Fallout's 25th Anniversary

Fallout is now 25 years old, and I want to take this chance to talk about the original Fallout and why it is my favorite in the series. First, I didn’t play Fallout in the 90s, my brother had the game (and I always thought the CD case cover looked like the coolest game ever) but I had no space in my heart for any video games that weren’t first-person shooters or real-time strategy games. The brief time spent watching my brother play Fallout made it look like such a boring game. It wasn’t until many years later that Fallout 1 was one of the free games on Gametap and I, bored of the games I had, decided to play it (at that point in life having accepted that games other than Doom could be fun). So, when I Gush over Fallout, know that it is not as someone who played it when it launched but as someone who played it probably a decade after its release and still fell in love. It is also worth noting that I am critical of the Fallouts that followed but it comes from a place of love. They are still great games in a great series, and I am only ever sad they aren't better. 

 
I jumped into Fallout blind, only really knowing it was post-apocalyptic and that the power armor looked rad. I was focused on the TV in the opening and ignored the slow zoom out of the camera and enjoying the world building of the ads until the TV dies, at which point I looked around at the devastation and had chills run down my arms. The perfect feeling of despair to then get hit with that perfect line, “War, war never changes.” The end result of this was that I hadn’t so much as clicked New Game and was already hooked on this game and its world. I build a character (a terrible character as I’d never played an RPG that required things like stats!) and jump into the game. This moment at the start with the Overseer is incredible at setting the tone and your mission, and it is one area I think every other Fallout game has failed to reach up to. It’s obvious that your vault is in a dire state and you are the last hope of everyone you have ever known. Importantly, it never feels like you are The Chosen One or some great hero of your vault, you just feel like the last one the Overseer has to send on this quest. The last thing he tells you is to, above all, stay safe. Almost like he is saying, “We can’t afford to lose you too.” And when you step out of the vault, you know exactly why. 

You are not the first person that vault 13 has sent on this task. It is difficult to tell, but the body you come out to is wearing a vault 13 suit! Oh hey, it’s Ed! You, apparently, knew Ed! He (presumably) was the person the Overseer sent before sending you. And he has Armor Piercing 10mm ammo on him too, they only sent you with Jacketed Hollow Points (ignore game effects here, the point is he has ammo you do not have. He is better prepared than you, and look at how much that helped him). The reason they have sent you with so little equipment is because they just don’t have anything better to send you with, they sent the two people (we’ll learn way later in the game about the first one they sent out) before you with the best equipment that they could spare.

“Here’s a common handgun, some ammo, a knife, and some healing stuff; you have 150 days. Good luck!” What you get sent with does change a bit by your tagged skills, but it isn’t like they send you with a laser pistol or a rifle or body armor if you tagged the right things. It has been made clear, assuming you notice why you know the skeleton’s name, that you are not the first choice, but the safety of the vault and everyone you have ever known, is still resting on you. No pressure! In Fallout 2 you are literally called The Chosen One, you are the first and best your village has to send out to save it. In Fallout 3, you are just some kid trying to find your Dad. In New Vegas, you are just some courier who is trying to find the guy that shot you and left you for dead. And in Fallout 4, you are only trying to find your kidnapped son. Only in the original Fallout are you fighting for more than you or a family member AND not the first choice to save the day. I would say 3, NV, and 4 are much more personal stories where “saving the world/wasteland” comes in Act 2, after you have found the person you were hunting for and are then thrust into deciding the fate of the area. I can appreciate all of these stories but they lack the high stakes the original Fallout had right from the start; you are not eased into despair you are thrust into it. Fallout 2 does have high stakes from the start (your village is dying) but you are the best person they have for the job, so it feels more hopeful (you're the best, you got this!). The cave in Fallout sets the tone for the rest of the game, where humanity feels like it is barely hanging on, whereas Fallout 2 makes it clear with the first town you visit that humanity is doing pretty okay! Things are not great exactly, but we have bars and traders, a brothel, and plenty of people living pretty peaceful lives. Fallout 1’s first town does not have much other than farmers, farmers who are plagued by raiders and wildlife. This all adds to the stakes, as you slowly see that your vault being forced out would lead to a terrible life for everyone. The towns you visit are not great places, the wildlife is terrifying, there are raiders and all manner of people that would murder everyone from your vault if it paid them well enough. This wasteland is not safe and your vault may be the only safe place left on Earth! Your village in Fallout 2 seems peaceful and worth saving, but they can just move if they really have to. We can assume there are other villages such that there just isn’t anywhere else good to move to, but we never see them. Other than a dislike of “tribals” there also doesn’t appear to be a reason your village couldn’t move to farming near town or working with other farmers. The stakes just feel so much lower, even if the second half has you, again, saving the world from some terrible threat. 

