Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

It is hard to believe that it has been a little over 10 years since the release of the first Halo. In that time the series has accomplished a lot: successfully launched the Xbox, sold tens of millions of games, and crossed into other forms of entertainment including comics, novels, and movies. Halo is the game that Microsoft built their Xbox empire on, so it’s no surprise that the game is getting treatment the remake treatment for its 10 year anniversary.

In the past there was generally two different ways to do these re-releases. You could take the approach of games like Resident Evil 4 HD and Beyond Good and Evil HD and just port the game to modern consoles, upscale the textures a bit, and call it day. Or you could go the full remake route of games like Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes and completely remake the game on a new engine. This is the more impressive route to take, but you lose the nostalgia factor when you do it. Halo Anniversary takes a different approach, and ends up somewhere between the two.

At its core, Halo Anniversary is the exact same game everyone played a decade ago. The game engine is still around and running the show. This means that all of the gameplay mechanics are exactly the same as they have always been. All of the weapons and vehicles handle the same, and all of the AI remains unchanged. For better or worse, the Covenant, Marines, and Flood all behave as they used to. Co-op is still around as well, and this time you can play over Xbox Live.

So the Halo “combat puzzle” is still intact and as fun as it ever was. Each encounter provides a great challenge, with the game’s iconic selection of weapons providing the tools to solve them. Despite the game’s age, it still provides some of the most fun and challenging firefights in the series, especially on the higher difficulty settings. Halo: Combat Evolved on Legendary difficulty is certainly the most challenging of all in the series, and without ever feeling unfair. Those that played the game in the past will have a great nostalgia trip, while those new to the game will find what still is a surprisingly modern gameplay experience.

On the outside though, we have a brand new graphics engine and art assets. Everything visual in the game, from the smallest rock to the largest Hunter, has had a pretty impressive makeover. Since the old game engine is still running behind the scenes, it is actually possible to switch back and forward between old and new, allowing you to actually play the original game with its original graphics. It it offers a great opportunity to see how far graphics technology for games have come in the past ten years. I had a lot of fun just switching between the two in each new area to see what they changed.

All of the graphical changes are just superficial though. For example, while the elites have many times the polygons and texture resolution then they used to have, they are still the same height and width. Every rock, tree, and barricade is exactly where it used to be, the same size and facing the same direction. Everything just look a whole lot nicer. This means that the levels themselves also remained functionally untouched. The Silent Cartographer is as great as everyone remembers it, while The Library is every bit as annoying as it ever. The updated visuals do help a bit, as there is more variety in the previously monotonous hallways of Covenant ships, and some arrows added to the floors in the Library help you stay oriented. Overall though, the levels in Halo were well designed and had a good amount on non-linearity to them that modern gamers have come to expect.

All of that graphical fidelity has come at a price: frame rate. The game runs at a shaky thirty frames per second most of the time and can dip pretty low when things get frantic. Occasionally it was bad enough I actually switched back to the old visuals which runs smooth as butter. I am not sure if it is a result of running the two graphics engines or not, but it is a bit disappointing that they couldn’t have locked it down. Halo deserves better.

In addition to the graphics update, the sound effects and music also got some attention. They really should have left well enough alone though. The new gun sounds are hit and miss, with some sounding truly awful. The same can also be said for the new music. As someone who played a lot of the original game, it was really distracting at first to not hear the same music and weapon effects that I remembered. It really messes with your nostalgia until you get used to the new sounds. Thankfully you can swap out the new music score for the old one. It’s too bad you can’t do the same for the weapon sound effects.

The only real major disappointment in the package is the lack of Halo: Combat Evolved’s multiplayer. Instead of recreating it, we get an add-on pack for Halo Reach that consists of six maps (and one new firefight map). They have given a number of reasons for excluding the original’s multiplayer, but it really feels like it was cut due to time and budget constraints. The map pack consists of both Halo and Halo 2 classics such as Beaver Creek and Damnation. Since this is Reach multiplayer, the maps have been tweaked a bit to accommodate the various gameplay changes over the years such as jetpacks. If you already had your fill of Halo Reach online, there is not much here to bring you back.

