Replica23's Reviews

Straight up, Age of Conan is a mess. Technicality right through to some poor design choices and (most importantly) a forced release. No self-respecting developer would ever launch a product with so many areas of incompletion unless the decision was not their own. I'll break it down into what I felt were three major quality/quantity of content shifts, 1-20/25, 25-50 and 55+.

Age of Conan starts excellently enough with a very robust and pleasing character creation feature, one which is bursting with options and is a far cry from my last MMO indulgence, World of Warcraft. Once into the game your character washes ashore to be confronted by an NPC that sets you on your way with a quest of destiny on the island of Tortage. The Tortage content is great, voice acted and the destiny quest portion (which is single player and takes place at night) is more story driven than what most MMO's offer. Combat is excellent, the animation is good and the overall graphical presentation is quite pleasing. Simply put, Age of Conan is a game ready to explode with detail. Sadly this is far from what to expect once you hit 22-25 and finish the destiny chain in Tortage.

At this point you are sent via boat to (continue your quest of destiny) the captol city of your chosen country (Cimmeria, Stgyia or Aquilonia). You will then meet your contact and discover the quest chain does not continue until level 30. At level 30 you are treated to some further development (although minor in comparison with the Tortage content) and your destiny is again postponed until the 40's. During this time you'll find a plethora of standard fetch and kill X/Y quests any WoW player will recognize. You'll dip your toe into (and quickly remove it from) a very badly implemented profession system and experiment with a pointless PvP scheme. Player versus player combat in Age of Conan is wonderful, but largely pointless. You will discover how small the world actually is and find yourself in other countries looking for more quests. At this point many broken chains rear their heads, usually half way through (resulting in a lot of wasted time), as the quest pool continues to shrink.

One can easily make it into their 50's with the available quests but will fall far short of the level 80 cap; at which point you may feel a sense of deja-vu if you played WoW at its beginning. Endgame is virtually non-existent. A great PvP siege system complete with player controlled cities is in place, but through my experience on one of a few PvP realms I failed to see any kind of activity. Of course Age of Conan is a young game so this is likely to change as it continues to grow.

That said anyone who plays Age of Conan can see how additional development time would have greatly benefited the game upon release. Sadly that did not happen, but there is a lot of potential here that will likely be realized in the coming year and I plan to return to see it at some point.

There ain't a lot that can be said about Super Stardust HD, the concept is simple and straight forward. It's a shooter and most would know exactly what they're getting into when picking up the controller. The graphics (especially colour and effects) are very pleasing and the music plays along with the action on screen quite nicely. But as I was already hinting at, most people will know what they're getting into and already have reasons why the game appeals to them. So there is little reason for me to tell whomever may read this why they should check it out.

Instead I'll write a bit about what I would liked to have seen included in the package. There are three main things I would liked to have seen added and they are more difficult/elaborate boss battles, the option for user created soundtracks and the inclusion of an online mode for both co-op and competitive players. Still the exclusion of any online mode hardly damages the quality or appeal of Super Stardust HD. It also wouldn't have hurt if the game was a bit longer.

And that's really it. A great little game but a little game none-the-less. For the price you really cannot go wrong, especially with the multi-system download option Sony gives users with PSN titles. Get a couple friends together, split the cost and enjoy a really cool shooter. It's just too bad the experience isn't longer.

Bioshock gets so many things right in an industry where the majority of games feel rushed. The incredible amount of polish on display is impressive and shocking, like the developer had all the time in the world to make it perfect. Despite how awesome the art direction, technical graphic excellence, sound, animation, control and just about everything else one can think of is, why am I not as satisfied as I should be?

I guess I feel like a conscious attempt by the developer was made to water down game play to appeal to a larger audience. The hooks are in place for so many RPG elements to go extremely deep and affect the outcome of the game by the decisions you make early on. Thus affecting the experience. True that one can get a couple different endings depending on what is dome with the "Little Sisters", but these decisions don't really affect the way the game is played as you progress through the narrative. It's disappointing to me because I can see the foundation for these elements to exist, it just feels like the developer turned the switch off.

