Category: Games

Games

Wii Release Date & Price

Well, it’s been confirmed on various sites that Nintendo will launch the Wii on November 19th with a price tag of $250. This seems like more then a fair price for the console and I can definitely see myself picking one up eventually. It has also been confirmed that the price for most of the virtual console games will be in the range of five to ten dollars. What are your thoughts? Will you be buying a Wii this November?

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Games Reviews 1

Far Cry Instincts Predator

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Far Cry Instincts Predator is a repackaging of the Xbox game Far Cry Instincts and its stand alone expansion Far Cry Instincts: Evolution. There are some minor differences between the two, such as improved graphics, but this is more or less the same game that came out months earlier on the original Xbox. It is important to make that clear right away so there is no confusion over what exactly you are getting.

For the main campaign, Far Cry Instincts Predator puts you into the shoes of Jack Carver, a retired Navy commando who now pays the bills by taking tourists out on his boat. After being hired by a woman to take her to a mysterious tropical island, Jack finds himself on the receiving end of a helicopter gunship. With his boat destroyed, Jack must find a way to rescue the woman and get off of the island. Of course that sounds a lot easier then it actually is. You will discover that there are some odd things going on deep inside the jungle, something that an army of mercenaries don’t want you to discover.

The game’s setting is probably the most important part of the game. The entire main campaign takes place on one huge lush tropical island. This setting opens the game up to some interesting gameplay. For most of the game you must rely on Guerrilla warfare since you are almost always outgunned. Hiding in the jungle and sneaking around is a big part of the game. It is possible to sneak up on enemies and perform stealth kills by stabbing them in the back. You can also set branch traps on trees, and then throw rocks to lure unsuspecting enemies to their death. There isn’t much that is more satisfying then taking out whole groups of enemies without any of them ever seeing you. While stealth is more of a suggestion rather then a strict requirement, you will have a much easier time covertly taking out as many mercenaries as you can then if you run in guns blazing.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a ton of gunplay to be found in the game. The firefights can be pretty intense at times. There is a pretty good selection of weapons, though they are pretty much what you would expect to see. You have your assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, shotguns and more. Jack can carry three weapons at once: a pistol, a medium weapon like an assault rifle, and a heavy weapon like a rocket launcher. This doesn’t include grenades or claymores that you can use as well. You can also dual-wield many of the games smaller weapons.

Your most effective weapon in the game though is definitely your own two hands. Not too far into the game, Jack becomes a victim of one of the strange experiments going on (this is written on the box, so it’s not really a spoiler). The experiment gives you “feral abilities” like super human strength and speed. Early on you can essentially rip enemies apart with your own bare hands. As you progress through the game, you are constantly getting new tricks. For example, you will gain the ability to pick of sent trails from your enemies, or run extremely fast and jump incredible distances.

You can also take control of a few vehicles in the game. These range from ground vehicles like ATVs to water craft like jet skis. There are even a few hang gliders in the game which you can use to fly around the huge environments. While you can shoot while in the vehicles, driving and shooting is pretty difficult. The awkward vehicle physics can make a lot of the vehicles frustrating to control. You will mostly use the vehicles simply as a way to travel across the big levels.

There is also a pretty good variety in the environments. While most of the levels take place in large outdoor jungles, there are a few underground levels as well as a volcano fortress to mix things up a bit. This keeps the levels feeling pretty fresh throughout since looking at a bunch of trees the entire time could get a bit boring. On the PC, Far Cry featured very open ended levels, where you could pretty much pick your own path through the island and tackle objectives in a variety of ways. This seems to have been scaled back for the console game. The underground levels, which last for a good amount of time, are completely linear. The outdoor levels do offer you more freedom then most first person shooter, but they feel pretty linear compared to the original Far Cry game. Perhaps this was due to technical limitations of the first Xbox, but it is unfortunate that one of the best features of the original game has been watered down.

Once you have finished the Instincts campaign, which should take you around 12 hours or so to complete, there is the Evolution campaign for you to tackle. It is no big surprise that it is actually pretty similar to the main campaign. It is an expansion after all. This time around however Jack Carver is hired by a woman (again) to help her with some illegal gun-running. As you would expect, things don’t go as planned. Shortly after delivering the weapons, rebels attack, stranding Jack on another tropical island. While the expansion is still a good amount of fun, it doesn’t manage to meet the same level of excitement as the first campaign. This is mostly because it doesn’t manage to feel as fresh.