Still, Halo Anniversary is an enjoyable single-player focused remake of one of the most iconic games of the past decade. It really shows just how right Bungie got things the first time around. If you have fond memories of the original or never got a chance to play it the first time around, Anniversary is absolutely worth picking up.

Guest Review: Castlevania – Lords of Shadow

I am going to start this review of Castlevania Lords of Shadow by saying that I had a lot of mixed emotions about this game while I was playing it. This was the first Castlevania game that I have ever played and I was pretty excited about playing it because people speak so highly of Castlevania. When I first started this game I recognized immediately that this game was almost a perfect carbon copy of God of War, that can be a good or bad thing depending on what you expected a Castlevania game to be. Also, the graphics are actually pretty good, and the levels detail and environment gives the game a Castlevania feel to it I guess.

Once I got past the realization that I am basically playing God of War, I continued on through the levels. Lords of Shadow has 12 chapters for you to take the main character, Gabriel, button mashing through. The story of this game is that the world is going through a very dark time, a lot of evil things have been happening very frequently and that the balance of Good and Evil have tipped significantly in Evil’s favor. The Holy Order (The Brotherhood of Light) that Gabriel belongs to believes that God has left them. Gabriel, who has just recently lost his wife, is going to go try to find out why the this is all happening and see if God has really left them to suffer the evil that is spreading through the world. Gabriel learns some vital information from a member of the Holy Order named Zobek, that there is an artifact named “The God Mask”. Zobek informs Gabriel that this artifact can put an end to this dark time that the world is experiencing, and here’s the kicker, the mask can in fact bring his wife Marie back to life. There are 4 Lords of shadow, and each Lord has a piece of this God Mask in order to maintain a balance between themselves so not one Lord is more powerful than the other. So Gabriel Belmont sets out in the quest to bring his wife from the dead, and restore the “Good” to the world.

As I said, this is the very first Castlevania I have played, and everything seemed pretty cool until I got basically more than half way through this game and had not yet set foot inside of a castle. Call me ignorant, but I could have sworn that in almost every screenshot, and every time I have seen someone playing a Castlevania game, I have always seen them inside of a castle. This is not the case with Lords of Shadow. The majority of this game takes place outside killing trolls and goblins in swamps and mystical forests. Now I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but it was just very unexpected on my end.

I have to say though, this game is very frustrating. You will be plowing through this game and then once you hit a puzzle or a platforming scenario, the game basically skids to a stop. I don’t really mind platforming and puzzles, but I DO mind when they are absolutely idiotic and basically just seem like they were put there to make you mad and slow down your progress. Platforming wouldn’t be so bad if this game allowed you to look around in first person, but they don’t which results in a lot of frustrating trial and error. This is also a very big problem with finding secrets in this game. You have to basically ask yourself, “Hmm… should I jump off this bridge to see if there is a secret cache over there? Sure why not?” and then plummet to your death to the set checkpoint that the game saves you to if your health is low enough.

I also remember having to kill myself 3 times because the creators of this game made your grapple hook button the same as your “pick up item” button. So I would click the button, miss an item that would increase the amount of my health or magic, and would have to kill myself to do the whole sequence all over again.
My first play through of this game was on hard mode, and it frustrated me to no end that I wasn’t even dying from the monsters, but to this games horrible platforming mechanics which really made no sense to me. For example, I would jump to a ledge but would not make it and fall to my death. Then after reloading I would be back at the same point and make the exact same jump as I did before, but this time Gabriel would grab onto the ledge and pull himself up. I found myself repeatedly asking myself, “Why didn’t that work last time” throughout the entire game.

The fighting in this game gets pretty repetitive until you have enough points to buy new combo moves. However, your magic powers are pretty entertaining. You have Holy Magic and Dark Magic, and it makes for good killing of monsters and demons alike. I found that the Cross ability and the Ultimate Light and Ultimate Dark spells are the “I Win” Buttons of the game. These spells would utterly destroy any monster or demon in front of me without any problem at all, and I was playing on hard mode, so… yeah.

