I’m more pleased by the actual announcement than the fact that this will be in 3D. A sequel to the popular Russian linear horror shooter wasn’t hard to guess, because the first was based on a book which also had a sequel called Metro 2034. The game is the fourth game from THQ to use 3D technology, the first being the original Metro 2033.

Metro 2033 was known mainly for it’s amazing visuals, probably the best looking game on the PC at this moment in time. It was a great linear horror shooter, though it suffered from having rather boring and generic enemies. It received unfairly average reviews in my opinion and I just hope that the developers can improve upon the ideas in the first and make a really defining horror game, which we haven’t had for a long time (except Penumbra).

Lets also hope that the 3D development doesn’t take precedence over making the game actually good. 3D games are just a gimmick and will never fully catch on, only being fueled by the popularity of 3D movies. From what I understand, not only do you need a special monitor to play 3D games, you also need twice as much processing power, making the game run slower or look worse, as the game is rendering two images, one for each eye.

Metro 2034 in 3D

This is a review I wrote for the game when it was released, on 16/05/2009. I thought I’d post it here because the game is currently on sale and I’ve been playing it a bunch with some friends who purchased it a few days ago.

On the last day of August, everything changed in the bustling city of London. You are an anonymous British military soldier dropped in to clear the area and put an end to a failed secret government program designed to clone soldiers for the army. Killing Floor, developed by Tripwire is a remake of their UT2004 mod by the same name, pits you against waves of cloned zombies who would like nothing better than to cleft you in twane and eat you for breakfast.

The general premise for the game is to survive, there are no objectives to complete except to repel a number of increasingly difficult waves until you face the end boss. The number of waves you face and the difficulty is set by the server. Short, medium, and long games being 4, 7, and 10 waves respectively. The four difficulty levels are easy, normal, hard, and suicide. Normal difficulty is default and I have yet to kill the final boss on normal. Scuicide difficulty the two times I have played it, my team didn’t get past the 2nd wave. You get money for killing zombies, and for completing the wave alive. If you die, you will respawn when your team kills the final zombie of the wave, however you will have lost all your weapons and will have to buy new ones.

You spend money on weapons, ammo, and armour in a merchant’s shop which opens at a random location in the map. You have 60 seconds from the point when you kill the final zombie to get to the shop and make your purchases, before you are booted out to face the next wave. There are about 5 possible locations for the shop on each map, which means you have to move between locations and quickly find a good spot to take out the zombies in the wave. Near the end of the wave, your team should be looking to move towards the next location of the shop (shown by an arrow) so they get there in time. This constant moving makes the games much more interesting. Another interesting mechanic is the welding gun. You can weld shut any doors you can close, effectively creating chokepoints by closing all entrances but one. Zombies will beat down on welded doors and will break through eventually but you can often flank them as they are knocking it down for massive grenade damage.

There are a total of 9 enemy types in the game, Clots are your basic zombie, slow and weak but high in number. Gorefasts are Clots with darker skin and a machette, who will charge at you when close, doing huge damage. The Bloat if similar to Left 4 Dead’s Boomer, he pukes corrosive acid over anyone close enough which does heavy damage and distorts vision. The Skrake and Fleshpound are even tougher zombies who can take and deal huge amounts of damage. There are three other rather different enemies, the Crawler which is small fast and dangerous, the Siren lets out a deafening screech, doing area of effect damage to anyone nearby, they must be taken out at range, finally there is a type of zombie who has very low health but can cause huge damage because they are almost invisible up to the moment they strike you.

The range of firearms in the game is small, however there are still more than in Left 4 Dead. There are two pistols, each of which can be dual wielded. A multitude of melee weapons, shotguns and rifles, and a gun similar to a P90. Special weapons include a flamethrower, LAW (rocket launcher), and crossbow. Your inventory is limited by weight, a typical setup would be a gun such as a shotgun or P90, a pistol, and 5 grenades. Special firearms are heavy so you need to pick carefully for the situation. You start with a pistol for the first wave, then you can buy new guns in the shop as you acumulate more money. Gunplay is incredibly satisfying, animations are the best i’ve seen in a FPS, and slow motion works fantastically, slowing the game down if you make an especially awesome shot. This slow motion effects the whole team so it doesn’t happen often, and even if it wasn’t you that triggered it, it lets you line up a perfect shot and let rip for massive damage.

Gameplay overall is very addictive, and is made even more so by the inclusion of perks, a total of 7 perks overall include Beserker, Sharpshooter, and Firebug. Each perk caters to a specific playstyle, melee combat, precision headshots, and flamethrower damage respectively. As you complete the criteria for each perk it goes up in level and you get bonuses to damage, reload time, and price reductions. Healing is performed by a syringe gun which recharges over time. Injecting yourself is possible but has more effect on teammates, encouraging teamwork.

