Insert Coin #7 GTA4 Initial Impressions

So it’s been about a week since GTA4 has been released so it seemed appropriate to give some initial impressions whilst still keeping away from any spoilers for those who have still haven’t played it. As I read via Digg, there was an article “are you a hardcore gamer?”, the last point being that you can get by without getting GTA4 on release date. I got mine on release but had to wait till after work to fire it up – what an inconvenience.
Anyways, I’ve played for a little bit most evenings, the gym has called to see if I’m still alive (I will be going this week), and the last time I checked the stats I was approx 20% the way through, which is pretty crazy thinking about it.

So what are my thoughts on the game. These are just my first impressions effectively, there is so much to explore and do in the game, not to mention all the clever nuances which I can spend whole weeks without no doubt.
The game exhibits a swagger which we’ve come to expect from a GTA game. The cut scenes are all delivered in a slick manner and Niko’s accent has already got me imitating a little, or should I say lee-tle har har.
They’ve built in the idea of a mobile phone to handle contacts and being notified about newly unlocked missions – it’s quite smart without being as HUD reducing as was claimed a fair while before the game was released. Speaking of HUD, the option of adding a GPS route onto your map is something pretty cool and if you drive an upmarket 4×4 (it’s the only one I’ve noticed in it so far), you’ll get the directions spoken to you. Again, a nice little touch. To be honest there are no big surprises in terms of gameplay. What Rockstar have done this time has simply refined the GTA experience, it’s more of the same, only that little bit better. The missions still hold true to the templates of old – drive somewhere, kill a guy, escape the police and make it back to safety etc etc

Side activities have been added in the game, the idea of building relationships is something the developers want to stress. So that will involve going out to dinner or a comedy club with friends, going to play darts and pool offer up mini games. It’s something quite smart and will appeal to the casual gamer. Personally I’ve given the mini games a go and it’ll probably be some time before I revisit them. What can I say? I have unsurprisingly harvested them of achievements so there’s no need to rush back in my mind.

The combat system has had an overhaul, so targeting is much easier, your own health has been incorporated as the border of the map and your target’s health appears as a ring on the reticule so it’s all pretty slick. That being said, hand-to-hand can feel a little clumsy still and timing of dodges are still something of a black art to me, I failed that tutorial mission so many times cos I lost too much health trying to dodge swings.

Graphically I am perhaps a little disappointed, especially when looking back at the series of trailers which were released which really wet my appetite. The game also features the distant soft focus and grainy shadows much like Mass Effect, I can’t decide if it’s a work of art and genius or to excuse mediocre draw distance. I will say that driving over one of the bridges and seeing a distant 747-type plane is pretty awesome.

You can’t throw in two cents without saying something about the radio stations available in the game. I have to say they are not unmissable, I think they got it just right for Vice City and have been trying to emulate that ever since. That being said there are radio stations for everyone, personally I usually throw on Liberty Rock, or WTTT, which is a little like KChat. The theme music used in the GTA trailers is on the Journey station and that’s pretty cool so have to check out the actual music for that.

At the weekend, I decided to forego the single player campaign and brave the multiplayer. What can I say, again it’s premature to say this as I have only checked out a few game modes, but it could be one of the best multiplayer experiences when it peaks. I’ve given the Crooks and Robbers gamemode a go and that was a lot of fun, but I have to say I’m addicted to GTA Race. Essentially it take the basic form of a race but then throw in driveby-stylee shooting at each other, plus the fact you can simply get out of the car and try and take other people out and ignore trying to win the race and you have a winning formula right there.
I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard at a video game in so long, I can watch some guy’s player model got knocked down by a scooter and it will never get old, I promise you.

These are just my initial impressions, a lot more time will have to be invested into both the single player and multiplayer to give a true review of GTA4.

Insert Coin #6 The Cake is a lie

Continuing my trend of post titles that only really make sense if you are very familiar with the subject matter, I present this Insert Coin. Hopefully, the Title ignites the curiosity enough to investigate further. This is another edition of Insert Coin, so it’s already known that it’s going to be about games, and I finally succumb to buying a copy of The Orange Box.

I know, I know it’s been out for what seems like forever since the Orange Box came out. So much time in fact, that they have now released Portal separately for the PC. For those not in the know, The Orange Box is effectively 5 games in 1. There is Half Life 2 + episodes 1 and 2; There is Team Fortress 2 (class-based multiplayer) and there is Portal.
Now Portal is the one game out of the five which I’ve played the most. I took a brief look at Team Fortress 2 and if I’m honest, I found it quite skittish and loose. However the visuals are awesome, cel-shaded and very cartoonish with exaggerated body shapes etc. I think I’ll just need to spend a bit more time with that to get a true idea if I like the game or not. Half Life 2 and the episodic content is something I embarrassingly have not played at all. When Half Life 2 came out I did not have the rig to be able to run it. I remember when Half Life 2 was released on Xbox and that suffered from really bad frame rate, the 360 shouldn’t suffer from any of that. Anyways, with the coming of GTA4 (initial impressions coming soon), I’ll have to check out the Half Life 2 series at a much later date – gravity gun yum.