Honestly Lords of Shadow doesn’t really pick up, until the first real Boss of the game. I have to say, the boss fights and the story in this game is what really drove me on to completing this game. The boss fights are extremely fun, and I was shocked that the camera angles weren’t an issue during these boss encounters. The bosses in this game are in my opinion very creative and a lot of thought was put into these fights, and on hard difficulty mode, I felt like I accomplished something by killing some of these bosses. Most of these bosses are definitely not push overs in this game, and it was actually really refreshing to struggle through some of these encounters.

So, my opinion on Castlevania Lords of Shadow is that it is a pretty solid game if you can get through the frustrating points of the game, you will be rewarded with this games pretty awesome story for a video game and amazing graphics. It is worth renting or borrowing for a play through.

Crysis 2

Crysis 2, the latest graphical powerhouse from developer Crytek, marks a number of firsts for the developer. For the first time they have left the lush tropical setting and moved to the urban jungle of New York city, providing a number of gameplay changes from previous games in the city. Crysis 2 also marks the first time the developer has targeted the console platforms as well as the PC. This decision was met with some disappointment from some of the PC gamer elitists. All of Crytek’s previous games focused on pushing PC graphics technology as far as it could go, resulting in games that looked absolutely stunning but required thousands of dollars of PC hardware to run adequately. PC gamers often used these games as showpieces for their gaming rigs, using them as an example of why PC gaming was superior to the consoles. The disappointment was based on the assumption that by developing the game for the consoles, the PC version would suffer due to the rather old console hardware.

It would seem that in the process of optimizing the game to run on the older console hardware has resulted in much more reasonable system requirements on the PC then the previous Crysis games. I was able to run Crysis 2 on my somewhat modest gaming PC at the maximum graphics setting with very smooth frame rates. This same computer still has the occasional slowdowns running Crysis 1 at maximum graphics settings, and that game is a few years old at this point. That is not to say that the game doesn’t push graphics hardware like the first Crysis did. This game looks absolutely phenomenal, easily winning the category of best looking game this year. In fact, every aspect of the presentation is impressive. New York city is almost photo-realistic at times, and the scope of all of the environments is truly impressive. Character faces look lifelike, and the animation is fluid and natural. The visual presentation here is second to none, and the fact that the game runs on consoles is an equally impressive feat. The PC version of the game is the best looking of them all, but the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions look great as well. Whatever platform you play Crysis 2 on, know that it is the most impressive looking game around. The only disappointment with the presentation was some issues with 5.1 surround sound mixing. Dialog coming out of the rear channels was often too quiet, even when the character speaking was only a few feet back.

Moving the game from the jungle to the city has resulted in a few gameplay changes over the previous two entries in the series. The environments in the previous games were pretty wide open, allowing for numerous ways to approach each enemy encounter,  places to hide, and tactics to take. The open-ended level design of Crysis 2 has been scaled back a bit, as you have fewer opportunities fighting in city streets then in dense vegetation filled jungles. The tradeoff here is that the city provides a bit of verticality that the other games never had. There are lots of things to climb in the city, providing lots of opportunities to take the high ground and work your way around patrols. The setting also provides a lot more cover to take advantage of, with abandoned cars, signs, benches, and other things placed all over.

You still have the same weapon customization options available as you would expect. You can attach an assortment of scopes, silencers, laser sights, and launchers to many of the weapons, increasing their usefulness in multiple combat scenarios. The suit abilities are back, but this time you can customize those as well. Taking down the alien enemies in the game provides you with “nano catalysts”  to spend on suit upgrades. These upgrades have affects such as reducing the energy drain while cloaked, adding tracers to bullets fired at you, increasing the damage you can absorb, and providing you with more air control when falling. You can only have a few of these upgrades activated at a time, and the proper selection of upgrades in the right situation can make your life a lot easier.

The suit has also been streamlined a bit, and the game is better for it. Instead of having to manually switch between speed and strength, they automatically kick in when you want them. Holding down the sprint button activates speed, draining energy as you run really fast. Holding down the jump button will automatically activate strength, allowing you to jump many feet into the air. The suit controls much more naturally now, allowing you to stay in the combat at all times instead of fumbling with a radial menu when you need to switch abilities.