Speaking of narrative, I wasn't much of a fan. Most people seem to think Bioshock has an excellent story, and fair is fair, so I won't be harsh on what is available and chalk it up to personal preference. To me the narrative in Bioshock reads much like the appendixes of the "Lord of the Rings"; where the world and wealth of fiction are engrossing and entertaining but lack a strong narrative to carry the reader (in this case player) through. I felt Bioshock to be much akin to to that, but I think I'm almost alone in my opinion.

The last gripe I have with Bioshock is the level of difficulty. I began on normal (or the default setting) like I do with every game, but about an hour in I restarted on the hardest difficulty level available. Even then through the course of my time in Rapture I never died, never ran low on hypno injections or med-kits and never really felt challenged. Even during the final showdown. And if I did die a Vita Chamber was a stone throw away.

Even with my 3 main complaints I still find myself unable to rate Bioshock any less than a 9/10 for the simple reason the game is too imaginative, too well made and much too polished to deserve anything less. It's also a lot of fun to play, I just feel disappointed because the prospect of so much more was dangled in my face the entire time. Despite what I've said I still recommend every gamer at least give Bioshock a try. It would be a shame to let this one fall into history without experiencing everything it does get right. Hopefully when the inevitable sequel arrives Irrational (now 2k Boston) can amp up the challenge and fully deliver on those RPG elements.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2
First of all Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 deserve mention as being great games themselves and are as good today as they were when at their initial release. Now then...

Episode 2 got a lot right in Valve's quest to deliver episodic gaming. The updated models, textures and lighting effects go a long way to contrast the differences between the original Source engine and this newer version. The sad part is it has a negative affect on Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 in that it really shows how the Source engine can look and how lucky Xbox 360 owners are. My favorite part of Episode 2 though is how Valve created a superb, strong and fast moving narrative that really does feel like a true progression in the Half-Life saga instead of an extension of HL2. The game is still as linear as the previous installaments but at least the view has changed. Instead of confined tight spaces, ruined urban streets and buildings you'll find yourself out in the open making your way through green scapes half the time. Even the mineshaft portion of the game feels less confined than past HL2 settings for some reason. The formula is still very much encounter, bridge to encounter, encounter, continue etc etc., however Valve has done enough to provide a refreshing take on the HL2 experience.

I believe this to be the best entry in the Half-Life 2 series that includes everything HL2 fans love. In fact, without spoiling the game for players I cannot say anymore as there really isn't a single issue to complain about.

Team Fortress 2
The game might only include 6 maps but the whole package has a level of polish and balance that's more legend than fact in the industry. The game also oozes with a ridiculous amount of personality, largely driven by the colourful Pixar-like art and graphic design that fuels its great sense of humor absent in almost any game, period. In addition to excellent level design, the real meat and potatoes of Team Fortress 2 lies in the 9 classes. Simply put each class plays completely different while still managing to be almost perfectly balanced. Feeling lazy? Take up a defensive position and slap down a sentry gun as the engineer. Feeling twichy? Roll-up the scout and go to town. The play style for each class is so unique it keeps the game's 6 levels incredibly fresh time and time again.

Unless you don't like team-based shooters there should be no reason not to get this game.

Portal
Portal is a great game, straight forward (as much as a puzzle game can be), but great none the less. What took me by surprise was...and I'll stop myself there so I don't ruin it for those who haven't played it yet (shame on you). I'll just say it unexpected and I was throughly pleased. Oh and "talk" about the credits song is spot-on. Wow, I think I need an MP3. What actually pleased most (other than what I said I wouldn't discuss) are both the advanced and challenge maps. Actually, the challenge maps are my favorite...maps, in Portal. Trying to squeeze through an area in less than 4 portals is quite...stimulating. Hell I'm done talking, go play it.

My only complaint is Valve did not include the updated versions of Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 that 360 and PS3 users got. Even so it's difficult to rate the Orange Box anything lower than a 10.

If I could use one word to describe Crysis it would be epic. Not gorgeous or a computer killing game, just epic. Everything about this game is epic. A lot of people complain about the open level break-down after the halfway point, degenerating into standard sci-fi FPS fare, but so what? Why is that type of design looked down on in Crysis but not in other notable titles such as Half-Life, Gears of War or Halo? I guess maybe people were spoiled buy the free roaming nature of the first half and were cranky Crytek took it away form them. But you know what, **** that. Sure it's a lot more linear in the later stages and the nano suit almost becomes pointless, but it's ****ing epic. And the ending is perfect.

