Between Love and vehicles

I just watched Coop episode 6 where they were talking about Motorstorm Pacific Rift and not Pacifica as I read somewhere, Henry Hatsworth and Love was also on the program.

My first game on my PS3 was the first Motorstorm and I really liked it and it was the only game I had for a couple of months so I kind of played it a lot when I first bought the PS3. It was hard and contained a lot of bugs but the driving really got me going and I became good at it. When Evolution Studio released the demo for Motorstorm Pacific Rift I downloaded it straight away but I felt disappointed after trying it. It wasn’t as good as the first game and it just didn’t feel the same. But as I watched Coop today and saw a lot of game play footage from it and heard what Ryan and the others thought about it, my interest went up. The tropical setting seems great, the tracks seems cool and interesting just as they were in the first game with multiple ways to advance through the tracks. They also introduced the Monster truck class and made special ways for that class only and they probably have other ”class specific” ways on other places as well. I am not going to buy the game straight away since I have a bunch of games unfinished but I might give the game a chance when I played through a couple of games.

With Love, it isn’t the usual bondage between two persons or so but a one man game project which looks stunning. The creator is Eskil Steenberg, a Norwegian I suppose who have created this lovely looking game which have been referred to as a MMORPG but apparently isn’t as massively as MMO stands for. The game puts the players against the world, so called Player vs. Environment, and it is possible to build your own cities and stuff in the game. He also has created a 3D modeling tool in which you can play Asteroid. It is also good as it is scale able and can be used on any platform apparently. I have seen pictures of Love before and the difference between what it looks like now and before is dependent on one feature, the wind. As far as I know it is the first and only game that shows how the wind is blowing and shows the air as a layer in the world. It makes the graphic a bit fuzzier but it looks impressive when a wind power station starts to turn and you can actually see the wind going through it. Here is the homepage for Love for those who want to check it out and the picture under here is taken from the homepage.

Swing around in a multiplayer demo

I have played the Bionic Commando demo today, so far only played three matches and I kind of like it. During the first match I was kind of lost since they had a interactive loading screen where you had to press the button to get to know what it does. The loading time was short so I had no time to check through all the buttons. That game ended with me in seventh place with eight players and I only got two kills. I blame my defeat on the lovely weather and the shining sun that was shining on my TV.

I played two more matches a couple of hours later and this time I both knew how the control worked and I could actually see something on the TV with the sun behind a couple of houses. The aiming in the game is a bit loose, you can put the camera right behind the character and get a better aiming but it takes time and the game is quite hectic and I haven’t found time so far to use that ability. Even though the control is loose it is still good and it is fun to throw yourself at enemies with the mechanical arm. I believe the arm will work well in the single player game and that with some exercise; I will swing around each level with grace.

The level in the demo takes place on the roof of a house; it is not very big but a good taste of what will come in the full game. It takes place during the night and I am not sure if there is a daytime version of the level in the demo, I hope it is since it would be nice to see what the game looks like when a little brighter but the game will be released in the end of May I believe so you might have to wait until then.

Will I buy the game when it is released? It sure is a candidate but I have to see when we get closer to the release date. There are a couple of interesting games coming out in May; a lot of them are licensed games such as the new Batman, X-men, Ghostbusters and Terminator Salvation games. They look interesting and it looks like the developers have learned to develop good license games or at least some developers.

I am off to a game night now since Lisa works at Traversen tonight which for me leaves me with the TV all alone. I have already played two matches of Bionic Commando and I finished one campaign mission in Halo Wars, I am half way through that game now by the way. I might continue the evening with some Midnight Club LA, Infinite Undiscovery, Halo Wars or a couple of more games in the Bionic Commando demo.

***Update***

So I recently played another match in the demo and here are some things I came to think about during my five minutes in the game.

The aiming is really inaccurate and you both hit and miss even when aiming on the opponent. The first time I reacted on it was when I was killed by a sniper shot and at the same time the laser sight from that weapon was besides me but it still hit me. You can also get kills by punching in the vicinity of opponents. The rocket launcher is very inaccurate and you have to aim way out of place of where you actually want to hit.

The auto lock of the arm sometimes grabs the wrong thing, mostly dead bodies instead of the one alive that you want to kill. But it is very satisfying to fly kick someone of the roof and to see them fly down and die.

The demo map is called Vertigo, it is only playable in deathmatch during five minute rounds. You recive points for each kill aswell as frags but I don’t know what the points are good for.

L.A. driving 101

I have now spent some time with Midnight Club Los Angeles to be able to give you an impression. For those who don’t know the Midnight Club series it takes place in different cities where you have to roam the cities to find competitors to compete against, these I believe have been the way all the games in the series have worked. Midnight Club LA is the forth part in the series and takes place in Los Angeles, the name gives a hint about it, and it gives a big part of L.A. to cruise around in.

