Author - Judgeman

Risen 2: Dark Waters (Xbox 360) – A Review

Piranha Bytes and Deep Silver has brought us the latest game in the Risen franchise with Risen 2: Dark Waters.  Instead of being a direct sequel to Risen, Risen 2 feels more like a re-imagining of the entire franchise, giving up on the high fantasy world of Risen for a more realistic pirate feel in the new game.  The story of Risen 2 follows the same nameless hero from Risen, as he sets out on a fairly generic quest, to collect legendary artifacts to defeat an ancient evil in the form of a sea monster.  Game play mechanics feel right and the world definitely gives you more then enough to do, but on the Xbox 360, the graphics just look horrible.  I’m not sure what happened along the way here, but everything looks washed out, the animations are not finished, and characters will even stop mid sentence and just stare at the screen.  What could have been a solid game, is brought down to mediocre even bad levels by unfinished animations and graphics.

Story:

The story for Risen 2 is a very generic piece of work.  Risen 2 still follows the same nameless hero from Risen, who begins Risen 2 working for the Inquisition and being stationed on an island in the middle of the ocean.  He is awakened to see a ship coming into harbor, that is completely destroyed by the Kraken, a huge sea monster that has been hunting down and destroying ships throughout the ocean.  One of the survivors of the shipwreck tells a tale of her father and his legendary weapon that can be used to finally rid the world of not only the Kraken, but the other monsters that threaten humanity as well.  The nameless hero is then charged by the Inquisition with the task of recovering this weapon from the pirates and to proceed in making the world safe again.

While very generic, the story line works well for the world that has been created for Risen 2.  There is a reason that most RPGs use this type of story, and that is because it is an easy way to give the heroes the motivation to leave their homes and partake in the mission that is given to them.  This gives Piranha Bytes the opportunity to fill the world with interesting creatures and side missions galore, which helps to flesh out the story line a bit more but never truly brings it into a great story.  I have to give Piranha Bytes credit for changing up the theme from high fantasy that was the original Risen, but going to a pirate theme in Risen 2 just feels like they are trying to cash in on the Pirates of the Caribbean success.  Unfortunately, Piranha Bytes and Risen 2 are even way to late to cash in on that success.  In the end, the story works, as does the environments, but ultimately just feels a little generic, like we have played this game before.

Game Play:

Game play mechanics for Risen 2 are solid but generic as well.  Your characters skills, in the beginning of the game, start out very rudimentary and boring, only being able to swing a sword.  However, as the game goes on and you start to develop new skills, game play changed drastically.  Sword play becomes more involved and not just mashing the X button, and you gain abilities like sneak or pick pocket.  If learning to fight with a sword does not fit your character or play style, then you can focus on muskets or even learn voodoo spells.  For me, the voodoo system felt very underwhelming and underdeveloped, as I was  hoping for more here.

Voodoo had the potential to be really fun in Risen 2.  I could imagine being a voodoo spell caster and creating zombies or directly hexing my opponents using voodoo dolls, but Risen 2 only lets you debuff enemies or mind control them, with no direct damage spells.  Voodoo is used as a set of spells that you would cast prior to killing your enemies with either musket or sabre.  Not saying that you will not find uses for these spells, but as an overall system, voodoo just feels like a complete letdown and far more underdeveloped then most other RPG magic systems on the market.

Some skills will give you different conversation choices as you go through the game, allowing you to intimidate or charm your way through the world.  Some of these choices will give you funny conversations or change encounters to your favor, but feels just like any other chat system that has used this style before, like Vampire: The Masquerade.  NPCs can be picked up too as you adventure through Risen 2.  Like the NPCs in other RPGs, say like Skyrim, they work best as damage sponges and targets for the beasts and monsters of the world.  Get the enemy to focus on your NPC so that you can move into position and blast away without taking damage, especially if the enemy is fairly cheap in its tactics by using stun locks.

Overall, what is here in Risen 2: Dark Waters is good but ultimately could have been so much better with a little more developmental time and energy.  A complete spell casting system would have given us another viable choice to run through the world of Risen 2, and I feel that Piranha Bytes really missed the boat with that.  I would have loved being able to summon a horde of zombies to do my bidding as I sat back and poked needles into a voodoo doll to damage my targets.

Aesthetics:

Ok, here is where Risen 2: Dark Waters unfortunately goes belly up for me, the aesthetics department.  Let me reiterate a few points before I get into my little tirade.  The use of aesthetics in a game is a funny thing, all games have aesthetics and a design framework to work in.  Aesthetics and graphics are not the same thing.  Some games out there have great aesthetics with non high resolution graphics, like Team Fortress 2 or Awesomenauts.  The graphics of those games are not bad, just not on par with the top of the line games on the market, hence why I changed the title to this category to aesthetics, to allow games like Awesomenauts to shine.

 

With the case of Risen 2: Dark Waters, the design of the game is well done.  I can see what the designers wanted to achieve and the world they wanted to portray.  Unfortunately, on the Xbox 360, the graphics ruin any chance for the aesthetics to come through and shine.  This game looks outright horrible on the 360.  It would be a bad looking game on the Wii, that’s just how bad it is.  Animations are not finished in the game.  Characters would stop moving their mouths to match the voice over, like all of that work was making them tired.  Characters would also turn without animations.  I felt like I was watching a horror movie sometimes, the character would be facing someone, then suddenly would appear to be facing someone else.  And who thought it would be a good idea for characters to stop and face the screen to continue their conversations?  This felt like I was watching a bad elementary school production.

The voice overs were not all that great either, with everyone sporting a bad accent and giving over the top performances.  The music was workable, but unremarkable.  Unfortunately, the horror show that was the graphics really took me out of any immersion that I would feel for this game, and made it hard to focus on anything else when it came to the aesthetics of Risen 2: Dark Water.  If you are going to buy this game, and have a PC that can run it, I strongly suggest you get it on that platform.  The Xbox version just isn’t good at all in this category.

Final Thoughts:

What could have been a good game comes off as rather mediocre, even bad, due to some game killing issues.  The horrid “last generation” graphics and missing animations coinciding with a lack luster voodoo system completely ruins a good but generic story line and solid game play mechanics.  If you get the PC version of Risen 2, then you will get an graphics upgrade, but will still be suffering through the underdeveloped combat system.  Even if you were a huge fan of Risen, Risen 2 does not give you enough to want to continue that story line, since this game feels nothing like the last game.  If you need to get a pirate RPG right now, then this is your only choice, but seriously, get it for the PC.  It’s still not great on the PC, but it looks a far sight better then it does on the Xbox, and in this case, that makes all the difference in the world.  Risen 2: Dark Waters is available now.

Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise (XBLA) – A Review

Qooc Soft and 7sixty brings us an old school arcade beat-em-up style video game with Kung Fu Strike:  The Warrior’s Rise on the XBLA.  While Kung Fu Strike will not win any awards for game play or story telling this year, the game ultimately succeeds where many have failed before, it is fun to play.  The story is basic and told through dialogue loading screens before each map, and can even be skippable in the options menu, so that should tell you how much the developers believed in their story.  Game play is old school brawler, fighting a screen full of enemies on your way to the boss for that section.  Aesthetics remind me a lot of Street Fighter 4, with the ink outlining and dripping as you pull of major moves, to reproduce the look of Chinese art.  That is Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise summed up, now let’s look at the details of what made this game.

Story:

Whenever a developer makes the story to a game optional, I have some concerns.  The story is usually what draws the player into the surroundings of the game and immerses us into the world that the developer wants us to be in.  A story gives you that connection and when you make it skippable, like Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise does, then you are just solely relying on your game play to save the game.  That means your game play has to be so good that people will want to continue playing your game without ever becoming invested in the characters.  That is a bold move, and it works here for Kung Fu Strike: A Warrior’s Rise, sort of.

The story follows you as General Loh, a general of the current ruling faction of China, who is both searching for his father’s murderer and is trying to save his ruler from a rebellion.  The game follows Loh as he searches for answers in a secluded monastery, searching for the master.  Unwanted at the monastery, Loh must fight his way passed everyone, just to have a talk with the master.  To make matters worse, members of the rebellion have traced Loh to this monastery and are trying to kill him to help further the cause of the revolution.

The story is told through graphic novel pages, a la Max Payne, but without any type of voice acting.  If we had cared more about the story and the characters, I truly believe this could have raised Kung Fu Strike: A Warrior’s Rise to a higher level of excitement and enjoyment.  However, since the developers had absolutely no faith in their story and chose not to develop it further, it only serves as background knowledge and the entire game has to rely on it’s game play to make it through this review.

Game Play:

The good news here for Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise is that it’s game play is enough to make this game good, though not great.  The game is set up to have you fight your opponents within sections of the monastery, like the front gate, the courtyard, or the “Zen Room of Emptiness”.  Within these sections, you will defeat soldiers and monks in groups, battling your way to the mini boss of that section.  While fighting these waves are fairly straight forward for this type of game, the action can be frantic if you are not paying attention enough to get yourself overrun, and the boss fights are a pain to play.  Each boss has a set pattern to their attacks, so it is up to you to quickly learn the tells from the boss in order to counter act or dodge these attacks.  I felt like I was playing Mike Tyson’s Punch Out again, staring into his eyes to see what move he was going to make next.  The bosses can also complete moves that are completely unblockable, and must be dodged.  These are truly what drove me up the wall, for I would have the block and counter punch pattern down, only to forget that the next move needed to be dodged.

The moves list plays out like any other brawler, you have some combinations that are all performed by hitting certain buttons in certain order that goes along with a block button that most will forget about until you fight the boss.  In Kung Fu Strike: the Warrior’s Rise, timing is everything.  Your blocks, parries, deflections, and moves will all depend on how quick your reflexes are on whether or not you are successful in pulling of the move.  Your biggest enemy here, however, is the camera.  The camera has a tendency to do it’s own thing during some fights, not all.  It will behave for most of the game, then decided that it’s been good long enough, and misbehave just in time for you to miss a critical move or block.  While not a deal breaker, the camera was annoying enough to make a mention of it in this review.

Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise can be played co-op on the same screen, which is great.  Two people beating up wave after wave of monks and soldiers reminded me of the hours I put into Double Dragon as a kid at the local arcade.  What did frustrate me with this game play mechanic, is that essentially you and your partner share the same life.  If one of you is cornered and defeated, then the game is over.  For the minion fights, that isn’t such a big deal unless one of you just isn’t paying attention, but for the boss fights it can become annoying quickly.  Again, like many of the flaws of Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise, annoying not game breaking.

Aesthetics:

Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise is done in a very similar art style to that done in Street Fighter 4.  The artists used heavy black lines to represent the ink in a Chinese painting to outline the world, and to highlight the moves of General Loh.  Ink blots will appear on your screen as you pull off major moves and spin through the air.  The visuals of the game look good, if not great and would be quite unique if it had not been for Street Fighter 4.  Still, overall, the game has a nice feel and look to it and utilizes the graphics well enough to give us a nice visually pleasing world to play through.  Level design is very basic and relies on the background textures to be interesting, and are all taken out of your typical Chinese kung fu design schemes.

Voice acting for Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise is non existent.  The only voice work you will hear will be the typical grunts and yells of the stereotypical kung fu practitioner.  Sound effects are exactly what you would expect from this type of game; punches, kicks and other impact sound effects.  None of this detracts from the overall aesthetic of Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise, but none of this adds to it either.

Final Thoughts:

Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise knows what it does and does not do well.  The game is very self aware that the only reason people will play it is because of the game  play and the old school brawler mechanics, not because of the story line or voice acting.  The game plays well and is fun, but truly lacks the polish and care that is shown in some other higher budget games.  The aesthetics, though borrowed from other games, are used well here and make the game look good.  Only a few issues made the game feel unpolished, like a camera that would misbehave every once in a while, and bosses that felt rather cheap sometimes.  These negatives, while annoying, don’t detract too much from the overall feel of Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise.  Overall, this is a very solid throwback to the arcade beat-em-up game mechanic, playable from the comfort of your couch.  Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise is available now for the XBLA.

Trailer:

Death Rally (PC) – A Review

If I say the words, RC Pro-Am, does your inner child do a back flip?  If he or she does, then I strongly suggest you check out Remedy’s newest IOs port to the PC, Death Rally. Death Rally for the PC is a top down racer that pits the player against computer opponents to see who can cross the finish line first, alive.  Death Rally also supports multiplayer games, up to four players over the internet.  While my childhood memories still has RC Pro-Am as the best game of this genre ever, I must say that Death Rally comes in at a close second.  Sometimes, games just can’t beat nostalgia.

Story:

Some game types just don’t need story lines or well written characters to work.  All that matters is that the player has fun with the game and just won’t put it down.  Death Rally is that type of game.  Sure, there is a story mode here, but it’s fairly inconsequential and is used just to rope all of the races together.  You play as a lone wolf driver, who has been captured by the police and forced into the Death Rally tournament.  The police are hoping that your entry into Death Rally will expose the organizer, who is only known as The Adversary.  The Adversary is your target and you have to eliminate him in order to free yourself from the police.