The open environments and the customizable weapons and nano-suit abilities gives the combat in the game a sandbox feel. There are a lot of ways to approach any combat space, and thanks to pretty solid enemy AI no two encounters will ever play out the same way. The brute force and stealth approach are always viable options, however the stealth route is often pretty easy and ultimately less satisfying. It is just way too easy to sneak past enemies using the cloak if you have upgraded it, often allowing you to skip somewhat large portions of the game. For example, at one point in the game you are tasked with fighting your way into an armored compound to kill the enemy leader. Dozens of heavily armored guards stand between you and him. The resulting firefight is intense and extremely fun. However you could also choose to cloak and bypass everyone, walking straight up to the commander and taking him out without a shot fired.  Since a lot of the combat can be skipped if you choose, your playing time will vary.  I only used the stealth suit to sneak past a few encounters and finished the game in roughly eight hours.

Some of the people I have talked to consider being able to skip large portions of the game broken, making the game less fun. I tend to disagree. If you treat every game as a challenge to overcome with the least resistance possible, I could see how you might be disappointed. However I strongly believe that in games like Crysis 2, you are fully responsible for your own experience and enjoyment of the game. I play games to have fun, not to find the most optimum way to beat it. I wouldn’t find sneaking past everything fun, so I simply didn’t do that and I had a great time. I got into some of the most intense gunfights I have ever experienced in a game, often times barely escaping death. However, if you are one of those people who play games simply to win, and do so by whatever means you can (such as exploiting the AI), I will warn you now that your fun might vary.

The story in the game is probably the weakest part of the package. It seems that a considerable amount of time has passed between the events of Crysis 1, and the game does a poor job of filling you in on what has happened.  You start out as part of a squad of marines sent in to rescue a scientist named Gould who has important research about the aliens. In the opening moments of the game your squad is wiped out, but not before Prophet,  one of the nano-suit soldiers from the first game, saves you. You are given his armor, and it is up to you alone to carry out your mission. Your interaction with other characters in the game is pretty limited. You get a few moments of face time with Gould during the campaign, but it seems most of the characters in the story simply exist to yell orders at you over the radio or provide you with someone to take out. The story is big on technical details about your suit doing something with the alien tissue samples you are collecting, but it is not always clear what exactly is going on are why you are doing some of the things you are tasked with. However in the most basic sense the story does get the job done. It provides you with enough motivation, and provides a number of pretty epic set piece battles.

Crytrek has gone with the Call of Duty approach to the multiplayer aspect of the game, so if you have played any of those games you know what you are getting into. You have a persistent character profile that ranks up as you play, allowing you to spend XP to unlock new abilities and weapons. Just like in the single player campaign, you can customize your weapons with attachments, providing players with a lot of options when creating their own classes. Other features taken out of the Call of Duty playbook include challenges you can complete to unlock bonuses and map specific killstreak rewards. Some of these rewards, like the orbital laser strike, can be very devastating. Finding a game to get into is easy thanks to a quick match option, where you specify the game mode you want to play and you will automatically be placed into a game. I found search times to be extremely quick, and most games to be lag free thanks to dedicated servers on the PC. The suit abilities and their energy draining mechanics add a neat aspect to the multiplayer gameplay. For example, sprinting around uses your suit energy, resulting in less energy to absorb damage should you run into an enemy player. Knowing when and how your abilities and how to manage your energy is required to do well. The stealth ability provides a lot of opportunities to play sneaky and outmaneuver your enemies, and becomes a very valuable tool in objective based game modes.

Overall Crysis 2 is a compelling game. The single player campaign offers a lot of intense gunfights and breathtaking visuals, while the online multiplayer offers solid, if not uninspired, social fragging. Only time will tell how much staying power the online aspect of the game has, but as of right now the game has a sizable online community. With a standard length campaign, enjoyable multiplayer, and the best graphics of any game to date, Crysis 2 is worth picking up.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

You wake up in a castle with a note you have written yourself. You cannot remember who or where you are, but your former self is not surprised. The note tells you that you have purposefully forgotten recent events, and that you now have one goal: find and kill a man named Alexander. You don’t know who Alexander is or why you wanted to kill him, but your note warns that you are being chased by a dark shadow that alters reality and that time will be short.