I find myself coming back to Fallout 1 over and over again because it feels so close to perfection. The mechanical improvements to Fallout 2 are all very obvious (why was the transfer limit 999 in a game where things, like money, go higher than that? That “take all” button is so nice!) but the story and world are not as bleak and that results in a very different game. To say nothing of the abundance of pop-culture references in Fallout 2 that always remind me I’m playing a video game. And then Fallout 2 also has so many quests and so much content all resulting in a game that is much more fun to play but a story that is less focused. Fallout 3 does a better job of creating a bleak world than Fallout 2 did; the Capital Wasteland (and that misspelling has ruined my ability to spell capitol when I need to) is honestly worse off than even Fallout 1’s world, and while a lot of that is from engine and hardware limitations (you just do not have the memory for lots of NPCs in the era of PS3/XB360 so the wasteland feels devoid of anyone farming or otherwise living) but it does make for what feels like a bleak despair of a world. (It also means wanting to bring fresh water to the wasteland makes sense and fits with what it would need to survive.) And New Vegas and 4 both present us with worlds that are pretty civilized with towns and factions and, still clearly limited by available RAM, people just living and surviving. At this point, Fallout is much more post-post-apocalyptic than anything else, as the worlds are presenting us with people fighting for control instead of fighting to survive the week. The New California Republic wants Hoover Dam because it supplies their cities with abundant electricity and for the Legion it is just the road across the river on the endless march of war. The East Coast is busy fighting over techbros replacing people with synthetic copies and military authoritarians (as an aside, this does make me wonder what a Fallout with the NCR and East Coast Brotherhood smashing against each other would look like, as NCR annexes territory as it grows and the Brotherhood brings order through overwhelming force. They could never co-exist. But I digress.) This all makes for a very different game world and story than what the original presented us with. I do really love the stories that can be told in this world now, and I like seeing the battle for how the world will be lead, but there is a simplicity in a battle for agricultural land or fighting against beasts in the wasteland that is largely lost now. I am not complaining that Fallout has grown (I actually love that it has instead of repeating itself again and again) but simply admiring the bleak hell it all came from. My favorite post-apocalyptic setting is where humanity can still survive but it could also still fail. The original Fallout is exactly in that spot, but the games since all have more hope for humanity's survival and, at least at the start of the games, feel like they'd largely do just fine if you failed. There is a great freedom in storytelling here and to watch the world grow from your choices (Coming across the NCR in Fallout 2 was the coolest, I did that! Democracy for the wasteland all because I saved one person!) I do however quite love where Fallout is at now, and continue to be excited for the future of the series, because if there is one thing that the newer post-post-apocalyptic setting of Fallout shows us it’s that war, war never changes. 

Playing Fallout New Vegas as a vegetarian

Well, I took the plunge last night and went vegetarian. Well, okay, I went vegetarian in Fallout New Vegas (it sounds more fun than going vegetarian in real life). I cheated and add the Animal Friend perk at the start (otherwise it'd be some stupid "run from hostile animals and have someone else kill them" and that doesn't sound fun), but the perk annoying doesn't include insects like the giant ants and all that. I figure they're technically not animals so it's okay, I just won't kill any that aren't hostile and I won't loot anything from them. It was going really well up until one of my shotgun pellets hit a Legion Dog and made it hostile.