This story won’t win any awards any time soon for it’s writing or presentation.  The style of the presentation seems completely ripped right out of the first Max Payne game, done in graphic novel style.  I swear it even looks like the same artist doing the art.  I am usually very critical with game writing because I feel that this is the entire basis on whether or not the game draws people in.  If we don’t care about the characters or their plight, it’s hard to invest ourselves into the game.  Death Rally is the type of game that can get away with very little narrative and overused plot points.  Why?  Because, in the end, the game is just damn fun to play.  Since it was originally made to be an IOs game, it is played in smaller chunks, so the story does not have a huge impact in the player’s enjoyment, if at all.

Game Play:

Death Rally has a surprising amount of depth to it before each race.  You start off with the lowest beater of the group, with just a single machine gun to kill your opponents with.  As you survive races, you earn money to repair your vehicle and purchase upgrades.  During each race break, you can visit the black market, for some illegal upgrades, visit the loan shark to get some extra cash and a one hundred percent interest rate, or visit some shady gentlemen that are not above a little sabotage to help put you in front of your opponents.

The actual races are done from a top down view, very similar to games like RC Pro-Am or Off Road Rally.  This gives you a perfect view of all of the action that is taking place and it helps line up your opponents for the kill.  As you race, you will expose power ups or parts that you can use either during the game or afterwards.  Nitro, ammo, exploding barrels, mushrooms, and the like are used during races to help you get out in front, while other pieces that you pick up helps unlock the next vehicle in line or another weapon.

My only complaint with the game play of Death Rally is the controls.  I do not have a control pad on my PC, so it was mouse and keyboard for me.  The mouse and keyboard control scheme never felt solid enough to handle the turns in the way I wanted to.  A control pad would handle this situation quite well, I believe, but I can see where this game was designed primarily as a touch screen game, and not one to use with the keyboard.

Aesthetics:

The visuals of the game work very well for me.  Each track is extremely interesting to look at, vivid and colorful, while the cars will show varying degrees of damage as the race progresses.  The game isn’t cutting edge, and does not have a really well designed aesthetic, like Awesomenauts, but the graphics are clean and interesting to look at.  Not once did I have any type of graphical issues during game play, and only a few times did i really notice something that didn’t look right.  The pictures of your rival racers are static and just hover near the car that they are driving, with the police chief looking a lot like George Lucas.  The graphic novel parts of the game looks exactly like the old Max Payne game, with no motion at all.

Sound is just as serviceable as the graphics are.  The voice acting isn’t all that great, it’s a lot over the top.  However, there is so little of it that you will never notice it unless you are really searching.  The in game sound is just perfect, the explosions sound good while the report of the machine guns sound just as they should.  Overall, a solid technical job that won’t win any awards, but also does not detract from the fun experience of Death Rally’s game play.

Final Thoughts:

Death Rally by Remedy is just fun, and at the end of the day, that is really all that matters.  Death Rally really takes me back to my child hood days of playing RC Pro-Am with my brother.  This is the type of game that doesn’t revolve around a story and does not suffer for it, unlike other games.  The fun of Death Rally is really in just blasting the competition into little hunks of metal while you upgrade your car to get to the next stage.  Game play is solid for the most part, but I found that the stock keyboard and mouse controls to be fairly deficient in giving me absolute control over my car.  The use of a PC control pad, though, should solve that problem right up.  The sound and the visuals of Death Rally do a good job, with the visuals being much more tighter and crisper then the sound.  Overall, I will recommend this game for anyone who is interested in a racing game that has a lot of extra curricular activity going on during the race, but feel that Mario Kart is a little to young for you.  Death Rally is available now from Steam.

Fun Trailer:

Gameplay Trailer:

Awesomenauts (PC) – A Review

Ronimo Games has released a brand new multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game for Steam, aptly named Awesomenauts.  The MOBA genre of games has seen a rise lately, with the success of League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients, but Awesomenauts puts a 2D action shooter spin on the whole genre.  Awesomenauts is full of great characters that are created with a very particular aesthetic, solid gameplay, but does suffer from some balance issues with the characters that are currently available.  Overall, Awesomenauts lives up to it’s name, which was a very pleasant surprise for me.

Story:

The story and the aesthetics of Awesomenauts comes right out of my child hood and plays like a Saturday cartoon from the 80’s.  Awesomenauts is set in the future, the year 3587, where massive robot armies wage war across the universe.  Each side in this massive conflict begin to hire mercenaries to help break the stalemate.  These mercenaries, the Awesomenauts, are who you play as during each skirmish versus the other players online or against practice bots.

The story here is more of a background character, explaining more why you are fighting against another team then really acting as any type of driving narrative for game play.  You are fighting against another set of mercenary Awesomenauts over the resource known as Solar, and for control over the planet that you are on.  Currently, there are four planets, or maps, that get unlocked as you level up.  Each character has a little bio that fits the character design, more on that actual design later.  Overall, the story really sets up the aesthetics of the entire game and gives it a good structure and basis for what is going on, without actually driving the narrative of the story or forcing the story to move anywhere.

Game play:

The game play of Awesomenauts plays like a typical MOBA game.  The battles are three versus three, so they are small but can be quite frantic, thanks to the size of the arenas that you fight in.  You select a character and a load out in the beginning of the game.  The load out will be the types of upgrades that you can purchase throughout the game as you level up and gain Solar, which is the monetary unit for purchases in Awesomenauts.  Similar to League of Legends, Awesomenauts allows you to create and modify your Awesomenaut in a unique way.  You choose your load out, then choose what you want to purchase during game play.  Being able to pick a load out also before the game begins, also allows you to set up a plan of purchases, which helps if you are not overly familiar with your particular Awesomenaut.

You can purchase up to 2 more special attacks that is in addition to your base attack.  These attacks are bound to your mouse, which means the game plays much more like a first person shooter then the other MOBA games on the market.  You move using the keyboard, then target and fire using your mouse, with each button being bound to a special attack.  The other bonuses you buy to upgrade your Awesomenaut all modify these attacks or your base stats.

During game play, your base will generate robots to help you defeat the other team’s turrets that block your path to the opponents’ power core.  Again like League of Legends, you have to use the bots to push your team to destroy each turret in order to get to the power core, while fighting off the other team, or hunting creeps that are found on the map.  The creeps will give you experience and Solar for each one you destroy, while also giving you a little health.    The first team to destroy the opposing power core, wins the match.

The game is mostly an online game, made to play against other teams of three live players.  What is really nice with the game play design here, is that if there isn’t enough players, the game will generate bots to fill in the missing spots.  Then as players drop in, they take the spots of these bots.  This ensures that games are easy to find, and they were for me.  You can also play in an offline practice mode, which still allows for achievements and earning experience, so online play isn’t a necessity to unlock other items. Once a player picks a character, that character is locked out for the others, so make sure you pick quickly if you have a favorite.  The only negative that I could see here was the balance of the characters.  Currently, Yuri the Spacemonkey is a wrecking ball and dominates most games that I played in.  Ronimo is looking at these balance changes, and have already put out patch 1.2, which addresses some of these concerns.