The dark shadow is a persistent threat that is never directly seen but its presence can always be felt. Earthquakes are tearing the castle apart, and odd noises can be heard coming from outside. However, these are the least of your worries as strange creatures walk the halls of the castle. The castle is impressive – a massive maze of twisting rooms  and corridors. The earthquakes are causing parts of the roof to collapse, blocking off passages and creating new ones as you play.

Light is in limited supply, as candles provide your only means of illuminating the darkness. Tinderboxes are scattered all over the castle, but you never seem to have enough. You also have a lantern that runs on oil, but even that is in limited supply. Staying in the darkness slowly drains your sanity, which is something that could easily be lost in a place like this. You need to treat light like a limited resource, otherwise you could lose your mind.

You have to stay focused and keep your wits about you. Keeping the darkness at bay is only part of the challenge, as every odd event you witness chews on your soul. Looking too long at the foul creatures could cause you to panic and reveal your position, forfeiting your only advantage: stealth.  You will find no weapons to use against the creatures in the castle. Your only choice when faced with one of them is to run or hide. You can close doors and barricade yourself in rooms, but that will only slow them down. Running fast and far away or hiding in closets or other dark corners will be your best bet for survival.

As you lose your sanity your vision becomes blurred. You might start seeing and hearing things that are not actually there. Depending on how far gone you are there might even be a delay between mouse inputs and you performing the action. Keeping your mind on the tasks at hand is the only way to preserve what little sanity you have left, as solving a puzzle completely restores your sanity.

Solving these puzzles is how you will spend a majority of your time. The castle is in very bad shape with areas that you need to get to currently inaccessible. Many of the puzzles work like classic point and click adventure games. You have to find the items that you need, combine them to create something useful, and then use the item on the environment. This might include mixing chemicals to produce an explosive to clear your path, or to fix a broken steam generator by properly setting levers and replacing gears and other broken parts. The puzzles are well designed and often make good use of the physics engine. They will require you to think things through, but are never so complicated that you will be stuck on any one for too long.

The physics engine makes interacting with the world feel pretty real. Using the mouse you actually grab on to items and move them around. Opening doors requires more than just a click, as you have to push or pull your mouse to swing the door open. Similarly, turning valves requires you to move the mouse in the correct circular motion. It creates a unique physical connection between you and the game that really helps to immerse you in its world. It also helps increase the tension a lot, especially when running from enemies where you actually have to stop and swing a door open in order to get away.

The presentation of the game is pretty solid, especially for an indie game. The graphics engine won’t necessarily impress if you have been playing a lot of big budget games, but by no means does the game look bad. The actual art in the game is pretty good. Objects have a good amount of detail, and feel authentic for the time period.  The lighting engine works well, creating believable shadows and the use of ambient occlusion adds depth to the scenes. However, the most impressive part of the presentation has to be the audio design. The audio designers clearly understand that what you cannot see is often scarier then what you can, and they provide you with some truly terrifying sounds to get your imagination working against you. The graphics and audio combine to create a game that is really rich in atmosphere.

True horror games are rare these days, but Amnesia The Dark Descent really pulls it off. This might just be the creepiest game ever made.

Metro 2033

I am never riding the Metro again.

After playing the creepy and extremely atmospheric game Metro 2033, I don’t think I can ever step foot into a Metro station again without getting flashbacks to this excellent survival horror first-person shooter. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, the remaining Russian population has retreated underground to the Moscow Metro system where the majority of the game takes place. The individual Metro stations have been turned into refugee camps of sorts, with families trying to survive on whatever they can. Many of the camps are run by different factions, some of which are friendly, while others are not. Travel between these crowded stations is possible but dangerous due to the mutants, bandits, and anomalies that have taken up residence in the sprawling Metro tunnels. The setting is extremely dirty, depressing and claustrophobic, but rendered in amazing detail. Every inch of the Metro system seems plausible, and years of neglect have never looked so awesome. With resources so scarce, life seems to be hanging on by a thread. The world is clearly dying, with everything, including the tunnels which preserve this last bit of humanity, rapidly deteriorating. Still, there is still a lot of life left in the people in these Metro stations, and they are not willing to disappear without a fight.