I'm basically role-playing it as a stereo-typical Oregonian, since, why not? My rule set is as follows:

Vegetarian but not Vegan. (Vegan really wouldn't be much harder though, since few foods use animal products in New Vegas)

Not anti-establishment, but not pro-establishment. I.E. I won't attack the NCR, but I won't go out of my way to help them either. I'll basically only attack the things that are hostile, and I won't attack anything that's not known to be hostile. So no shooting those people I meta-knowledge know to be raiders but character wise shouldn't know to be raiders.

No stealing at all. It's annoying when it's good karma to kill an escaped convict and okay to loot his body, but it's bad karma to steal something from his "house." At any rate, no stealing; stealing is wrong.

Hardcore mode so eating actually matters.

Hard difficulty. I find this the best setting since enemy weapons do a lot of damage but your own still do damage as well.

No fast traveling since that makes any Fallout and any Elder Scrolls game instantly better. When a quest sends you half way across the map it actually feels like a quest. Fast traveling is easily the worst part of Skyrim, but that's for another blog post.

No Nukacola (even to loot and sell). Nukacola is a representation of a giant corporation and Oregonians seem to support the little guy (in this case, Sunset Sarsaparilla) rather than the mega-corp. It's worth mentioning that Portland Oregon has more craft breweries inside its limits than any city in the world (http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220319) and, as such, I can pick up a fancy micro-brew for little more than most people pay for national brand brews. On tap at bars, it's often a very minimal cost difference between something like PBR and a Widmer Brother's Hefeweizen. Now remember from Fallout 3 that Nukacola Quantum had some bad test problems and the family of any people who died in test groups got a fruit basket as a sorry; this paints Nukacola as a uncaring and large corporation. Sunset Sarsaparilla is painted as a much smaller company in Fallout New Vegas (they aren't even national). Put these together and you'll hopefully see why my stereo-typical Oregonian will shun the big corp and embrace the (at least comparatively) little guy.


No over-bartering things. I'll still loot and sell things, but I won't do it too much. This plays better with the next (and final) rule. This is mostly done to make the game a bit tougher (but not as hard as my "no bartering" masochist mode rule set) rather than for role-playing.

Max caps is 1,000 times character level. So I can't ever get mega-rich, but I won't be as broke as I am in my "no bartering" masochist mode playthrough. I'm tempted to lower this to 500 caps times level to keep money even lower. Once I reach the limit, I won't be looting any more stuff I don't need. Keeping weapons and armor in repair will also keep me from getting too much money.


Like any good PC Fallout NV player, I have a crap-ton of mods installed. Most of these mods are weapon and ammo based so that there is a massive level of verity in enemy weapons and all that. And pretty much every weapon mod ever puts those new guns somewhere in Doc's house. As a result, I limit myself to only picking up a few of these guns whenever I start a new game. This time around I limited myself to 3 guns. The Tokarev (TT-30) fits very well as a cheap pistol that I'd expect an Oregonian to own (hell, I know at least 2 people who do). It's not expensive and flashy, it's reliable and cheap. If you've ever wondered why you see so many old Toyota's, Subaru's, and Volvo's on Oregon roads, this is the reason (along with the weather and crappy roads). All of the guns I picked follow this route. Second up was an Ithica M37 shotgun (in 20 gauge) with the side paddle shell holder installed. And lastly is an SKS (annoyingly in 5.56mm even though there are mods that add 7.62x39mm to the game). I used console commands to lower the reliability of all these weapons (I just pulled a random number out of my head, but they were all between 60% and 75% repaired), and all of them have the ability to jam when shooting, not just when reloading (one of my favorite things ever, since having a rifle jam in a fire fight really makes for a rush of adrenalin). I dumped anything else that wasn't these 3 weapons from my inventory, along with all the armors but the Armored Vault 13 suit, and then ditched the vault 13 canteen to make sure I had to worry about water.