I have made a lot of comparisons to League of Legends here with Awesomenauts, and it’s hard not to.  Both are MOBA type games, using bots and characters to destroy turrets on the way to destroy the opposing power core.  However, the difference is in the actual game play and the aesthetics of both games.  Awesomenauts plays much more like a side scrolling shooter, then an action rpg like League of Legends does.  League of Legends borrows heavily from Warcraft III, while Awesomenauts truly borrows most of it’s ideas from my child hood and 80’s cartoons.  So, if you think this is just another MOBA League of Legends or Dota clone, stop right there!  This game plays nothing like those, and, for me, it plays much better as an actual game.

Aesthetics:

I have mention this before, but the aesthetics of Awesomenauts comes right out of a 80’s Saturday morning cartoon, right down to the opening theme song.  The characters are all designed with this type of motif in mind, from the rapping frog creature with the Kid N’ Play haircut, to the space cowboy Lonestar.  The graphics look very cartoon like themselves, which works with the aesthetic that Ronimo is working towards.  The action was fast and fluid looking on my PC, which recently had a huge upgrade to the video card so I can see more of what the developers were intending here.  Awesomenauts may not be on the cutting edge of graphics, but the aesthetics and designs here are just…..awesome.

Even the voice work fits the aesthetics for Awesomenauts.  Each character is voiced to spout one liners during game play, and I felt that each character’s voice overs help promote their individuality and really worked for me.  None of the voice overs became grating or overused, at least to my level of tolerance.  For me, in these types of games, a good voice over is one that adds to the overall game without becoming to noticeable, so Awesomenauts does the job quite well in those regards.

Overall:

Simply put, this is the best MOBA game I have played outside of League of Legends.  The game play is solid and is easier for me to get a handle on, the aesthetics really works well with the overall design, and the voice overs work well without becoming annoying.  Sure, the game has some serious balance issues online currently, but so did League of Legends.  I will give the people at Ronimo some time to get this right as they see the game play pan out.  I understand that the price point for Awesomenauts is $9.99, versus free for League of Legends, but remember that the free version of League of Legends does not allow you access to every champion, while buying Awesomenauts does, you just have to unlock them as you level up.  Awesomenauts is well worth the look, especially at the price point they have it on Steam.

Trailer:

Gallery:

Street Fighter X Tekken DLC Review – Xbox 360

Capcom has released their new character pack for Street Fighter X Tekken.  This new pack contains twelve new fighters, six from Street Fighter franchises and six from Tekken, that are ready to fight for Pandora’s Box.  This pack, for me, has some of the best fighters in the game, unfortunately, some of these fighters break the balance that Capcom has finally achieved in Street Fighter X Tekken.  However, before we get into the review, we need to address the 900 lb. E. Honda in the room, the controversy surrounding this pack.

For those of you that don’t know, this content was actually on disk at launch back in March.  All twelve fighters were discovered to be on the disk by some proactive hackers out there, and this caused a huge uproar from the fan community.  Games today already cost upwards of $60 for a new release, to discover that a company is going to hit us up for more money for things that are already on the disk is insulting at best.  Officially, Capcom stated that this was to save hard drive space and to allow players to play with one another, regardless of who had the pack or not.  Understandably, this did not appease anyone who had bought the game, who still feel that this pack is nothing more then a money grab for something that should already be on the disk.  This whole dlc pack could have been handled better by Capcom.  Ok, with that out of the way, let’s actually see if this pack is worth the extra money or not.

Characters:

You get twelve characters with this new download, and that is a lot of extra people to play with.  This brings the total now up to fifty fighters to select from, with the Playstation 3 hitting 54 fighters.  That is a huge amount of variety and selection for a fighting game.  Keeping the sides even, this pack brings us six Street Fighter characters and six Tekken fighters.  Representing the Street Fighter side we get Dudley, Elena, Sakura, Blanka, Cody and Guy.  The Tekken side gets Jack-X, Bryan Fury, Lei Wulong, Christie Montiero, Lars Alexandersson, and Alisa Bosconovitch.

Now, I have always been more partial to the Street Fighter franchise then the Tekken one, so forgive me for being a little more biased here then usual.  I love the Street Fighter side here and feel that this is an excellent selection of characters to add.  Blanka has always been and will always be my number one fighter to choose from, and I am absolutely glad that he is here and ready to go.  The game just did not feel complete without my Blanka.  The tag combinations are straight forward for the most part, Sakura joins up with Blanka to find Dan, Cody and Guy continue their partnership, and Elena and Dudley join forces to hunt for Pandora’s Box.  Only the last combination made me scratch my head, and I was delighted to find that Lei and Christie thought so too, during their story missions in arcade mode.

Since I know less about Tekken, I was a little less thrilled to see this list of characters.  I do love to play as Christie and Lei and was happy to get my hands back on those two, and was happy to see Jack-X make an appearance, but since I never really delved deeply into Tekken 5 or 6, the addition of the others wasn’t as fantastic to me.  The Tekken combinations are interesting to see as well, with Lei and Christie teaming up, Jack-X joining forces with Bryan Fury, and Lars Alexandersson working with Alisa Bosconovitch.

Gameplay:

This new pack is being released to go with the new 1.06, which focused on balancing some of the more powerful fighters, such as Ken, Ryu and Akuma.  The Street Fighter group from this pack seems to be very balanced and fits in perfectly with 1.06 so as to not upset the game.  However, to me, the Tekken fighters feel out of balance in comparison.  Christie is a combination nightmare with just a single touch of the button, with Lei and Bryan being massive powerhouses.  It will be interesting to see how this effects the online and tournament community in the future in regards to character selections.

Besides adding the new characters to the roster, this dlc pack doesn’t add anything else to the game play of Street Fighter X Tekken.  Each character has their own moves list, just like the original roster, and each has their own play style.  I liked Lei’s multiple fighting stance techniques, but they seemed awkward to pull off during combat, while Blanka’s new dodges seemed to really blend in well with his play style, though his rolling ball attack does seem very slow to me.

Final Thoughts:

Putting the controversy aside for a second and looking at this pack as it is, I like this addition to Street Fighter X Tekken.  I feel that this pack brings new life to the game at this point with the addition of some great fighters, one just happening to be my all time favorite.  I also feel that this adds some interesting combinations of tag teams that people can try out.  I did love playing as Elena and Christie, both who use the Capoeira fighting style just as a fun team up.  There will be some balancing issues here again, which is too bad since patch 1.06 just fixed the issues that came with the release.