There are different competitions in the game, landmark, time trail, tournaments and single races that can be found out in the city. Checkpoints are shown as colored smoke on the street and they contain a huge arrow pointing to the next checkpoint. In landmark races you get a goal destination and you have to get there before your opponent does by finding the fastest way. In time trail races you have to race around a track within a given time and a certain car that you borrow from the NPC who arrange it. Tournaments are a series of races and they come in two variants, one where you get points for each race and one where you have to win a number of races to win the tournament. Single races are just what they sound like, single races against a couple of opponents and first to the finish line (smoke) wins.

I have now raced a bit, tried a couple of cars and cruised around the city and I kind of like it. It is sometimes hard but it is more because there is traffic out on the streets which I usually collide with in critical moments. The game has a built in rubber band which makes it very hard to be too far away from the lead. This is both good and bad, good when you have screwed up big time and for instance turned down the wrong road or similar. At those moments I am happy I catch up with the opponents but it still feels kind of weird when losing a lot of time and a couple of checkpoints later you have catch up with the lead and are at first place.

The biggest surprise so far in the game came when I tried a motorbike, I have recently played the little more realistic Project Gotham Racing 4 which also contains bikes and in that game it is an art form to be successful with bikes, but in Midnight Club LA the handling is if possible even more stable than with a car. I took it out for a test run and ran around for a while and it was what I would like the cars to feel like when drive them. Maybe the cars later on in the game feels like that, I have only tried three or four cars so far and they all been a bit light weight compared to how the cars in PGR4 handles.

The game contains a story about an east coast guy who travels to Los Angeles and around here I lost the story pretty much. I receive a couple of phone calls where people tell me where the races are and such but so far I haven’t really cared for the story. Hopefully it grows as I progress through the game.

A funny thing I stumbled upon when I recently played the game is that when it is raining, it only rains on the main roads. I took a short cut in one of the roads leading up the mountain on the north part of the map and on that shortcut the road was dry as a desert and no rain falling down but when I reached the end of that road and entered the main road the whole road was wet and slippery and the rain falling.

I might return with more impressions later when I have played more of the game but for now this is enough. The picture under was found at Level7, I thought I should mention that.

Changes

I have changed my blog a little, I changed the theme to a lighter one and I have created a new page called Documents where I will post a lot of my school projects, at the moment I have only posted four documents from my specialization project.

During this week the weather have been wonderful with the sun shining most of the days. It’s been really nice and hot. I have recieved two new games this week aswell, The Worlds End with You for Nintendo DS and Midnight Club Los Angeles for the Xbox 360. I shall try post some impressions of them early next week but they seems to be two pretty good games. Handheld games are really nice during the summer since you can sit anywhere playing them, it is harder to move the television out to the balcony and play with the stationary video game systems there.

Have a nice weekend and I will start blogging next week with some first impressions of the two new games and a little of everything as usuall.

In company with two deadly creatures

I spent last night in company with a glass of Rum, a Tarantula and a Scorpion. I played the three last levels of Deadly Creatures so that I can put the game on the shelf and look at it and know that I am done with it.

Deadly Creatures is a game that takes place somewhere in the American desert around an old petrol station. The story is focusing around two human characters that you see from time to time when they interact with each other and unfolds their history. But to be honest, the story isn’t a big part of this game seems to be there only to have something to use Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper for but yes, the story do pushes the game forward with some changes in the environment. Rainbow Studio could have made it without them but it doesn’t make the game less good and it gives the game some sort of story.

The game switches between the Tarantula and Scorpion each level and they progresses the same way which means many levels are played twice, first as the Tarantula when you might jump around aiming for different spider webs and on the next you level you play as the Scorpion and walk the same way but on the ground, hacking your way through bushes and walls. It is not always as much fun playing the same level once again but the level design is good and it is cool to play from an insect’s perspective which usually is done only in child games or movie license games.

The levels lets you walk on many different surfaces in all directions, sometimes you run around on the ground and in the other you are running in the ceiling of a car. The negative with the environments are that some areas are locked by an area that can’t be climb, usually a small cliff in the nature levels or a cable or a crack on walls and indoor areas. It takes away the free roaming feeling but it is obviously there to limit the levels and not making it a Grand Theft Auto in insect style.

The control uses both the Wiimote and the nunchuck and it involves some waving with both of them. Waving is used in some attacks, usually in combos or in special attacks, in some environmental issues like hacking your way through some grass or a wall and of course the waving is used in the quick time events when either taking down a weakened enemy or in special sections of the game. The waving works quite well and there are never any advanced motions you have to do, it is more like lifting or lowering the wiimote, swing it in one of four directions and stuff like that. But it feels cool to pick up a rat with the scorpions claw, throw down the ground and then finish him off by putting the tail in is head.

A bad thing with the controller is that you can’t lock on to enemies and move around them but instead the camera locks itself in the center of all enemies and you have to circle around all of them. The character sometimes bug out when walking over edges or standing close to some walls and it also happens to some of the enemies when bashing them so they fly somewhere they shouldn’t be. It lowers the experience a bit when stuff like that happens and they should have know that the player walks over edges and they should have made animations for that type of movement.

The soundtrack is built up by ambient sounds that create the feeling of being a little creature; the two creatures that you play have no voices and no lines of conversation in the game which is unusual in games. The sound effects contains of different sounds from the different animals you meet such as spiders, bugs, crickets and lizards.