I'm excited for this playthrough, but I'm afraid I'll have the same problem with it that I have with the masochist mode playthrough; I have no interest in aligning myself with factions and moving the story along, I just want to explore the wasteland. This is made worse in this playthrough since none of the factions really match with the type of character I'm playing as. And with no real end goal to aim for, it's tough to play the game for too long. I'll likely just play until my first death and call it done.

Bioshock (game worlds)

I'll start this by saying I've not beaten all of the first Bioshock (the lack of Steam cloud saving is a pain. I've played the first half or so of the game more times than I can count because I never back up my saves) but I've still played it. I've also not played any if Bioshock 2 or Infinite, but I do plan to play Infinite at some point (after beating 1).

I'd normally just Tweet this, since it's not a huge post like I normally do, but it's a bit too big for a Tweet. Today we have Bioshock: Infinite DLC announced and one of the packs takes place in Rapture before it all went to shit! I'm really excited for this, but not for the reasons people would probably expect. Bioshock's Rapture is a beautiful city and an interesting idea, but it feels so empty and 2D. It's like an amusement park ride or a cheesy western town. If you move along the route and don't look too hard you'll enjoy it, but the second you look deep you see that's it not a real place where people have ever lived. I never (and again I haven't beaten Bioshock 1 but I've played a decent amount of it) ever felt like people lived in Rapture. The areas flow badly and don't feel like I'm in a place anyone would build let alone live in. I'm sure some of this is because the game doesn't let you explore everywhere and does things to force you along a set route (so you're not moving through the city like a normal person would, you're instead going through broken walls and maintenance doors). When you add in the fact it's underwater you see it doesn't make any sense to have the buildings not designed perfectly before building. It's sad that I've felt like some Call of Duty maps could have actually been filled with people before a war and not in Bioshock (CoD has the advantage of being able to just copy real world areas or movie scenes though). I compare the two games because they're both hallway shooters (Bioshock is better at making you think it's not, but it's pretty damn linear) even if Bioshock likes to throw in RPG type things into the mix (though, once again, it's mostly normal shooter type things with an RPG paint job. In CoD you'd put on a red dot and you're gun would become more accurate where in Bioshock you'd upgrade it or equip plasmids). Borderlands is an example of an FPS/RPG hybrid with a close to a  50/50 split of the two). So the reason I'm excited for this DLC in Rapture is because I'm excited to see if Rapture can feel more like a real place if it's got people living in it rather than just enemies. I've not played Infinite, but from screen shots and in game video it doesn't often look like it'd feel like a real place with people in it. I do feel like Infinite starts out feeling like a real city (the fair parts at the start I've seen feel like a real place) but I won't know for sure until I play it; and the price (along with that damn Steam backlog) keeps that from happening anytime soon. Most games fall very short of making it seem like people could or do live in it, but few games ever really try for this either (by which I mean that they don't set out to simulate a real world, they set out to make a game, then throw in NPCs to make it sort of feel like a real place). Skyrim, Fallout 3 and NV, Borderlands, Final Fantasy, Pokemon; they all fall short of making me feel like I'm in a real place where people live, I'm hopeful that this DLC will finally make it feel like you're in a real place. I could go into detail about what I feel each of those games is lacking to make it feel like a real place with real people, but that would make this post a bit too long (and I'm too lazy to type that much).

The 2 games I can think of that do a decent job of making a city feel real are Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Detroit feels like a hell hole, but it mostly feels like a real hell hole. And China feels like a real slum without being over the top. The fact you can enter a lot of houses and apartments that you don't need to go into really helps this) and Assassin's Creed 2 (lots of people in the world and lots of places to go to. You can't enter house like in DE:HR but it makes sense that you wouldn't in AC2. The advantage here is that the developer can just use real world pictures/paintings/maps to make the city so it's easier to make it feel like a real place just throwing a shit-ton of NPCs into). You could also add GTA4 to this list, since it does a good job making an entire city feel pretty lively. I've not played enough of GTA4 to really have much of an opinion on it though so I won't (and, yes, you could say the same about me and Bioshock: Infinite. The point of this post is more Rapture across the games than it is about a particular game). Hopefully the next Fallout game can make the world seem like there are real civilizations built from the ashes of atomic hellfire, since one of the best parts of post-apocalyptic media are the people who climb back into the ruins of the world.