The real question will come down to whether or not you want to pony up $20 for something that was on disk at release and cost you originally $60.  I can tell you that I feel that this pack is worth the price tag and is full of fighters that are fun to play.  For me, this would be a must have pack for a great game such as Street Fighter X Tekken.  The pack is available now.

Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad – A Review (Xbox 360)

 

Reverb Publishing and 2XL Games has just released a new Xbox Live title for all of you racing fans out there named Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad.  Jeremy McGrath has been a well known name in motocross for the last twenty years, so I was very surprised to find out that this game does not have a single motocross bike in it.  Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad represents another passion of Jeremy’s, that of the Rally Circuit and Pro Lite Truck competitions.  Stylized as a arcade racer with RPG elements, Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad is an interesting racing game that does somethings right, but misses on others.  I have most definitely played worse racing games out there, but with the existence of Dirt 3, there are also better games on the market.  Let’s get into exactly what Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad does right and wrong.

Story:

It’s a racing game, folks, so the story line is pretty much “Don’t be last”.  The career mode does follow McGrath and the other racers through various stages of the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series, but this is pretty much hinted at and not specifically stated in the game.  The career mode puts you into different types of vehicles as you race through the different stages and two game types.  You work your way through the Pro Lite Buggies, to the Pro Lite Trucks and into the Rally Cars during the course of the career mode.  The stages are taken from various locals from around the world like California, Wyoming, and Ecuador, and represent different types of landscape.  I’ll hit more on the actual career mode in the game play section, that will include the experience and leveling up mechanics.

The real story that is attached to Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad is the story behind the game.  Jeremy McGrath has promised to donate his entire earnings from the sale of this game to Bethematch.org, an organization that helps individuals who need a bone marrow transplant to find a donor.  This donation is Jeremy McGrath’s way of thanking the organization for their help in finding his wife, Sally, a bone marrow donor during her fight with Leukemia.

Gameplay:

Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad plays like most racers out there, you race around either a circuit or a time trial for first place and the points that gives you to be first in the overall standings.  The tracks are used from about six locales, that range from California desert to Ecuadorian jungle.  As you complete each race, you earn experience points that can be used to upgrade your chosen vehicle’s stats.  The stats are taken from the typical car stat list, handling, top speed, acceleration and brakes.  Through my career mode, I only upgraded the first three stats, as braking seemed to be overrated in this game.  I was able to play on the normal difficulty through the career mode by just feathering the throttle and using my steering to work my way through the corners and come out on top each and every time.

The race tracks themselves are interesting environments to race in.  I felt that the tracks were well designed and gave me various settings to race in, even though they cycled through the same six regions.  Each track also had environmental hazards to contend with, these could range from falling poles, fences, rolling rounds of hay, and signs.  I had mixed feelings about these hazards.  I was absolutely fine with the static hazards, such as the fences and signs, because they felt like natural hazards.  Every rally and off road race needs to have these types of obstacles in them, since this defines the true nature of an off road race.  However, rolling hay rounds into my path during a race, made the game feel cheap, especially when these obstacles reset every time you do a circuit.  I understand that the developers were going for more of an arcade feel, but I would have preferred to have just raced my opponents straight up, instead of being involved in a hay round accident.

Other then that small gripe about the hazards, the rest of Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad plays exactly like you would expect, with decent AI and good handling of the vehicles.  The game does have some terrain that will actually impact the speed of your vehicle, but it’s only used sparingly and I felt really could have increased the real feeling of racing through the various environments.  Overall, the game play of Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad is very solid and is what I would expect from a racing game on today’s market.

 

Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad does support up to eight racers online, which is a nice feature.  However, when I tried to find people to race against, I couldn’t find a single opponent.  I am hoping that this changes as more people look into the game, but for right now, it’s a little barren online.

Aesthetics:

Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad runs in a full 1080p HD presentation with 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround sound at 60 frames per second.  To say this game is great to look at though, would be over exaggerating the truth.  While the backgrounds do pop out nicely and are very detailed to look at, the vehicles seem a little too flat to me.  I really wished that the vehicles would have shown some damage and would have gotten progressively dirty through the race, but your vehicle will look just as good at the end of the race as it did at the beginning, regardless of how you drove it.

Vehicle skins used in Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad do sport official sponsors from the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series, and includes fully licensed vehicles, including VW buggies and trophy trucks.  As I said earlier, I wish that the sponsors would have let the developers muddy up and damage their vehicles a little more in this game, that would have made the experience that much more like real off road racing to me.

The sound is exactly what you would expect from an off road game, a lot of vehicle noise and engines blasting out of your speakers.  Jeremy McGrath does do the voice over work for the entire game, giving you tips and strategies during the load screens and is your navigator during the actual racing.  Like many rally games out there, Jeremy McGrath will give you a preview of each and every corner as you race.  For you rookies to rally racing, this may be annoying to you to hear the voiceovers, but for you experienced Colin McRae fans out there, the navigation directions will feel just right.  Jeremy McGrath won’t win any Oscars for his performance in this game, but the work is adequate for the job at hand.

Final Thoughts:

Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad is a good game for the price tag.  At 800 MSPoints (that’s $9.99 to the uninitiated out there), Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad will fill a racing need to those of you that couldn’t afford Dirt 3 when it came out.  The game play mechanics work just like you need them too, and the tracks feel a lot more varied then they actually are.  I did not like the road hazards that would jump out and try to hit you, and I seriously wish that the graphics on the vehicles showed the accumulation of dirt and damage as the race goes on.  If you are a racing fan that is in the mood for something new and cheap, then Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad will do the trick, especially when you are helping out a worthy cause like Bethematch.org.  For ten bucks, you get a solid, decent racing game and get to help out a charity, and that is a a good deal to me.

Street Fighter’s 25 Anniversary Art Show Opening at iam8bit

Hard to believe that it has been twenty five years since my addiction to the Street Fighter franchise began.  I would rush out of high school then stop on the way home to pump quarters into the local Street Fighter II machine, which was found at a video store.  The addiction would continue into Street Fighter II Champion Edition, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers and finally Super Street Fighter II Turbo.  By the time the Alpha Series started to hit the streets in 1996, I was knee deep in finishing up my bachelor’s degree, so my addiction would start to subside, but not my love for the game.  What is it about Street Fighter that has captured the minds of people all over the world?  Unlike most games that truly enrapture people, it does not have a deep story line nor a particularly interesting world, just a series of exceptional individuals that beat the crap out of each other.  I won’t try to speak for anyone else out there, but I can definitely tell you why I loved the game, competition.  Street Fighter represented the very first game to me that truly gave people the unique head to head competition that people really wanted.  This is the game that started the huge fighting game trend of the nineties, and the creating of fighting game tournaments all over the world.  The game play was very well balanced, with the exceptions of a few well known glitches in the early days (Guile, I am looking at you).  It was the perfect game at the perfect time and Capcom has done many things with the franchise over the years, but partnering with one of Hollywood’s many art collectors to celebrate this anniversary was a thing of beauty.