There are a few minor critisizms which could be ironed out in future patches (Tripwire released a patch solving connection and server browser issues just 2 days after the game was released). At the end of a wave, there is sometimes a group of zombies which you have to go and hunt down, which can detract from the pace of the game. The voice acting for the merchant gets very annoying, she reminds me of the black woman from 28 days later, the lack of different lines can also grate, when you heal somebody else you always hear, “hold still i’m trying to heal you”, even if they aren’t moving. My only other complaint is the difficulty. After the final wave, you face the Patriarch, supposedly the leader of the experiment, who is armed to the teeth with a chaingun, rocket launcher, health kits, and who spawns dozens of minions. His difficulty doesn’t scale well and on normal he can kill you in a couple of seconds with his chaingun if you aren’t behind cover. This makes it very hard for a random group to take him down, however a co-ordinated group shouldn’t have much trouble.

29/06/2010 update: Since the game has been released, Tripwire have been updating the game with map packs and new weapons. In total, an additional 8 maps have been added to the original 5, and there are new top level guns for each perk, for example the SCAR, M14, and M32 Grenade Launcher. Obviously this greatly increases the replayability of the game, as each of the new maps and guns have been lovingly created to the same quality as the original game. Two optional character packs are also available for less than £1 each, allowing you to play with a different model and skin.

Positives
+ Fantastic visuals, animations, and effects.
+ Large range of guns and maps let you experiment with different loadouts and defensive positions.
+ Addictive gameplay, perk system keeps you coming back for more and gives you goals.
+ Cheap, only £7.50 in the half-price sale.

Negatives
- Repetitive character dialog.
- Needs an organized group using VoIP to complete harder difficulties.
- Gameplay doesn’t differ much from shooting specimens, and shooting more specimens.
- Can play solo but game is balanced for co-op.

AltTabbed score: 9/10

Of course, the engine is also compatible with the Mac OSX, which doesn’t affect PC gamers a whole lot unless you also have a Mac (or a Macbook), apart from giving us some ‘noobs to pwn’ (sorry). The statistics recorded are very detailed, including which maps you’re best on, which guns you are most accurate with, number of windows you’ve shot out, et-cetera, which could prove interesting once you’ve been playing a while and racked up a large amount of data. There are 144 new achievements added, ranging from getting a number of kills with each gun, winning rounds, and earning money, most of which are achievable through normal gameplay, except maybe one which has you and 4 friends on the same server buy the same loadout.

Most of the community seem to be receiving the patch positively, with the occasional 12 year old yelling at Valve for destroying their game. Most changes don’t affect gameplay at all, and most of the additions can be turned off in the server config, including kill cams and dominations (and most servers I’ve been on turn kill cams off). Valve’s usual perfection has been swept aside for some reason when creating the GUI for the new menus, but that’s only a minor point.

A few real negative points to the update come in the fact that the updated engine has reduced frames by a rather large percentage for some players on lesser specced machines, which is a fair complaint. Even with the new HDR lighting turned off, people are reporting losses of up to 50% FPS, presumably because they have an ancient graphics card that can’t handle the new shaders. I couldn’t say for certain the performance loss I’ve had, but it’s still running comfortably at over 150 most of the time so I’m not complaining.

Finally, the updated engine has broken all surf servers for the time being, because of the small changes to the physics used, on which surf was so reliant. I’m unaware if this is permanent or a workaround could be found, which is a shame because I did like a quick game of surf now and again. Other mods such as GunGame should be working fine with possibly a quick update.

A fantastic update then, thanks Valve. We can but wonder which game is next on Valve’s update list, Half Life 2: Deathmatch perhaps? Oh, and CSS is 66% off for two days, but I hope nobody still needs to buy it *evil look*.

Update: It seems like Surf servers are back, though they don’t feel as fast as before.

Bearing in mind that this is a beta product, with over three months until release, let’s get stuck in. The first thing that is shown to you is the main menu, which is obviously ported directly from console versions, designed for navigation with a gamepad and with large fonts. Play is obvious. Career contains your ranks, medals, ribbons, and leaderboards, much like Bad Company 2. Options lets you change video settings and adjust your TV display. Exit Game lets you exit the game, I haven’t used this one yet because the game crashes when it thinks I’ve played enough. Let’s hope DICE has the time to improve this for us PC users. Medals and ribbons are awards you can earn in ranked servers, including the Action Commendation you can see below. Each medal or ribbon you earn in-game will increase your score and help you on the way to your next rank, earning you new weapons and attachments.