Rage

[Post updated for clarity and grammar. Also it's now gluten free and is fortified with iron!]

It's been a long time since I've done a blog post, and it's been a long time since Rage came out. So most of you would either own Rage, or wouldn't care to own Rage. So, like most of my posts, this isn't a review, but I did plan this post in my head while playing the game.

I was very excited for it and I picked it up at launch. I was slightly disappointed, but mostly because I hyped myself up over the idea of a new id IP. The A.I. was amazing (it reacted in ways that were semi-predictable, but most shooters have the enemies doing things that you 100% see coming every time. So it was a massive step forward, but not so large of a leap that I feel I'm going into the field of video game A.I. too late), the textures were not as awesome as I wanted, but they had a wonderful amount of detail (playing on PS3). The guns sounded great, the cars handled realistically without being a racing sim (though the game felt like a racing game with an FPS mini-game a lot of the time), and the world was both original and strange without going too far in either direction. But, alas, the game had a lot of faults. Mostly, however, I found the faults were in the story.

[Super fast plot details for anyone who hasn't played the game. The governments of the world find out that an asteroid is going to hit Earth and destroy all life. They all decide to make Arks and store select people underground in them to survive the impact, and also decide not to tell anyone so as not to induce panic. These people are given magical nano-machines that basically revive you on death, help you heal over time, give you a HUD; basically anything a normal shooter likes to give you anyway. The Arks preserve everyone in a sleep state for, like, 100 years at which point you'll go above ground and restart humanity! The first group to come out of the Arks are military members, with everyone else following in 20 or so years. Some Arks, like your own, are staged to come out later than the others. And everyone else in your Ark is, for some reason, dead (likely a long time by the decay). So you're all alone, thrust into the wasteland. You're also wearing an Ark-suit. The plot is basically Fallout as a pure shooter, but it's set up well enough as to be a fun time! So, join me as we see this plot fail.]

The story was a pretty good one, but (much like the Halo games) the story wasn't much of the actual game. My biggest issue, however, was with the Authority and some of the raider groups. Or, more specifically, a lack of a problem. The Authority is, at no point in the game, a threat to you personally until you start shooting them/invading their bases (as in you can drive up to their defensive wall and they won't start shooting at you until you start shooting them). Everyone in the towns tells you they're evil and fascist, but the game doesn't show them in an offensive light until you've started killing them. Of course the Authority wants revenge/justice at that point! You see some floating robotic scanner things (think scanners from Half Life 2) in the first town after you stir things up a bit, but they don't really respond to you (even when they see and, presumably, scan you). Shouldn't the Authority have the ability to scan you (and others) remotely with these things and, I don't know, pick up those nano-machines all Ark survivors have? We also don't see this Authority killing civilians in the towns or really doing anything generic fascist-like that the townspeople seem to be insistent on. One of the Authority soldiers (after taking control of a subway town) will tell you to "pick up that can" in a very nice homage to Half-Life 2 and the Combine. A group that is shown to be evil before you ever get to pick up a crowbar and bash some skulls (and headcrabs) in! In this case, if you look down, you'll see there is a can of food on the ground. So this evil Authority soldier is pointing out a can of food on the ground and telling me to pick it up.