Since this game is set in a tropical island very similar to the last one, the game plays almost exactly the same. There are, however, a few changes in the level design that are worth mentioning. On the good side, some of the levels feel a lot more open ended this time around. For example, early on you will have multiple objectives across a few smaller islands that you can tackle in any order you want by using boats to travel between them. On the bad side, the game has some very annoying jumping puzzles later on that seem to simply be there to extend the length of the game. Also, sometimes there are infinite amounts of enemies that spawn in. It may take a while to realize what is going on and that you are supposed to just move on.

There is one bug that shows up pretty often during both campaigns that deserves mentioning. The bug involves locking onto enemies to use your claw attack. Similar to the sword attack in Halo 2, when you target an enemy to attack them with your claws, the game automatically has you fly in a straight line towards your target until you hit them. The problem is that it is extremely easy to get stuck on objects while flying towards your victim. When you do, you will be unable to move until the game gives you back control. The problem is that it takes way too long for the game to realize that you are stuck and give you back control. There will be many times when you will die because of this, and it can be extremely frustrating at times.

There is not much else to say about the expansion campaign. It’s pretty much just more of the Instincts gameplay with a new storyline. But that is not necessarily a bad thing since Instincts was pretty fun. The Evolution campaign should take most players around 6 to 8 hours to finish. After finishing both campaigns, there is still the multiplayer left to check out.

Far Cry Instincts Predator has great Xbox Live support. It is one of the few games to feature an easy to use map editor. It’s surprisingly easy to create your own levels. Most of the map editing is point and click, so you can very quickly develop and test your own ideas. When connecting to a game running a custom map, it is automatically downloaded. The custom map editor combined with a good number of retail maps and game types makes the multiplayer experience pretty solid. You could easily spend a good amount of time playing this game online.

Overall, Far Cry Instincts Predator is a pretty good game. It is a complete package that features a ton of content and is definitely the best version of Far Cry to date. That being said, if you already own Far Cry Instincts on the Xbox, there is not enough here to warrant buying the game again. You would be better off just buying the expansion separately. But if you have yet to play Instincts, this is the best version to play.

On a side note, I have to take issue with some of the other reviews for this game out there. Review sites such as Gamespot gave Far Cry Instincts a significantly higher score then Far Cry Instincts Predator. Considering Predator contains Instincts and Evolution as well as some minor upgrades, it is definitely the better version of the game and in my opinion deserves a higher, not lower, score then the original. The gamplay is no less fun today as it was when the game first came out on the Xbox. The lack of true next generation content (such as a major upgrade to the graphics) does not make the game any less fun then it already was.

Games

Next Backwards Compatibility Update

Wow, I have been starting to wonder if we would ever see another update. These backwards compatibility updates are way to few and far between. Still, it’s good to know they are working on it, even if this new update consists of mostly mediocre titles.

Here is the list of new and updated games:

  • Aggressive Inline
  • Aquaman: Battle of Atlantis
  • All Star Baseball 2003
  • All Star Baseball 2005
  • Burnout 3: Takedown
  • Catwoman
  • Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart UPDATED
  • Counter Strike
  • Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
  • Dead to Rights
  • Digimon Rumble Arena 2 UPDATED
  • ESPN Major League Baseball
  • Fatal Frame 2
  • Ford vs. Chevy UPDATED
  • Freaky Flyers
  • Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows
  • Tom Clancy´s Ghost Recon – Island Thunder
  • Half Life 2 UPDATED
  • The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer UPDATED
  • IndyCar Series 2005
  • Kabuki Warrior UPDATED
  • Lego Star Wars II
  • Links 2004
  • Magatama UPDATED
  • Maximum Chase
  • Mortal Kombat: Deception UPDATED
  • MTX: Mototrax Featuring Travis Pastrana
  • Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Arcade Collection
  • MX vs. ATV Unleashed
  • Outlaw Tennis
  • Over the Hedge
  • Sid Meier’s Pirates
  • Richard Burns Rally
  • Rogue Trooper
  • Serious Sam
  • Shincho Mahjong
  • Smashing Drive
  • Sneakers UPDATED
  • Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run
  • The Legend of Spyro: A Beginning
  • TAZ: Wanted
  • True Crime Streets of LA
  • The Suffering
  • Trigger Man
  • Torino Winter Olympics 2006
  • Vietcong
  • Wrath Unleashed
  • X-Men II: Wolverine’s Revenge

The only game on that list that I would have cared about would be Burnout 3, but I have since bought Burnout Revenge for the 360. Hopefully they will get The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay on the list soon.

Games

Best Videogame Villain?

A recent thread on Gametrailers has got me thinking about the best video game villains in any game. There are a lot that I personally like a lot, but one definitely sticks out when compared to all the others.