There are three classes in the game, Rifleman, Spec Ops, and Sniper. Riflemen have assault rifles, grenade launchers (sigh), and can unlock LMGs. Spec Ops have SMGs and rocket launchers. Snipers have sniper rifles, though they start out without a scope, and C4. All pretty generic modern combat shooter stuff, and unfortunately that’s a theme throughout Medal Of Honor, everything you see in this game has been done before, and done by two games. If there ever was an offspring of two games, this would be it. Those games are of course Modern Warfare (2), and Bad Company 2. Running off the Frostbite engine, it looks and feels a lot like Bad Company 2, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but in it’s current state BC2 is a better game, so one could ask oneself what’s the point in Medal Of Honor?

Guns are as close to recoilless as you could get, though EA have said they are going to tweak that during the beta. The two maps available, Kabul City Ruins and Helmand Valley, are too small. Helmand Valley is very linear, there is one capture point at each stage (think BC2 rush map) which focuses all combat on a single point with usually only two paths up to that point, unlike in BC2 where the maps are more open and you have more freedom to flank. Kabul City Ruins is even worse, if I were to draw the map in ASCII, it would look something like this;
___
|_|_|
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the four empty squares each have a building in it which you can enter, but the map is basically an urban four-square court, and the teams rotate spawn points around the center every few minutes.

Visually, the game looks good, a lot like Bad Company 2 but different enough to be called it’s own game, which is a good thing because they most likely won’t be changing during the beta. Controls are what you’d expect, no prone or lean. Crouch can be toggled (yay), but it doesn’t work yet (aww). DICE is known for poor server browsers, every game they make they seem to forget how to make them and start again from scratch, Medal Of Honor’s server browser is no exception, their worst one yet. Performance for me at least is better than BC2 at high settings, though I was forced to play on DX9 to even start the game, which may be helping my FPS somewhat. I’d like to comment on the kill-streak bonuses, but I haven’t had any yet. Not because I suck, but because the game crashes to desktop whenever I have enough points to obtain one, eagerly awaiting a fix to that one.

While the beta doesn’t make me want to cancel my pre-order immediately, if DICE doesn’t work hard to improve the game over the next three months, I’ll probably save myself £30. There is still the singleplayer game of course, which could turn out to be worth playing. Could.

RAGE

Let’s start with RAGE. RAGE was announced back in 2007, and is being developed by id Software (that’s pronounced ‘id’, not ‘eye dee’) and published by Bethesda Softworks. Details of the apocalypse is currently unknown, but the setting is similar to Borderlands, brown wasteland full of brown rocks, and towns constructed of corrugated sheet metal and neon signs. You fight against mutants, gangs, and ‘the authority’, presumably a sort of corrupted government attempting to control the wasteland. You can see more in the gameplay videos below, which is running on an Xbox 360. Release is 2011.

Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3 Screenshot 4

Brink

Brink is interesting. It can be played with up to 8 players in co-op, against another team of the opposite faction. The two faction are the Security and the Resistance, and there are two campaigns based around both stories. If, for example, you’re playing the campaign as Resistance, your Security enemies might be made up of actual humans. The game is based in a floating city after a world flood, and as population is increasing, citizens are on the ‘Brink’ of civil war. Build on the id Tech 4 engine, it’s easy to see why the game looks very similar to RAGE. It’s being developed by Spash Damage, and like RAGE, published by Bethesda Softworks, and is set for release in spring 2011.

Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm is all about the combat. Intense, bloody, visceral, over-the-top, hilarious, point increasing combat. Story takes a back seat here, this game is designed to be fun. It’s being developed by Epic Games and People Can Fly (yeah, I’ve never heard of them either), and published by EA. Build on the Unreal Engine, it takes place on what used to be a paradise world, a planet converted by humans to be a place for the wealthy to go on vacation, and now overrun by criminals and bandits. The E3 presentation will no doubt tell you more than I could in a paragraph. It’s due for release on the 22nd of February, 2011.

Three interesting titles, all set for release at similar times. I’m predicting RAGE to be a very good game. It’s been in development for over three years by id Software, who are known for great games such as Wolfenstein (the original) and Quake. Brink could be great, it depends how the multiplayer component turns out, as the actual combat at the moment doesn’t look all too fun. Bulletstorm just looks fantastic, the multiplayer has the potential to be the next Unreal.

Fire in the hole!

Portal 2

This has the potential to be the most disappointing announcement during E3. During Sony’s Press Conference yesterday, Valve announced that Portal 2 would be coming to the PS3, along with steam services such as automatic updates and steam cloud technology which will make it the best console version of the game (better than the Xbox360 version, essentially). How a game so dexterous as Portal is supposed to work well with an analogue stick I don’t know, and I don’t really care. They also showed a decent trailer for the game, though it was lacking in the humor of the first one, which is a great shame, I hope they don’t decide to drop the humor from that actual game.