In this subway town (the Authority take it over after you complete this mission) you get tasked with killing a group of "raiders" who supply the town's power (because they're charging more money now or whatever). Now the mayor of this town seems way more evil than these raiders; and the same can be said of most of the raider groups. In this case you are tasked with killing them simply because the mayor wants cheaper power. The world is bloody gone, be happy you have power! So those raiders are walking around the town demanding protection money or looting your caravans? No, it's a group of Russians who have power plants. In one of the co-op missions (the first) you get to hear how the guy who gives you the sniper rifle in the main story got that rifle. It's a nice bit of backstory (that isn't needed, but it's probably more fun shooting wise than the main game) but his reason is also more evil than these Russian "raiders". The Russian group of raiders is drilling for oil in an old (abandon) prison. You are tasked with stopping them. This would be like America invading Canada because they started drilling for oil that they planned to export to the US anyway! The first raider group you fight (the ghost guys) are typical savage raiders, so killing them makes sense (although, even then you're doing it because the guy who saved you from them told you to rather than because you want revenge or something). But the British group is a bunch of drunks who tinker with cars (not evil, but not good. It seems likely they harass local populations, but you don't ever see it). And every other group seems to be pretty okay. One raider group (located where another Ark pops up) is said to be savage, killing anyone that enters their land and not speaking a language anyone understands. I felt bad killing these guys (though not as bad as the group or Russians [in hindsight that feels really racist of past-me]) because I didn't have a good feel for them being "bad guys" in the least. They defend their land, and if someone comes into it and doesn't leave (while being shouted at) then they get killed. I bet more than a few Native American tribes wish they had taken that stance when Europeans came to America (and some, of course, did).

I played the entire game waiting for plot twist. Waiting to take down part of the Authority only to find out that the group I had been working for was self serving, and used an Ark survivor knowing they would be naive and powerful. When the game ended (and, much like a fall, it's the sudden stop that kills you) I was left disappointed and wanting so much more. Not because id didn't bring me a good game, but because id could have brought me an orgasmically-amazing (amazingly-orgasmic?) game with a slightly better story and a slightly longer game. I look forward to the DLC that I pray comes [future me: it did. I bought it. I didn't beat it but plan to. Though I'm on PC this time around]. And the same with a Rage 2 [which will likely never happen]. But I hope Bethesda helps them bring in a good story teller. No id game has ever had a drop-dead amazing story. "Space Marine killing the spawns of hell" was fine for the 90s, and it still makes for a fun game today, but it feels dated. id doesn't need to make a story driven game (Halo isn't story driven, and yet it has so much story. Final Fantasy games are pure story these days), they can keep a linear game (like Half-Life) and still tell a fun story. I really look forward to seeing what the bring forth, and they will always be one of my favorite companies (if only because they bring some of the coolest new tech engines to the gaming world).

[I'd love to rewrite this post but it feels dishonest to do so. I'll likely play the game again and write another, better written, post about it. This post was updated for clarity and grammar, but not for content. 1/14/2015]

Metal Gear Solid 4

The first game I bought for my PS3 was Metal Gear Solid 4. I had wanted a PS3 just to play this game, back in the days before I had a job when it first came out. I managed to keep all the spoilers at bay and so I was able to enjoy this game. And shit bricks. Lots of them. The story was almost too easy for me to follow after MGS1/2/3's joy of twists and turns. It had a few, but they weren't hard to follow. And it had to make sure it cleared up everything at the end. And man did it ever. But that's not what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about is the engine used in MGS4. The story made me shit bricks at times(as stated), and the engine did things I won't talk about. But really, I have never had an engine in a game feel this perfect. Bungie does a really good job with their engines, as does DICE and Valve. But a "plain" (man, it hurts to say those engines are plain. I love you guys, really) FPS engine working perfectly isn't as impressive as a stealth game's. In a first person shoot your focus is on moving from point A to B, and killing everything you can (save a few games). If the environment reacts to you and your weapons it's a solid engine. Throw in bullet physics, destructible environments and such and you're pretty much golden. More than Call of Duty has done. (I hate on CoD so much not because I think their games are bad(though they are not my cup of tea anymore), but because I don't see them trying to push the envelope and do new things with their games anymore). But with MGS4 I can go from 2 points and kill anything, and do it any number of ways.  Or I can sneak by and kill nobody a number of ways as well. They took out the spinning boxes for items which helped make them harder to spot and make the world feel better. They added the Solid Eye which did a great job of adding nice H.U.D. features to enemies and such (really nice when you can't tell if that person hates you or not from a distance). And the guns, oh God the guns!