If there are drawbacks, and there are (always), it's that Crysis will kill most computers or never be fully realized on those it doesn't. Playing this game the way it's meant to be played is truly something else. This may be a case where the graphics are so good, the effects used so well, that they dramatically affect game play. Crysis is a spiritual evolution of Far Cry, so if that game didn't grab your interest and entertain Crysis probably won't either. Then again I wasn't much of a Far Cry fan but the nano suit and crazy game play mechanics Crysis brought with roped me in.

Bottom line: If you have a machine capable of playing Crysis I'd suggest you do so, regardless of how pretty it may or may not look.

Everyday Shooter is the best and most fresh dual-stick shooter, and the best shooter period, I've played in a long time. Yes the game only has 8 levels but they're a lot more difficult than other recent releases in the genre such as Super Stardust HD or Geometry Wars. In addition to superb game play the incredible art design makes playing through each level a joy time and time again. It also goes along way with music design, linking the song playing during each level to what the player is doing on screen with regard to the level objectives. And the music included is oddly satisfying. Another great part of the ES experience is the replay value. There is a lot to unlock for a game of this size. Good stuff too. The kind of stuff that further increases replay value, if ES didn't already have enough reasons to be played multiple times. Any fan of shooters of this ilk should definitely load-up their PSN account and make the $10 purchase.

Six months after 360 FPS fans got to exclusively play one of the most talked about games of the year I was quite excited to learn of the impending PC version; complete with new content, a level editor and amped up visuals. November 2007 came and went and although I had my chance to play this highly regarded game I actually didn't until February. And after just completing the game tonight I can agree with most of the praised this game has received.

Being a PC FPS fan I must admit my initial reaction to how the game controls was that of weirdness. Not bad but different enough to be a strange experience for the first chapter. And I also fully admit this may be a case for a dual-stick controller being a better method of play, even though mouse/keyboard works just fine. That said the story is decent and pretty much what I expected from a non-Half-Life FPS shooter, especially one made by Epic, and the game length sits in the "just right" area. My two favorite features in GoW are the cover and reload systems. The cover system works extremely well and offers many of the actions I kept wishing for whilst playing Rainbow Six Vegas. Actions such as moving from one side of a doorway to another, or from rolling in mid-stride and being able to slam yourself into cover. The reload system is a breath of fresh air and acts almost like a mini-game, adding to the intensity of a hot fight. Aside that I generally enjoyed the character models, everything from the Brumak to Fenix himself. They are filled to the brim with detail and are fairly well animated, which I cannot overly say the same for the environments.

The environments are probably my least liked part of the game, both technical and artistic. Simply put the palette of colours is severely lacking and this generally blends everything together. Not to mention the same palette is used for most of the game and gets quite repetitive fairly quick. I know it is post-apocalyptic and all but so was Half-Life 2. It still managed variation in colour. Technically speaking the environments look pretty darn good, but sometimes not so much. I've seen this in other Unreal 3 engine games and have to wonder if the engine either has difficulty producing large good looking environments or if all developers just happen to use most of their resources on creating excellent looking small spaces. Another thing about the U3 engine I really dislike is how shiny most textures reflecting light are, it is really annoying. Though I'm glad to have learned Epic has made substantial changes to their lighting system in U3E, as recently showcased at GDC 2008.

While playing GoW (and especially after finishing it) I kept thinking of all the people ragging on the story in Crysis, or lack of. I have no issue with either, both aren't exactly deep but they get the job done, I've just failed to see why Crysis got such bad rep for its narrative while most people seem to have looked passed that with GoW. Opinion I guess. I would have written more in-depth regarding my thoughts on multi-play but most of the time when I went online there were very few users playing and even fewer games available. Maybe this is a Live Gold versus Silver membership conflict, but I doubt it. It's probably a combination of of a year old game and a rough port. Or maybe I'm an idiot, though I swear I've never seen a deader online community before in a PC game. Even so multi-player seems kind of lean. Maybe I'm just spoiled with more robust online shooters. Speaking of rough ports, the install for GoW is ridiculously long (I cannot recall any other game ever coming near to matching it) and includes a Live bug right out of the box that can gimp your install if you are unaware of avoidance methods before hand. I haven't bothered to read up about it but I'm certain the game has memory leak issues. The performances keeps getting worse the longer the game is running; and if a simple restarted of the program didn't solve the issue I might think it was something else. When this issue doesn't intrude the game runs quite smooth on a 8800 series card, though shame on you Microsoft for omitting the AA option for XP/DX9 users. I would say that doesn't make sense but we all know why they did it.