The potentially disappointing part of this announcement is that if this is Valve’s E3 ‘Surprise’, that means no Episode 3, or Half Life 3 at this year’s E3. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what else Valve has in store for us, and personally I doubt that is all they’ve come to show.

Shogun 2: Total War

New screenshots of the latest in the Total War series, Shogun 2, have been released, showing how beautiful the game is. I’ve never really been into the series, I only owned Medieval 2 Total War, but this may rekindle my interest.

Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium Online

Two years ago, Mythic Entertainment released Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning. It was a good game, but ultimately flawed and failed financially. Vigil Games are now having a crack at the franchise with a 40K MMO, which should be a breath of fresh air for the MMO genre. From first impressions, it looks like players will have Space Marines, Chaos, and Orkz available to them, which brings up some interesting problems such as how do you balance the races, as lore-wise, Space Marines typically fight in small squads of 4-5, while Orkz rely on massive numbers. Screenshots are here here here and here.

Bad Company 2: Vietnam

An odd departure for the incredibly successful modern combat FPS, an expansion taking it back 40 years to Vietnam.  Expect a new singleplayer campaign, new multiplayer maps along with new guns and unlocks. Sounds good to me! Along with this announcement was a short teaser.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

I don’t have much information about Bioware’s upcoming Star Wars based MMORPG, but it is Bioware so my hopes are high. Lucas Arts have managed to pull together a fantastic CGI short movie for the game, which you can see below.

Crysis 2

I don’t hold much hope for the sequel to the graphics card melting original Crysis. From what I’ve seen, it’s suffered from the transition from PC exclusive to console, gone are the beautiful vistas and tropical scenery, and in are the common and dreary urban rubble settings you see from many B list console shooters. It still looks spectacular of course, and it may well run a lot better than the original, which would be a good thing, as Crysis is still one of the most graphically intensive games out there.

Also

This post is already long enough, so I’ll just give a brief mention to Brink, a group based multiplayer FPS set in a post-apocalyptic flooded world, and Rage, a FPS and racing game also set in a post-apocalyptic world. I did say brief.

Also shown was a multiplayer trailer which has me very excited, the multiplayer portion of the game is being developed by EA DICE, the developers behind the Battlefield series, and you can tell. The trailer shows off two very different maps, the first could easily be mistaken for a Modern Warfare 2 video, with close quarter, high paced action in an urban environment. The second is a lot more akin to Bad Company 2, with a larger, more open map and a Bradley APC, though DICE have been keen to say that we should not expect a clone.

The game is set for release on the 15th October in the EU, but the beta can be had as soon as tomorrow (the 17th) if you pre-order the game and also have Bad Company 2.

The first game that’s got me really excited is Dead Space 2, which was announced a good few months ago on consoles, but only recently has it been confirmed on PC, after months of uncertainty. During EA’s Press Conference, new gameplay footage was shown which includes Isaac shooting limbs off mutated babies in a setting that rather reminds me of Bioshock, which can only be a good thing. Possibly Isaac has got himself trapped inside a galactic leisure cruiser this time. See the video below.

There was also a shorter more action packed gameplay section in Son’y Press Conference, which I managed to record and upload to YouTube, which you can see below provided it doesn’t get removed (I got an email from YouTube about the content being licensed to E3 broadcasters *gulp*). This footage seems to open with the last scene of the above video, and features more bright flashy lights, more long limbed Necromorphs with handily placed pussy joints to shoot, and more glass smashing and sucking Isaac into oblivion.

Note: You might also have noticed that the site design has changed, well I’ll be playing around with that over the next few days so expect things to change randomly.

I put together a short video guide slash frag video showing off what the shotgun can do, have a watch. Put the video in 720p mode for best quality.

The Battlefield Bad Company 2 PC beta was released at 5pm, which will officially be known as the day the internet almost died. The combined might of Fileplay and FilePlanet ground to a halt as thousands upon thousands of pre-orderers attempted to download a single 1.5GB file. Perhaps somebody should tell EA about a little thing called preloading.

Gameplay wise, the game is classic Battlefield (minus the planes, woo), which shouldn’t need explaining. It is very apparent that this is a beta, with high levels of lag on almost all servers, countless people complaining about crashes, and a friend system that just plain doesn’t work. Console origins show through, the game falls short of my expectations for aesthetics and it runs choppier than one might wish for, even on my GTX280. Bloated interfaces that ask you to login, chose your soldier (profile), and then proceeds to spend minutes retrieving your online statistics from EA’s master servers every time you launch the game.

But that’s what betas are for right? Here are my first 10 minutes.

UPDATE! If you want to increase your performance in the beta, put level of detail on low. It reduces the distance you see some objects (noticeably trees), but can REALLY reduce stuttering, at least it did for me.