They got the guns perfect! Snake doesn't tactically reload "right", sadly. But if you shoot half a mag, reload and look on the ground you'll see that one of the rounds is still a live cartridge. So even though he works charging handle on that AK when he doesn't have to, it correctly ejects a live round. It's easy to see in the Shooting Range. I can't tell if the ammo count goes down because of this but either way it is very cool to see. It was really nice to play a MGS4 game that really allowed you to play it as a shooter just as much as it allowed you to play it as a stealth game. MGS4 is mostly stealth, but for someone who likes the story more it's nice to have the freedom to play it how I want to.

I loved being able to aim in either 3rd person or 1st person at the press of a button. And I could lock it into 1st person when aiming right in the menu. I kept it in 1st person most of the game while in combat. And I could finally fight and not totally waste ammo (and get shot up). But I could still explore the world in 3rd person which lends best to the MGS experience. I really REALLY want to see this engine used for the next Resident Evil game. I loved RE5, but the engine made it a bitch to play. I needed to be able to aim down my weapon sites a lot of the time (the laser dot was a joke on target) but 3rd person is just what RE games are. I think this engine would be perfect at accommodating both types of players.

Everything else about that game was really awesome. The way the environment reacted to you was awesome. The flashbacks and such were great. The little hidden things were awesome. The cut-scenes were just like a movie as always. Only thing missing was trophies to convince me to play the game on harder settings a bit more [when there isn't a way to track the awesome things I've done in a game, I'm often less likely to do them]. But I at least want to do a "kill everything" and "kill nothing" playthrough. Now I want to see the rest of the games remade in this engine. Both MGS and MG. Mostly the Metal Gear games, as those are hard as hell for me (as most NES games are).

Medal of Honor

Remember when I did that "review" of the upcoming MoH game, like a year ago? Well I finally got the chance to play it. It was the first game I beat with my new PS3 and I think it's a good sign of things to come. The cover mechanic is nothing short of perfect. I could finally aim down the sites of a weapon and just barely creep over the top of cover to fire. I could also quickly bolt around cover to see if anything was there before I moved past my cover. It also kept me in first person view (Rainbow Six Vegas too you to third person and I felt that was overly cheap). You also weren't glued to the cover and you could take cover behind anything.

But the game wasn't perfect. I beat the campaign in about 4-5 hours, playing on the hardest difficulty on the first playthrough. I got at least 8 when I did this with CoD:MW2. But these 4-5 hours were the best of any campaign I have ever played, ever! It beats out Call of Duty 2 (which has held that ground and been that campaign for which I compare every other campaign to) in everything but length. A lot of the time I just forgot I was playing a video game, I felt like I was playing Airsoft or reading a really well done book. There were no over the top cliches and there wasn't the one bad guy that you killed at the end. Hell, only once did I enter a room with that "slow motion" thing that CoD has seemed to fall in love with. And I won't lie, I didn't like that part as much as the times I had to enter a room without slow motion. It really added to the adrenalin involved in kicking down the door. With most of the guns you don't carry a crap ton of ammo. (the SAWs are the only exception to this that I found). I liked how I had a few hundred rounds for my M4, and if I needed more I'd ask one of my team mates (who would only give you more if you were low enough. I guess the NPCs have Solid Snake's bandanna from MGS1 and they aren't keen on sharing). This was a good reason for you to keep the guns you started the mission with. I found myself ditching the M14 EBR and the shotguns for AK47s and G3A3s. Ammo was fairly rare for the guns you picked up off of bad guys, and your team mates couldn't give you ammo for a gun they didn't have (or an ammo type they didn't have).