I was selected to attend the gallery’s opening night on Auguest 3rd at the iam8bit location on Sunset Blvd in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles because of my love of the franchise, so I was truly excited to head to the show and see what they had to offer.  The storefront that iam8bit uses for their collections is a very small looking typical street level front, which worried me as I passed the long line that awaited outside the gallery a full two hours ahead of the public opening.  It wasn’t until I got inside did I realize that the actual gallery stretches further back then expected, into a full 4500 sq. ft. show floor, which on opening nights iam8bit uses every foot.  The opening night celebration would not only showcase the fifty or so pieces of art by various artists, but would also have a shop, a photo area that allowed you to pose in front of the opening backdrop to the original Street Fighter II, two open bars, a food truck serving poutine, a pinata replica of the car from the bonus round and a dj.

I was very impressed, especially once I heard a staff member talking on the phone and saying that they were expecting over a thousand people to come by tonight.  It was at that moment I was glad they let the press in an hour early, because once the doors opened, I wasn’t going to get much work done, I was going to be busy enjoying the crowd and activities.

The actual collection is approximately fifty pieces from artists that were contacted through iam8bit to create various artworks.  What I loved about this show is the difference in both media and style that these different artists brought to their work.  I saw amazing glass paintings of Elena, giclee prints of Ken and Ryu in mid shoryuken, a woven tapestry done in side show style of Dhalsim, and my absolute personal favorite, a stitched two piece artwork of Dhalsim punching Ryu.  It was obvious from the start which characters found their way into more pieces then others.  Characters such as Zangief, Dhalsim, Ken, Ryu and Chun Li were found in more of the artwork, while characters such as Dee Jay, Elena, Juri, and to my surprise, M. Bison only found their way into a few artists’ eyes.  The artists come from various backgrounds, but are all underground artists who truly have a love for both their media and Street Fighter.  I loved Evanimal’s take on Zangief, Ryu and Chun Li, the Darrick Maasen tapestry of Dhalsim was fantastic, and I was ready to take home the two pieces by i love dust showing Ken and Ryu mid-shoryken.

Once the doors opened to the public, I quickly realized that this place draws a lot of attention and fans from all over the area.  I think giving out free beer didn’t hurt the draw of the crowd either, and it was that moment that I pretty much stopped working.

The rest of the night seems more like a party then an art show opening, of course this being my first art show opening I have very little to compare it too.  The place was absolutely packed with people who were having a blast.  Many of the artists made appearances and a representative from Capcom was there at the show, and many of the attendees came in Street Fighter cosplay.

 

For those of you that live anywhere within the Los Angeles area, I recommend a drive to see this collection for it really is some of the best Street Fighter art that I have every seen.  iam8bit’s gallery is located at 2147 Sunset Blved.  The Street Fighter 25 Anniversary Collection will be on display until August 19th, and is open Thursday through Sunday in the afternoons.

Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny – A Review (PC)

Nordic Games and Dream Catcher Interactive have just released their latest expansion to Spellforce 2, named Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny.  Faith in Destiny was originally announced back in 2009 but, due to budget concerns as well as their wanting to avoid a May 15, 2012 release date that would coincide with Diablo III, wasn’t released until June 19 of this year.  Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny is, at heart, a role-playing real time strategy game, that is set four years after the last expansion.  Faith in Destiny does not require the original game to play this expansion, but you will be completely lost as to where you are in this particular story, what the world is about, or even who your character is supposed to be.

Story: 

Spellforce 2:  Faith in Destiny is set four years after the Shaper’s defeat.  You are a Shaikan who is traveling through Eo in search for answers to the troubling dreams that you are having and to investigate attacks on the local villages by a group of monsters called the Nameless.

If you understood any of that last paragraph, you are much better off then I am, and I played the game.  The major issue with Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny’s storyline is that the developers pretty much assumed that you played the original Spellforce 2 and its other expansion.  Yet, they made Faith in Destiny a stand-alone game that did not require either game to play.  I can understand why a developer did not want to require a consumer to have to locate and purchase another game from 2006 in order to play this expansion, but the player needs to be brought up to speed on the story, and not just dropped off in the world, assuming that we will pick up the pieces as we go along.

What ends up happening is that I am forced to accept things with the hope that I will learn more later, and that kept me from becoming enraptured with the story from the beginning.  I found myself constantly asking questions as to what was a Shaikan, who was this traveling with me, and what are these portals that keep popping up.  I am a huge fan of writing in video games, and feel that it does not get enough quality time nor does it get nearly enough of the budget for my tastes.  However, the player must feel like he or she is at least following along with the plot, so that we may actually care about what people have to say.  When a player is lost from the beginning, they have a tendency just to skip all of the dialogue, because ‘nothing has made sense prior to that conversation, why would that conversation make any sense now?’

Game Play:

 The game play of Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny survives critique so much better then the story did.  The game play here is solid role-playing real time strategy game mechanics.  The role-playing mechanics focuses solely on your hero characters.  You get to create your own Shaikan, but can only select from male characters and only select from pre-selected heads.  As your heroes level up, you get to give them abilities based on combat, magic, or Shaikan trees.  You will also find gear in treasure chests or on enemies to help flesh out your heroes.  The great thing about the gear is that is actually changes the looks of your heroes.  This can lead to your heroes looking much more unique then other heroes that are out there, especially in multi player, but more on that later.

The real time strategy mechanics for Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny is what makes this game at least a solid outing for Nordic Games.  Let me get this out, I hate real time strategy games, I’m just no good at them and can’t stand all of the micro-management that is needed to be any good at them.  Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny is a game that is made for people like me.  The developers made resource management extremely easy by using a user interface that was very intuitive.  I loved being able to double click on a troop type, then clicking on a pull down menu to assign that troop a group number.  I also loved how each group would have their abilities directly under their group number, so I could activate an ability from group 2 then one from group 4 with two simple clicks of a button.

Everything else about the real time strategy mechanics for Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny you have seen before.  Faith in Destiny uses three resources, instead of the typical two so you do have one more resource to stress about, but besides that, this is a typically solid real time strategy game through and through.  When faced with such a lackluster story line, Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny is mediocre at best and cannot compare to recent games such as Starcraft 2.

Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny does have the typical multiplayer system in place, but with the exception of being played against an human opponent, there isn’t anything special here that you don’t see in the campaign.  You have five factions to choose from, but again, with very little invested into the story; the only difference here is aesthetics.  Multiplayer can support up to six players at one time, and does including a new game mode called Domination, where a player must capture and control certain points on the map.

Aesthetics:

 Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny has a unique look to it, but it is a look that is also outdated.  Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny looks more like Warcraft 3 then Starcraft 2, and that is probably because the game has been in development since 2009.  Unique looks to a game when they are a design decision work for me.  I have a much easier time forgiving the graphics for a game like The Bindings of Isaac when it is a deliberate decision to make the game look that way.  However, for Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny, the graphics just feel outdated.  They’re not horrible by any means, just old looking.

Voice acting, on the other hand, was atrocious.  I was doing ok with the acting, until a women came up to me in the main city with, what can only be described as the single worst attempt at a Scottish accent.  At least, I think she was trying to pull off Scottish; it might have been something else.  I’m not saying that we need Oscar winning actors for every game, but if your actor is going to try to pull of an accent, at least make sure that she is capable of doing so before you record it and put it in your game.

Final Thoughts:

At the end of it all, Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny isn’t a bad game – it’s just not a great game either.  It falls perfectly in the middle range that many games fall into – very playable for a while, but will soon be forgotten when the next bigger and better game comes out.  What really kills Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny to me was the lengthy developmental timeframe.  If this game came out in 2008 or 2009, just a few years after the original, it would have been a very good game and a top-notch entry into the real time strategy genre for that time period.  However, it’s 2012 and we have played Starcraft 2, and, while Starcraft 2 had it’s own issues, it clearly shows just how outdated Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny really is.  If you need a real time strategy game to tie you over until the next Starcraft 2 expansion comes out, you can do worse then Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny.  If not, then I would just wait it out until Heart of the Swarm hits the stores.

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown Review – Xbox 360

In the world of the fighting game genre, Virtua Fighter holds a very unique and special place in my heart.  Fighting games, like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter, focus on special attacks or moves that no human could possibly pull off.  While other games, such as Soul Calibur, add weapons to the mix, leaving the matches feeling unrealistic after you hit your opponent in the head with a huge axe.  The Virtua Fighter series has always been based in the real world of martial arts, focusing on quick strikes, timely blocks, throws, and reversals.  This realism has made the Virtua Fighter series the ultimate fighting game experience in my eyes, making matches more of a chess game then being about who pulled off the super moves first.  Sega has released the newest version in this series, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Characters and Features:

Instead of using my normal “story” headline here, since there really isn’t a story in Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, I will use this section to talk about the character design and the features of the game, including the many game options for both online and offline play.

All but one of the characters are returning fighters from previous versions of Virtua Fighter, with only Jean Kujo being the new addition.  The list of characters include many fan favorites, including Pai Chan, Lei-Fei, Lau Chan, and my personal favorite, Shun Di.  Each fighter is a practitioner of a real world martial art, and are designed around these styles.  Shun Di practices drunken boxing, so he carries a jug of wine to keep him well motivated.  El Blaze is an expert in the Luche Libre style of wrestling, and has been designed to look like your typical luchadore.  The actual visuals of each character are a little stereotypical, but I find that the designs work in the end.

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is full of features and game play modes for both online and offline games.  The single player list includes your standard arcade edition, but also includes a score attack mode and a license challenge mode, where the player must win his or her bout while completing the listed challenge as well.  There is also a special sparring mode, but unfortunately you must have had customization unlocked in order to play this mode, and I did not have any customization available for any of my characters.  For multiple players, there is the offline versus mode, which is exactly as it sounds.  Two players play versus each other offline, no more, no less.  Online fighting is single player versus another player over Xbox Live.  Bouts over Xbox Live were quick and lag free for me.  I was able to find opponents quickly and was able to fight without any delay, making the matches fast and fun.  The last mode available to the player is a training mode called the dojo.  This is where the player can learn the moves of his or her toon and become more familiar with what the toon is capable of.

There is plenty here to keep anyone busy for a while.  Customization is a great idea that helps keep the game alive longer, but it is a premium for this version of Virtua Fighter.  You can buy full costume packs, or just buy the ones that you want.  Overall, I love the list of fighters for Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown and feel that the modes are great, but really love the lag free online fighting.  I hope the community stays involved in this game for a while to go so that I can find opponents just as easily as I was with this last week.

Gameplay:

The game play for Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is the definition of “easy to learn, hard to master”.  You only have 3 buttons that you worry about:  punch, kick and guard.  Your moves are based off of the button press combinations and direction of your movement stick.  Move lists for each character is long and detailed, including a move for almost any situation you’ll find yourself in.  Each character has the ability to throw, dodge, reverse throws, and counter attack through button combinations, making defense just as deadly as offence.

Final Showdown has gone through Virtua Fighter 5’s core game play and have revised and balanced it.  All the balance and timing of each move has been evaluated and balanced, to make Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown one for the tournament playlists for fighting competitions around the world.

The arenas are interesting to look at and now are extremely varied in both size and shape.  I was surprised to find myself on a floating arena that measured 6×16, making it a rectangle with almost nowhere to dodge to.  Walls are breakable and half walls can trip up your fighter if you are not careful.  Fighters can also use the walls and fences to trap their opponents in a corner and fighter can perform special wall maneuvers.

Gameplay for Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown feels natural and right.  The moves are quick and are pulled off with the simplest of buttons combinations, but require the right application during the right time.  One must have great timing to pull of a grab reversal during a match, so it really comes down to reaction time and concentration, rather than complex button presses.

Aesthetics:

Graphically speaking, I really did not see a difference between Final Showdown and the original release of Virtua Fighter 5.  It looks good on the Xbox, but still looks a little dated and rough around the edges.  The movements of the fighters are smooth and come off looking natural, which is extremely important in this type of game that relies on real world martial styles.  Robes flow like they should and the arenas are interesting to look at and varied enough that I did not get bored with them.

Voice acting is probably the weakest of all areas for Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown.  That’s not to say that it is bad in any sense of the word, but it is just not riveting and fantastic.  Each character speaks in his or her native language, which is a great feel.

Like many games before it, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown doesn’t do anything bad in the aesthetics department, it just doesn’t do anything great.  Everything here works for what is needed.

Final Thoughts:

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is a fantastic game in a long series of fantastic games from Sega.  while there isn’t a lot of noticeable upgrades from the original Virtua Fighter 5 version, this game does present the most balanced and competitive version out currently of the franchise.  Characters show up from previous games with one brand new character just for this game.  Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is full of options and modes to play to keep you busy for a long time, but be prepared to pay extra for customization options.  Overall, this is the version to own if you are a huge fan of the Virtua Fighter series.  Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is available now on Xbox Live Arcade.