Overall, Deadly Creatures is a good game with some cool features such as the movement on all surfaces and that it actually lets you play as a small animal in a serious game. There are some flaws in the game that drags down the experience a little bit but nothing that destroys the entire game.

Long time no see

Some time have passed since my latest post here so I think it is time for a new one. The last week I have found an interest for Halo Wars, I have applied for some jobs in different places and I am dying to move away from Skellefteå to see something new and exciting. Don’t get me wrong, I like Skellefteå as a town to study with its cozy nature and closeness to the other students but it doesn’t offer a lot of stuff to do. I’m missing the sound of traffic going past my window, the crowds of people you have to pass when down town to being in a city where people are who they want to be but with style and no track suit bottoms which is common here now in the spring. Track suits should be worn at home or when training.

Halo Wars, the RTS game from Ensamble Studio, which has shut down, brings the Halo franchise back to its roots. I am usually not a huge RTS fan but I really like Halo Wars and I believe it is because the pace is a bit lower than in a PC equivalent  and with only two factions to play, it is easier to learn how they work. They have solved the control method in a good way as long as the action is in one place and you easily jump between bases with a single click on the pad.

I have played one third of the campaign but so far I have focused my attention on the skirmish mode which I think is great fun. It contains a lot of interesting maps with some bonus buildings and a huge variety on the environment with everything from deserts and cities to snowfield. The graphics are well made and the game looks pretty. On the downside is that there is only a human campaign and no campaign for the covenants. Also the voices can be a bit frustrating when you for each finished building, research or unit get an announcement told to you that tells you it is done. It gets a bit repetitive when you have built or upgraded six factories for money making. Even if the control works well as long as the action is taking place in a single place, it gets problematic when it is on more than one place with you often strafing through the map instead of pulling up and clicking on the spot on a mini map as it usually works on PC.

I am thinking about selling a couple of my games, titles that pretty much only take up places in my shelf such as Mirror’s Edge, Prince of Persia and Lost Planet. I am thinking about putting them up on sale on a gaming forum to maybe get them traded for other titles or else I bring them to the local game store and change them there. I am just not sure of what titles I am interested in… Lately there have been some handheld titles released that is of interest; Henry Hatsworth, Loco Roco 2 and of course GTA4 China Wars. I ordered The World Ends with You yesterday from Videogame plus as I have heard a lot of good stuff about it and I need to dust of my DS since I haven’t played anything on it for some time. Handheld games are great to play during the summer since you can play them outside in the grass or when traveling between towns.

In a bit more than a month, Nordic Game opens its doors in Malmö for a 2 day conference event and I have thoughts of going there. I think it would be interesting and a great experience, coming closer to the industry that I want to work in. Keiji Inafune and Suda 51 are two of the guests who will attend the conference and it would be a great experience to hear them speak. The down side is that I have to go there by myself since no one in my vicinity think it’s worth that much money to go there for two days and sure I can understand them, it isn’t free and the end note will end pretty high but it might be a way to get into the industry which I think could be worth trying. I might return on this subject due to the length of this text.

That have to do for today, sleep tight and have a nice future!

Half way into the Infinite

Spoiler alert once again

I am now haft way into Infinite Undiscovery and I just started on the second disc. The first disc ended after completing a temple which was a nice experience. It started with the group splitting up in three smaller groups and then we took one way each. The temple had several levels and at some points you needed some orbs to open up for further progress. The thing is that I, the player, didn’t find all of them or activated all of them but instead, sometimes one of the groups found one and gave it to me at some point where there was a net between the areas instead of brick walls and sometimes I found an orb that I couldn’t use but another group could and then I gave I to them so that they could open up the next door. It might not be any new for games but it gives the game a bit more depth when the player doesn’t do everything to progress.

In some fights in the temple, some of the enemies are unreachable for you and in those fights, another group can come into the room on that other level where those who are unreachable for the player are and start fighting them to relieve the player from some damage. It is probably all very scripted but it feels cool and makes the temple feel well planned.

The music in IU might not be the best in a game ever but it creates an atmosphere in the game and does what it should do. I entered a tainted city and the music became sad and depressed to reflect the feeling and it worked. I believe it has been like this all the way through the game but it isn’t anything I have thought about but I usually don’t think of the music in games, it is more something that is there and I don’t really reflect over it unless it is terrible.

You can enter a lot of houses in villages but in the houses with a top floor the stair is always shut off by a box, a barrel or the bottom stair is broken. It is always like that and it looks a bit ridiculous when they are, doesn’t anyone uses their top floors in the world?

The boss fights have started to become harder and they put up a challenge now, I usually die the first time since it is not only the boss who tries to hit me, there is also a bunch of other enemies who is there to fight against me and my group. But they are fun, at the first boss on the second disc you have to take cover for a tsunami that the boss summons from time to time. It gives a bit of variety to the fights instead of only mash the buttons on the controller to kill of the enemies.

I like Infinite Undiscovery, I might not get so many achievements out of this game but I think it’s worth a play through since the story is quite interesting and the game play is varied and it is a solid game.