Everything they did with the weapons I expect to be done with the weapons in any FPS. They got reloading right (I have a blog post on that so I won't go into it here), they got the ammo amount right (you have an extra round if you reloaded with a round in the chamber), they got the reload speed right (I mean that it wasn't too fast, but it wasn't too slow. It allowed reloading to bring tension, but not to take a year to do). There was one thing I never expected any game to do, and they did it. You can change the fire mode of most weapons (I can make my G3A3 shoot semi-auto or full-auto. Same with my M4, etc). I love this! But it has been done before, showing your character toggle to change the fire rate, yeah, I've never seen that done before. Hell, CoD has their M4 and M16 modeled with the selector switch on semi.

And lastly I want to compliment the dialog. This is one of the reasons I felt like I was there (or reading a really good book) and it was something I was really looking forward to ever since I read about it on that Joystiq review. The time spent in the Apaches is filled with a lot of com chatter. And every bit of it feels so real. To the point at which you can only guess what exactly they mean (though a lot of it is still easy to follow). it was the same way in the game with the rest of your team.

The enemy AI wasn't the brightest in the game, but I'm not bashing it. Far from it, I'm complimenting it. If I came around a corner and shot a guy, there were a few times where there would be another guy in the room, but he wouldn't have heard me come in and shoot so I'd be able to shoot him as well. Seeing as how he is shooting his gone, and not looking my way, it makes sense that he wouldn't have a magic sense to know where I was. But at the same time the enemy would flank me, and that would often lead to some pretty frantic moments of shooting. The AI killed me maybe 7 times in my play through. 3 times I got stuck on something, once I shot the hostage rather than the hostage taker, but the other 3 were pretty illegitimate kills. Where I had done something that probably wasn't the brightest thing to have done (or the AI did something I didn't expect them to do). So thank you AI team, you guys did an awesome job!

In short, I want more games like this. Please. And I'd also like to ask, why do people call this a rip off of Call of Duty? Is it because it's "modern"? Comparing this to CoD is like trying to compare a Michael Bay movie to a Steven Spielberg movie. Michael Bay will have everything blow up, and will have the pacing set to "balls to the wall" the entire movie. Steven Spielberg will use action and explosions like a chef will use his spices. Often enough that you know they're there, but not so often that they get boring and you know exactly how every other "dish" is going to taste. I'd also say that comparing the early Medal of Honor games to the first Call of Duty game wasn't possible because in MoH you had fairly bad AI and rarely had anyone on your team along with you. Were CoD gave you team mates and had you fight in a war for a change. I look forward to the next MoH game, and I hope they go the same route of getting veterans (and active duty personnel) involved in making the game, so as to keep it as real as possible. So hats off to the amazing team that made this game (as well as to veterans).

Wow, for once I did a "review" with referencing Valve or Half Life. As for random experiences I had playing the game, I really didn't have any. And I don't find "I took cover, leaned out of it and shot 3 people before ducking back in" that interesting to share. 

Portal 2

It’s hard not to just do a review of Portal 2, but there are plenty of those out there already. What I really want to see is someone (not me, because my computer isn’t powerful enough to play Portal 2) take the levels and turn them into an FPS. I’m not sure if I’d want any puzzles (depends on how it could be done), but the dark areas just lend to a Doom 3 style setting. If you were Gordon Freeman running through the compound fighting Combine, I think you’d have a really fun game. It could also make a neat L4D2 campaign if you rebuilt stair cases and catwalks and put in the classic “press this button to spawn the horde and slowly open the way past” things.

 I’d also like to make note of the doors in the game that don’t have handles, but had a number pad above them. The texture of the number pad was very nice, but the texture on the “handle” was slightly poorer. This leads me to the idea that these will be accessible with an update later in the game, maybe to announce Half-Life 2: Episode 3 (much as they did to announce Portal 2). This is, of course, total speculation and it could lead to nothing, but it could still be a hint of what’s to come.