Heroes and Generals Preview (PC) – Updated

*UPDATED! (05/18) – Looks like Reto-Moto had some comments regarding our preview of their upcoming Heroes & Generals, which you are about to checkout below. I have included their responses in indented italics and Judgeman’s responses to their responses in indented bold.

Independent game studio, Reto-Moto, is currently in development with their newest World War II game named Heroes and Generals, and we got our first look this week while they ran their pre-beta testing phase.  Heroes and Generals is a combined real time strategy and first person shooter game set during the largest conflict of the last century, World War II.  Heroes and Generals is a game that runs within your browser and is set to be free to play, but you can spend money to improve the game through micro-transactions.  Since this is in pre-beta testing, the game ran understandably inconsistent and the graphics aren’t quite finished yet, so with this preview of the game, I will just focus on the actual concept and game play.

Heroes and Generals is an ambitious title, combining aspects of the real time strategy game genre with that of the first person shooters that are littering the industry today.  At the heart of the game, players will select a campaign to participate in, and then select a faction.  Currently there are only two factions, the Germans and the United States.  Once a faction is selected, you must play only as that faction for the remainder of the campaign.  There is no such thing as auto-balance in Heroes and Generals, so if you join the game as the sole American against an army of Germans, good luck.

Once the faction has been picked, then the player gets to set up the soldiers that he or she will be playing as.  Each soldier fits into a certain category and has a set of starting gear, which is extremely light to start with.  A rifleman for the United States starts off with an M1 Garand and a Kbar knife.  That’s it.  You can buy more equipment, weapon mods that improve the performance of your weapons, side arms and grenades with credits that can be earned after each battle or bought with real money.  This buying of equipment with real money will be discussed later with one of my concerns with Heroes and Generals.

The player is then introduced to the strategy part of Heroes and Generals.  The map of the campaign shows exactly which faction controls which parts of the country, where the resources are for your faction, and which towns are currently being fought for.  Players can move resources via transportation corridors to the towns that need them the most.  These resources do carry over to the first person shooter part of the game, which determines who controls the town through direct combat.  The first person shooter combat plays very closely to the old classic Battlefield 1942, but with the limitations or gains that have been decided by the strategy section of Heroes and Generals.  For instance, if you moved enough resources to a town that you need to defend, then you can start the combat with tanks or air power, instead of just infantry.

The combat will see three different types of games, team death match, domination, and resources collecting.  Once the objectives have been met, the team that wins will be awarded with the town and the resources for their faction.  Each soldier is then given credits that they can use in the player screen to improve their soldiers, buy new classes, or build their own assault squads with tanks or fighter planes.

The idea behind Heroes and Generals is very interesting, but I feel that it’s still missing quite a bit.  For one, it does need some sort of balancing between the two factions.  When I played my first campaign, I dutifully selected the Americans and found that we were outnumbered almost three to one as a faction.  This led to a lack of resources for our side, and being outnumbered in every game that I played during the first person shooter phase.  The game also didn’t run as smooth as I would have liked within my browser, but Heroes and Generals is in a pre-beta phase, so that might get fixed.  My computer is also getting on the old side, so the culprit could have been on my side too.

My biggest concern with Heroes and Generals will be the micro-transactions for equipment.  Micro-transactions are the future of gaming; we need to just get that through our collective heads already.  However, the best way to do micro-transactions for a game is to allow players to buy items that do not give them a distinct advantage over players that do not buy items in the game’s shop.

We agree!

The model that Team Fortress 2 has followed is the best example of this; no weapon in the shop gives the player an advantage over a player that uses the base weapons, due to the negatives that can be found on purchased weapons.  An example of this is how the player may gain critical hits to his weapon, but will lose the air blast for their pyro.

Exactly!

With Heroes and Generals, there is no such balancing.  A player willing to spend tons of cash modifying his weapons will be able to one-shot anyone on the field, versus a player that cannot spend that cash and will have to use the lower quality in game items that they are given.

This is actually not the case, or at least this is not our intention! Each weapon has 5 parameters: Rate of Fire, Recoil, Damage, Range, Precision and each modifier works on these parameters. Our weapon modification system is a balanced system where each modification increases one parameter, but decreases another parameter. One example could be the “Hair Trigger”, which increases the Rate of Fire, but decreases the Range. So you can’t buy a super-gun which is maxed out in all parameters, but instead you can specialize a weapon so it fits your playing style.

That’s a fair response. I did spend some time on modifications, but truth be told never noticed the balance with them due to the fact that the game did not run smooth at all on my machine graphically. I would be willing to retract that part of my preview.

This “pay to win” model will be fine for the players that want to invest both the time and money into the game, but will be a hard sell on anyone that doesn’t have the cash to be competitive or have just started the game using the base weapons.

First of all, we don’t see our system as a pay to win system at all, and we strive to make a balanced and fair system. Secondly, you still earn credits by playing the game, and these credits can be used to purchase characters, weapons, weapon modifiers and assault teams. And even if you do use real money, you actually only “buy time” – all current items can be purchased by credits, so as a “free” player you can still buy and access everything if you play the game long enough.And even if you do modify your weapon, you still need to be able to use it properly. Unskilled players will never be able to be better than skilled players. That’s in the nature of twitch-based games. But if you modify your weapon, a medium skilled player might get a better chance against a highly skilled player.

People with money will still be better off earlier than others, so that point is still valid. I see their position on people earning credits to buy things just by playing the game, but the game still gives an advantage to those that are willing to pay real money to unlock things early.

Only time will tell once the game is released whether my concerns are valid, or just the ranting of a jaded gamer.

One other aspect we’re working on, but haven’t implemented yet is something we call “Social Free2Play”. The ideas is that as a commander, you can modify your Assault Team. One example could be that you want the machinegunners in your Assault Team to be able to shoot faster. So you do an Assault Team modification to the machineguns, which makes them shoot faster (but with an decreased accuracy for instance) and then when a player joins a mission where this Assault Team is in battle, he can choose to use the machinegun provided by the Assault Team, or he can just use his own. This model also applies to vehicles and other equipment. So the “spending” a commander does on his Assault Team, actually benefits other players as well. So he kind of “gives a round to the house”. We don’t believe that we have seen this model anywhere else.

I had no idea that the modifications transferred to all assault members as I couldn’t find any mention of that in the game.

Overall, Reto-Moto has something definitely different with Heroes and Generals in combing aspects of the strategy game genre with the first person shooter genre within a persistent world.  I will be interested in seeing the publics reactions to this once it’s released.

Screenshots