All told I really did enjoy Gears of War and technical issues aside it was definitely worth my time. I'm hoping Epic and MS get the sequel onto PC faster than the original, as I definitely believe the 1 year delay hurt its chances at success. Then again maybe CliffyB is right about PC gaming... Nah who am I kidding.

I can sumarize Rainbow Six Vegas 2 with a one paragraph addition to my R6V1 review. $50 gets you all the problems of and half the maps from the first game, haphazzardly rolled up into a package more fit for an expansion than a full game. What is new? There are a handful of new maps, a bit of environment interaction, the ability to sprint, bullet penetration (that has consistency issues) and a **** achievement/reward/unlock system. Why is it BS? Because you more or less have to mindlesslly grind experience to get, more or less, the same equipment the first game gave you from the get-go. If you like R6V1 you will probably enjoy R6V2, but do not pay more than $30 for it.

There really is nothing more to say about Rainbow Six Vegas 2, but Gamespot requires an 800 character minimum for user reviews. If you do not care about the sprint ability just stay with the first game until R6V2 hits your local bargain bin.

Sadly it's marred by technical issue and questionable design decisions.

At its core Rainbow Six Vegas is an excellent entry into the series that truly sports some awesome multi-player action, but it kind of stops there. Before I break into a rant about what I don't like about the game I should be a bit more positive with it. The cover system is simple yet ingenious and is easily my favorite, even though it is missing a few action oriented options (think Gears of War). The character customization options are excellent and straight-forward and the number of maps and multi-players modes make for a meaty online/LAN experience. Sadly there are numerous technical issues that plague the PC version as well as some daft design decisions.

Technical issues range from un-killable AI opponents, which I have come to believe must be a cover system glitch, right up to poor directional environmental sound design and spastic audio. And no it is not my computer as the friends I network the game with (over both a LAN and the internet) experience the same problems, all of which are completely random in occurrence. I'll also throw in a note about the very bad AA (or lack of) in the game. The amount of "jaggies" compared to what is deemed exceptable on the PC (or any platform) is uncanny. It's actually really quite puzzling. Then there is frequent login server issues, more specifically how often the login server is down. I guess this answers why they like Xbox so much (Live). Though to be fully honest I have to say when the login server is down it's generally not for a long. I'm also almost completely speechless at how bad the Unreal 3 Engine looks here. R6V is not a bad looking game (aside the bad AA), but compared it to other U3E games and you might wonder what the hell happened. And in traditional Ubisoft fashion the team responsible for the PC port did a horrible job optimizing this port. A game of this "calibur" should have no issues running on a most machines considered game-worthy within the last two years. I also find a lot of the time the AI seems to know where you are (regardless of what you're doing), while other times it'll run right up to you and stand there. I've played both the PS3 and 360 versions and the PC one is by far the worst. At least the game is stable, with maybe 1 or 2 experienced crashes. And tabbing to the desktop and back is surprisingly smooth.

Technicality aside, who the hell designed the user interface? Or should I say why wasn't the UI redesigned for the PC? Both an "exit to main menu" and "quit program" option should be available from the menu when in a game. It might sound like nitpicking but I really don't want to exit to each screen and wait while it loads when I just want to shut the game down. Luckily I can just tab out and force the program to shutdown. Maybe the whole Rainbow Six style is lost on me but am I alone in thinking there should be a close combat move? Nothing like Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3 where you could hurt/kill the guy, but an option to stun an opponent with the end of your rifle or pistol whip them. An ability like that would come in handy during hot fights when your clips runs dry and your opponent(s) charges you.

All my **** aside R6V is still a lot of fun, so much so its technical problems and design short-comings can easily be overlooked. For $20 who can really complain (obviously me). Hopefully Rainbow Six Vegas 2 can remedy some of my concerns.