Tag: FPS

This used to be my Playground.


That’s great, it starts with an earthquake…On its 6th anniversary, and a little over two years after Wrath of the Lich King, the World of Warcraft is shattering into pieces this morning to make way for Cataclysm on December 7th. [Cinematic.] In other words, the original 2004 release is being completely revamped and updated, and the Old World that I and 12 million other people have been traipsing about in for the past several years is disappearing forever.

(This posed a poignant question for long-time players last night — Where do you go when the world ends? I myself parked my undead rogue on the grave where he was “born” four years ago, atop a hill in Tirisfal Glades, so he could watch the decline from a hazy distance.)

As usual, I’ve got a lot of games on my plate at the moment — CoD: Black Ops, Fallout: New Vegas, Civ 5, Starcraft 2, and DJ Hero 2. I’m still only halfway through Red Dead Redemption, and everything I’ve seen from the Kinect (and particularly Dance Central) suggests it’s a game-changing device in its own right. Still, for what hours I consign to gaming, I usually just keep coming back to WoW. It’s a quality production, through and through.

I’ll see you on the beach.

Also (finally) emerging this evening: The very long-awaited Day of Defeat Source. I haven’t played much in the past year or so, but if DoD-S has managed to merge 1.0‘s already-excellent WWII FPS gameplay with HL2‘s immersive physics and graphics engine as rumored, this could get real ugly. So, DSSG‘ers, other long-time DoD’ers, and Robin Williams, best keep an eye out for the return of Liberty Lad, a freeborn man of the USA.

Only a Pawn in their Games.

Well, thankfully the expected post-Christmas gaming binge only lasted one month instead of two — I can now look upon the promise of February with nary a high-end gaming product to keep me from my academic business, pleasure reading, blogging, and/or other pursuits. (Well, that is until Day of Defeat Source or, God forbid, Civilization IV rear their heads. I also hear good things about World of Warcraft, but am too fearful of the egregious time-suck that would undoubtedly occur if I started getting into a well-done MMORPG.) A quick roundup:

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: As clever and immersive as GTA III and Vice City, but I thought San Andreas suffered in some ways from slight overkill (particularly in the food/clothing/weight-room character maintenance and the drawn-out travel times between cities.) That being said, having recently replayed the first two forays on XBox, I think my San Andreas experience was hindered by the graphics capability of the PS2, which made the scenery look muddy or devoid of color at certain times of day. (The fact that puppy Berkeley had long ago chewed my PS2 controller joysticks into jagged, thumb-wounding sculpture probably didn’t help either.) San Andreas is undoubtedly amazing, but I’d probably recommend Vice City first to GTA newbies, at least until the XBox port comes out.

Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: I spent the first week of 2004 doing very little but playing KotOR I, and the first week of 2005 followed the pattern. The game play hadn’t changed much — ok, the game play hadn’t changed at all — but both KotORs traverse the divide between puzzle-based RPG and action-game nicely, so I actually quite enjoyed this second installment. Obviously, I’m also a sucker for the Star Wars bent to these games — At the very least, they’re more fun (and often better-written) than the prequels. Now if only LucasArts would bring back Sam and Max…

Halo 2: As noted everywhere, the multiplayer is really something else — even if I have yet to figure out how not to get endlessly slaughtered by trigger-happy 12-year-olds. Yet, I actually found the single-player campaign both somewhat dull and hard-to-follow. As this Slate article suggested, the Covenant storyline seemed pretty intricate, but damned if I could figure out what was going on half the time. To be honest, I think I prefer my FPS’s on the PC anyway, since, unlike in games like Call of Duty or Day of Defeat, I rarely feel I have any sense of the hitbox on Halo 2…I’m just blasting away and hoping I’m doing damage. Which leads me to…

Halflife 2: Now this is a first-person shooter. HL2 benefited from being the first game I played after procuring a mid-level Radeon graphics card, but still…while I never got around to the recent Doom 3, I can’t remember being this amazed by game graphics in a very long time. (I may have to go back to the original Prince of Persia from 1989.) With HL2, it really seems that game-makers are starting to find their way through the Uncanny Valley. And, while the single-player is on the short side, the 1984 meets Pink Floyd The Wall storyline is great fun, and the physics of the gravity gun really expand the boundaries for environment interaction in these sorts of games. In short, Halflife 2 was worth the wait.

All Quiet on the Unggoy Front.

“More pointedly yet, the aliens refer to their defeat in the first game as ‘The Atrocity at Halo.’ Who wrote this thing, Noam Chomsky?” Slate‘s gaming writer Clive Thompson speculates on the political economy of Halo 2. I’m still traipsing about San Andreas at the moment (finished all storyline missions and only 65% complete), but, to no gamer’s surprise, I expect either this or Halflife 2 will be my next time-suck of choice.

I, Sim.

“Resident Evil Outbreak’s humans are realistic, but their facial expressions are so deadeningly weird they’re almost scarier than the actual zombies you’re fighting. The designers of 007: Everything or Nothing managed to take the adorable Shannon Elizabeth and render her as a walleyed replicant.” Slate‘s Clive Thompson examines game developers’ struggles through the Uncanny Valley.