Well its time for another game review! Prototype is the game of choice this time and let me say straight off the bat it was a great joy to play. Tasking you with running through New York slicing and dicing enemies while running up the sides of buildings and jumping miles into the air, Prototype is some good old fashioned fun from start to finish. If you want to read my full review then hop on over to Xboxgaming.co.za and leave a comment or two. 
Monthly Archive for June, 2009
Over the weekend I was strolling through African savannah and jungle with the sounds of animals and birds all around me. I could see zebra grazing in the fields and as I approached them they would gallop off into the distance as I stood surrounded by natural beauty. The surprising thing about this is that I managed to do all this while staying in rainy and wet Cape Town over the weekend. My gateway to this wonderful experience was Far Cry 2 on the Xbox 360. You might be asking yourself exactly how a boring game could ever come to encompass so much, well let me tell you. Ubisoft have developed Far cry 2 with one thing in mind, to surpass everything we once thought of as fact when it comes to first person shooters. They’ve managed that and so much more with Far Cry 2.
At the outset you find yourself stepping out into the middle of a civil war in a fictional African country and tasked with tracking down a man who goes by the name of The Jackal. He’s one of the major players in the war and its his arms deals that are fueling both sides so unless you stop him the war could carry on for a very long time. From here on out you’re treated to an immersive introduction sequence as you drive through to the main town of Pala with a taxi driver describing his country’s woes as you pass by scenes of desolation and war. Its a great way to set the scene for the remainder of the game and is the first sign that Far Cry 2 is just a bit more special than most other shooters out there. As you arrive at your hotel you’re overcome by blurred vision and cramps from what appears to be malaria. As you lie in your room trying to recover the Jackal makes his first appearance and taunts you. From here on out you’re tasked with tracking the Jackal down and surviving your time in Africa. You’ll have to complete missions from the various factions vying for control of the country as well as running documents for the underground in order to get hold of malaria pills.
The games beauty is twofold, firstly the African savannahs and jungle you trek your way through is some of the most beautiful looking landscapes yet scene in a game. Secondly, the game manages to not fall prey to the usual FPS pitfalls and is one of the most groundbreaking games currently available. From the very beginnings of the game its a struggle to survive. You’re up against an entire country of enemies from both sides and independent parties trying to get some gold and glory for themselves. The weapons you have at your disposal are prone to jam at the most inconvenient of times and might even explode in your hands in the middle of a firefight if they’re in a bad condition. So you slowly but surely try to earn diamonds, the currency in the game, either through completing faction missions or by finding them in the wilderness using your GPS and then buying brand new weapons. Speaking of the GPS, the in game map is very well implemented with it appearing as an actual map that your character holds and has to use to navigate the game area. In general, the in game depiction of your character is brilliantly handled with the use of the map being the prime example of this. The health system is also well done with several bars that wear down as you take damage and which will recharge is you manage to survive. You can fill up all your health bars by using a medicinal syringe but if your health is down to the last bar you have to initiate a cutscene of your character digging a bullet out from you flesh or bending broken bones back into position. Very atmospheric and tense stuff!
Luckily you’re aided on your journey by allies that you meet up with during various points in the game. They will aid you if you’re downed in battle, almost like a second life and will also offer you variations on main missions by offering to help you. Its these allies that lend Far Cry 2 its best feature, the ability to create your own stories in the game world. They’re human characters that can and will more than likely die during the course of your game and losing them is tough as it will change the game world. The first time I lost an ally to a gunshot wound and had to ease his pain by overdosing him with medicine was tough. The ability of Far Cry 2 to elicit such emotional responses is a remarkable achievement on the part of Ubisoft’s team and is something that they should be commended for.
Another outstanding feature of the game is the freedom that the game gives you in completing missions. You can approach a mission any which way you like. You can be stealthy and try to approach a target at night and use silenced weapons to remain detected. You can use a fire you set to distract enemies and give yourself a chance to run in undetected. you can run in head first and take them on with an arsenal of weapons at your back. Almost every playstyle is catered for and experimenting with different approaches will almost always lead to something new and exciting.
Far Cry 2’s graphics as have been mentioned are some of the most beautiful to hit the Xbox 360 and with variable weather effects as well as a day-night cycle trekking through the game world is one of the most rewarding experiences a gamer is likely to experience. Sound wise the game is also outstanding with music that is perfectly tailored to the game with African tribal rhythms while not sounding hokey in the slightest. Its also very well implemented into the game and doesn’t manage to overpower the action in the slightest. The character voices are well done even though they do sound a bit faster than one would expect, but once you get used to it it doesn’t manage to grate on your nerves much.
The multiplayer is relatively fun and can lead to some hilarious moments when played with a few friends. A favourite tactic of mine is to equip myself with a sniper rifle and pick a nice hidden high spot to snip passers by from. An outstanding addition to the game is the included map editor which allows you to create levels from scratch and is very well implemented for console controls. I was fortunate enough to attend a developer demonstration of this at Rage 2008 and it looked outstanding there. Now that the game’s been out for a while there are plenty of excellent user created levels available with a rendition of Fallout 3’s Megaton being one of my personal favourites.