SHODAN from System Shock 1 & 2 is probably one of the coolest villains ever created and is by far my favorite. She is just so menacing. I don’t think any other villain has ever gotten under my skin as much as her. I think this quote says it best:

“… But what really sucked me in was SHODAN. In most games, you saw the villain in a few key cutscenes, and then you faced him or her at the end, dispatching the cad with a rocket launcher or two or with a few well placed jumps on the head. But SHODAN was different. She taunted you, she threatened you, and sometimes, she even seemed to fear you.

I clearly remember approaching a set of computer terminals on the first level that I was supposed to blow up. As I readied my weapon, SHODAN told me, in so many words, that if I destroyed those terminals, she would have me torn into very small pieces. I hesitated. And then I thought ‘Nuts to you SHODAN’ and blew up the terminals, whereupon she sent a small army of cyborgs to, well, tear me into very small pieces.

I then knew that Shock was something different. Here was a foe who talked to you, who watched you, who cared about you. She wasn’t on vacation on some Caribbean island, only to return for the final battle. She was there, and she was ready to rumble.”

– Ken Levine, Irrational Games

She placed number 4 on IGN’s Top 10 List:

Make sure you treat your computers well. Don’t hack them, don’t abuse them, and certainly don’t assert your dominance, because if they’re anything like SHODAN, they’ll kill you if they’re having a bad day. They’ll also taunt you the entire time they’re doing it. Whether on a space station or a starship, SHODAN’s virtual omnipotence meant that everything from communications and security cameras to video terminals were under her control to do as she saw fit. Plus, she loved sending mutants, robots, and cyborgs of tortured victims after you, all the while ridiculing your insignificance. Each time she called you an insect or an irritant, it actually felt like a slap across the face.

And also made Gamespot’s top list:

Looking Glass Studios’ 3D action role-playing game System Shock is the closest thing to a cult hit on the PC, with its relatively small but ferociously loyal contingent of fans who insist it’s one of the best games ever made. At the center of its story lies SHODAN, the arrogant artificial intelligence bent on thwarting or toying with your character, a hacker who is evidently the lone survivor of the computer’s wrath. Being both invisible and omniscient, SHODAN makes her power and presence obvious through a combination of her disdainful, modulating voice and her knack for anticipating exactly what you’re thinking. As you uncover evidence about SHODAN’s intentions, she seems to be one step ahead of you all the while and taunts you every step of the way.

She may lack the modesty of 2,001’s HAL 9000, but she is every bit as dignified and even more self-aware than that soft-spoken machine. SHODAN is conscious of being the product of fallible human hands and ambitions and is all the more resentful toward her makers for that reason. She threatens you continuously, revealing full knowledge of your supposedly secret intention to dismantle her.

System Shock was a game in which a villain like SHODAN could thrive. Your character had to sneak through installation corridors (and even cyberspace), leaning around corners, standing on his toes to see over ledges – and yet such stealth seemed pathetic or entirely futile in the face of a computer opponent that was not limited by fallible senses. Fortunately or not, the conclusion of System Shock did not mark the end of SHODAN, as she was also alluded to in Origin’s Crusader isometric action games, as well as in the action-adventure Bioforge.

Games

R.I.P. CS Source

Well, Valve has pretty much ruined the game for me. They decided to “fix” the radar system. Apparently they don’t believe in the saying “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. The new radar system is absolutely awful. First, it looks extremely bad and too complex. I have never seen such an awful looking radar system in any game.

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But what is worse is that they changed the way the radar works. They added what they call “enemy detection”. Basically, if you see an enemy, even for a split second, it gets added to your and your teammate’s radar. After a few seconds it disappears, but this is absolutely unacceptable. It completely breaks a core mechanic of the game (stealth) and completely negates the need for communication in a lot of situations.

Say you are hiding behind a door with a silenced weapon guarding the bombsite. Some dumb player comes in and you kill him in under a second. The problem is, all of his teammates now have you on their radar for a few seconds. Assuming those are skilled players, you now have zero chance to take them out. They will probably just unload on you through the door, since they can see you on the radar. Valve has pretty much built in a wall hack. Check out this screen shot that was posted on the Steam forums:

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The guy who got killed was shot by someone who was all the way over in the paper room. Something like that used to only be possible if someone was cheating. But now, because of the radar, expect to see bullshit like that happen all the time.

This makes me want to go back and start playing CS 1.6 again. This looks like a good time to take a break from Source. Hopefully this awful radar system will be fixed. If not, I might not play that game any more.

Well probably not. Chances are I will learn to deal with it and continue to play. But I seriously think this new radar was a big mistake.