You play the game as Artyom, the son of the leader of one of the Metro stations. The Mutants have become more aggressive recently, attacking the station in greater numbers. The only hope of survival for those in the station are for you to get a message to one of the other, stronger Metro stations, asking them for help. However getting there, though the dangerous subway system, past the mutants, anomalies, bandits, and more will be no easy task. Luckily you are not alone in this, and you will have a number of companions to help you with your journey.

The game takes a lot of gameplay cues from existing survival horror games. This means limited supplies, dark corridors, oppressive atmosphere, and scary enemies. Friendly Metro stations, which can be thought of as hubs between missions, provide opportunities to catch your breath and trade for supplies. The currency in the tunnels takes the form of pre-war ammunition. Considering how hostile the world is, it’s not very surprising that bullets are more valuable then money. Pre-war ammo is becoming more and more scarce, so Metro residents have begun creating their own “dirty” rounds. These homemade rounds are not as powerful as the pre-war munitions, however they are plentiful. Balancing between firing dirty rounds and pre-war ammo, which doubles as your currency, creates an interesting gameplay choice. Do you want to take down the enemies quicker using less ammo, or save the ammo to buy more powerful weapons but stick to using the less effective rounds?

The gunplay in the game is pretty solid for the most part. There is an interesting selection of weapons that range from pre-war guns like AK-47s to weaponry made down in the Metro. These Metro weapons are often pneumatic in nature, requiring you to manually pump air into them (think squirt guns) before they can fire their ball bearing rounds. They take longer to prep, but they are silent and rather powerful. The guns behave in a realistic manner, and there are a number of choices for upgrades that range from scopes to silencers. The mutants behave as one would expect, charging after you without much intelligence. The human opponents show a reasonable amount of intelligence, and provide a challenge.

If brute force isn’t your thing, stealth is a viable option in the game. The Metro tunnels are naturally dark, and light sources can be eliminated to provide even more cover. There are a number of silent weapons, such as the pneumatic weapons discussed earlier, as well as throwing knives the like. The enemies react to noises as you would expect, investigating sounds and alerting other guards upon discovering you. Stealth is never outright required, but at times it certainly pays off to take the quiet approach.

If there is one defining aspect of this game it is that it absolutely nails the sense of atmosphere and immersion. It goes beyond the exquisitely detailed environments and superb graphics though. In a manner similar to that of Far Cry 2, a lot of the game’s HUD has been replaced by in-game items and other in-game visual feedback. For example, throughout the game you have to make use of gas masks. These masks occasionally require filter changes, but there is no timer on the HUD that tells you when to swap them. Instead, you can look at the watch on the character’s wrist. Other in-game feedback that indicates it’s time to swap filters is when your character’s breathing becomes heavy and the mask begins to fog up. Likewise, mission objectives are written on a journal that you can pull up and read without being pulled out of the experience. Other neat little touches includes a hand crank that you use to charge up battery powered items such as night vision goggles and flashlights. Instead of having a meter that displays battery power, your flashlight becomes visibly weaker over time. Taking out your hand and giving it a few pumps brings your flashlight back to life. Individually these little touches are not a big deal, but when taken together they help to really bring this world to life and immerse you in it.

If there is one real disappointment about the game it has to be its ending. This is a spoiler free review, so I won’t go into too much depth about what happens. However I think it’s safe to say that the very end of the game consists of a sequence of trial and error events. During this sequence I felt like a mouse in a maze that has to memorize the correct set of turns to get out. It was somewhat disappointing given the buildup, but I still found the overall ending of the game sufficient.

Overall, Metro 2033 is an excellent ride. Be sure to buy a ticket.