched in my heart.

—-

Capcom’s Darkwatch is a first-person shooter with a western/supernatural setting. This means that while you can expect to ride horses, fight Indians, and use the normal assortment of weapons you would find in the archetypal Western movie, you’ll also encounter supernatural elements such as zombies, demons, and skeletons throughout your adventure as well.

You are Jericho Cross, a disfigured outlaw who hopes to retire from his life of crime with one last big score. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned, and Jericho instead mistakenly releases a vampire named Lazarus from captivity. Lazarus then proceeds to “reward” Jericho by making Jericho a vampire. The rest of the game revolves around Jericho’s quest to escape from his curse and at the same time, seek revenge on Lazarus.

While Darkwatch’s setting may be a departure from that of a normal shooter, its play mechanics are not. Any FPS veteran will have no problem getting acclimated within the game quickly. Darkwatch is, nevertheless, very challenging. No matter how careful you are, you can die at any moment. That’s not to say necessarily that the game is unfair, however, or very hard overall. While it may seem that certain sections of the game are ridiculous in how easy it is for you to die, checkpoints are given very liberally, and you never have to repeat too much of what you’ve previously accomplished. This avoids creating too much frustration for the player, and allows the game to keep moving. This fast, sometimes frantic pace is what makes Darkwatch in the end, a very enjoyable game. Darkwatch creates a constant sense of desperation by combining a quick, constant-action pace with enemies that while, for the most part, are easily dispatched, come in continuous waves and cause lots of damage themselves.

I often felt that my gun would never shoot fast enough, or I was always getting stuck in some corner surrounded by skeletons and finding myself unable to escape. Darkwatch’s wonderful balance is in making you feel pretty confident one moment, and then fearful and desperate the next, where you then find yourself almost yelling in your mind, wishing you could escape, mashing on the controller just to survive for one more second in hopes of escaping the mad throng surrounding you.

Aiming control is precise, though at times I felt the aiming help impeded me, steering me towards the wrong target. This was never more than a minor irritation, however. For those picky about their control configurations, they’ll be happy to see selectable profiles based on the controls of other popular FPSs, and adjustable reticle sensitivity.

One of the intriguing aspects of Darkwatch is its emphasis on the player’s choice to be good or evil, but this is not done particularly well. All your choices will be obvious- you are explicitly presented with good and bad options, and your decision only affects gameplay in determining the special vampire powers you develop and the game’s ending. The powers, unfortunately, are not that special. While they are somewhat useful in gameplay, their subtraction from the game would not negatively affect it. At best, the special powers and decision to go good or evil add slight replay to the game.

The plot in Darkwatch doesn’t stand up well on its own, but it is good enough to keep the player interested in continuing from one level to the next. A lot of that has to do with the strong voice acting in the game. The soundtrack is another positive, properly reflecting the supernatural atmosphere of the game and the pace of the gameplay.

With so much action going on on-screen, I would often find myself lost, looking around aimlessly, struggling to find my next attacker. Darkwatch, though, has some of the best positional surround sound found in any game- I grew to depend on it as a gameplay aid as I progressed in my adventure. Darkwatch is one of the rare games where sound actually improves the gameplay for a title, rather than merely complementing it.

Darkwatch features excellent graphics as well. I remember being amazed one particular moment upon seeing a ceiling reflection in a water puddle in an underground tunnel. The reflection wasn’t part of eye candy that games will often deliberately put in plain sight to impress you- this was just a subtle thing that I picked up, pretty much on accident, but this example highlights the level of graphical detail found within the rest of the game. Both on an artistic and technical level, everything looks great.

Darkwatch at its core is a frantic action game with supernatural and adult undertones. It is somewhat on the short side, with limited replay value, but it is still an outstanding game. It’s hard to recommend the game as a purchase because it can easily be completed over a weekend, but you won’t be disappointed with Darkwatch if you do decide to buy it. Excellent production values and strong adrenaline-filled gameplay make Darkwatch a game well worth playing.

Notes: Multiplayer was not tested.

Test system: 32 inch non-HDTV, 5.1 Surround System

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