Do I have any gripes about Far Cry 2? Very few it must be said. This is not a game that you can put in your Xbox and play if you’re looking for a quick 15 minute session. Missions can take upwards of an hour to complete excluding the time it takes to traverse the length and breadth of the game world to get to your target. So if you’re not willing to put in a long gaming session then don’t bother. There is also a proliferation of armed checkpoints you need to make your way through and they respawn pretty fast making travelling a bit tough. These gripes aren’t the fault of the game though, they’re more an indication of the instant fix mentality of most gamers out there. So if you’re looking for an intelligent and compelling game then you cannot go far wrong with Far Cry 2. Its one of the outstanding gaming achievements of this generation and deserves to be played at least once by everyone.
Though it might not look like it this blog underwent quite a significant change this morning with an upgrade to the latest Wordpress version. Most of the changes are behind the scenes though so as a reader you’ll more than likely see no differences. Even though that may be the case there could still be the case I’d appreciate it if you could let me know of any problems you might encounter with the site for the next week or two so that I might follow up on it. Happy reading!
For some reason it dawned on me that I’d forgotten to put up a post for two of my previous game reviews for Xboxgaming.co.za so let’s remedy that right now shall we. I had the pleasure of reviewing two enjoyable games in Skate 2 from EA and WWE Legends of WrestleMania from THQ a while back and had a fun time testing them both out. Skate 2 sees you being released from prison and hitting the streets of New San Vanelona trying to earn back his reputation as the best street skater in the city. There’s the usual amount of real life professional skaters making cameos as well as the rather nifty flick it controls that let you do all manner of awesome tricks using the analogue sticks with the most notable addition in this sequel being the fact that your skater can now climb off his board and move objects. In theory it should work out quite nice and allow you to create new opportunities for tricks by moving obstacles but in practice its rather a damp squib with your skater walking around like a man whose just come home from a night on the town.
As for Legends of WrestleMania, there’s not much to it other than the fact that you choose some steroid buffed up wrestler and then duke it out with another steroid buffed up wrestler in one of man match types. The controls are hugely simplified from previous WWE games with heavy emphasis on quick time events and on screen button prompts to perform moves rather than any sort of technical proficiency. There is some to be had playing it against a mate or two and laughing amongst the wild punches and throws that you’ll be dealing out faster than you can count but it won’t last you longer than a few weeks before its shallow depth makes you look elsewhere for your gaming fix. The inclusion of clips from the original WrestleMania matches makes for some good viewing for those of you old enough to appreciate it but others will be better off renting this game.
If you want to check out my full length reviews then pop over here for the Skate 2 review and click here for the Legends of WrestleMania review.
South African Xbox 360 gamers will be well aware of the fact that Live is not officially supported in South Africa by Microsoft, meaning that most of us that game online have had to use overseas addresses and had to jump through quite a few hurdles to be able to play online. One drawback has been that many of us have been unable to use our credit cards online as the billing address and the overseas address we had to use to sign up for Live differ and leads the card companies to think someone is fraudulently using our credit cards with the result that the cards become blocked on Live and leave us unable to buy points or renew our subscriptions. One way around this is to buy Microsoft Points which you can then use to buy Live memberships and XBLA games. Getting the points is another tricky job with some overseas sites selling them via email but you always run the risk of being scammed at some point or another, which is why I was glad to see the local launch of MSPoints.co.za which is a venture by two long time local gamers, Denouncer and SeV3R7 (both involved in Xboxgaming.co.za) to make MS points available to local gamers at a good price and as fast as possible by emailing them instantly. So if you’re a South African 360 gamer be sure to stop by their site and support them. Its definitely great to see local gamers working together to better the gaming community here in South Africa and I wish them all the best for their site. I definitely know where I’ll be getting my points from in the future
After quite a long wait Linux users can finally take a turn at trying out Google Chrome without having to try and build it themselves from source now that Google has announced the release of an early alpha build for Mac OS X and Linux platforms. If you’re planning on using it just be aware that it is almost sure to crash at some point and it also has quite a few missing features such as the inability to watch any YouTube videos, no printing, you can’t change your default search engine and there is no way to change your privacy settings. So its no wonder that the Chrome developers had the following to say:
“In order to get more feedback from developers, we have early developer channel versions of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux, but whatever you do, please DON’T DOWNLOAD THEM! Unless of course you are a developer or take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software.”
If you’re foolhardy enough to try it out for yourself make sure you have an Intel Pentium 4 / Athlon 64 or later CPU, and Ubuntu 8.04 or Debian 5 or later and then grab the deb file from here. I gave it a quick go on my Ubuntu 9.04 installation and it managed to run fine and was as quick as we’ve become used to seeing in the Windows version, although I’ll be sticking to my trusty old Firefox till Google manages to release a more stable version with all its features intact. Your experience may vary of course but feel free to leave a comment detailing your experiences.
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