Fortunately there was enough time to check out Portal. Now I had heard a lot about Portal. Pretty much everywhere I turned, people were praising the game, there was even echoes of game of the year, which are not entirely misplaced. Opinions I had read promised a truly awesome puzzle game with the great writing that Valve have become well known for.
Well I can only agree with those many opinions, it is a great game and luckily I had not exposed myself enough to spoil the story of the game. What I will say that it is indeed a puzzle/platform game, the general premise being that you are faced with a room in which you have to use your portal gun to move yourself and other objects around in it. You shoot two portals and you then walk through one and then out the other.
It is very cool, I ended up playing for pretty much a whole afternoon and in that time I had pretty much completed all the levels – I got stuck once and had to look up for a bit of help (sorry!). So in reflection it’s quite a short experience, but something that is incredibly enjoyable throughout. Also with completing the game it has unlocked an arcade mode of sorts; challenges finishing rooms in the quickest time, finishing with the least number of portals and also reworked levels to make them much much harder. I tried the first hard level and I was making some progress but gave up as I was getting hungry. Anyways, that is pretty cool and the Orange Box will definitely be revisited after the GTA4 buzz calms down.

I wholeheartedly recommend the Orange Box, five games in one speaks really good value. For those like me which have put off this purchase especially with the handful of awesome games we got in the second half of 2007, then don’t delay, I can only comment on how much of it I’ve played so far – With all the Half Life 2 content still to play it’s so good in terms of monetary value plus there’s the fact that Valve are quality game developers, so it will deliver on actual game play too. Just get it.

Insert Coin #5Clearing the Road..

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are bound to know that Grand Theft Auto 4 is coming out this Tuesday – a title of which I am very much looking forward to. Now, I know that my gaming time will be consumed with it, a lot of my recent diggs have been little tidbits of information concerning aspects of the game. A full review by IGN that I recently read (and dugg) said that the main story will come in about 25-45 hours, dependent on player skill so there’s clearly a lot of content to get through. Post Tuesday I therefore know that the only game I will be playing will be GTA4 so I thought I’d have a revisit of some of my unfinished games – give them half a chance before they get blown away by the new kid on the block.

Jumping back on to COD4 inspired Insert Coin #4 but the majority of my 360 time has been consumed with completing the story of Mass Effect.
Now Mass Effect is a huge Sci-Fi RPG made by Bioware – the same people responsible for the Knights of the Old Republic games and are considered the best western RPG makers out there. Now I don’t want to turn this into a Mass Effect review, but as an overview statement, I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the story – it is the old classic, machines rising up and rebelling against their masters but despite that it was incredibly well told and did I mention I enjoyed it?

Some people are criticised the game in that it is nothing more than an interactive movie. Some would consider that a great compliment, and to be honest it is an RPG, so other criticisms that the combat isn’t up to scratch are a little unjustified. It is very smart that I can take my character (Jimiminar Shepard of course) with all his experience and skills and start the campaign all over again – particularly useful for going for the achivements which demand several complete playthroughs.
So I went through the first time, aiming to be a paragon player as opposed to renegade – although the rather cool thing of the game is that it’s not so much good vs evil, whatever happens you have to save the galaxy, it’s more about the choices you can make in order to achieve that goal. Anyways, I will go through it a second time eventually with a renegade character, I’ve already punched out a elderly scientist with a screw loose, so should be fun.
My first playthrough was clocked at about 35 hours if the saves are anything to go by, and I didn’t do much of the optional side missions, so it is a huge game. And that brings me smoothly onto some minor criticisms I have after playing through. The auto-save feature is effectively non-existent, so reminding myself to save after every enemy encounter is important but I have often forgot and become incredibly frustrated having to repeat half an hour’s worth of progress.
I also cannot stand the “driving” sections to the game. The Mako I read in reviews was very easy to control, but I must have had the controller upside down, as I could not manipulate it as I desired – my progress was merely a product of luck and perseverence. It’s true you cannot flip it, although I crucuially almost did when I was against the clock, I can’t be any more specific without giving spoilers.

Anyways, so that’s Mass Effect, a few problems which have been well documented upon the game’s release and some of my personal thoughts, but overall a very good game, recommended to anyone that likes their sci-fi and/or RPGs. Another game I’ve been trying out before the GTA4’s arrival is Dead Rising. I believe it was actually a release title, now 2 years old, and well it’s graphically not as impressive as games coming out now, but it is effectively a zombie-infested playground where an incredible amount of items can be used as a weapon. Again very cool, but again a frustration thanks to the saving your game progress. Capcom have made it their staple to have save locations, and I always end up dying literally at the furthest point away from one. Also as much as hitting zombies with benches or knocking them down with shopping trolleys, the combat can be clunky at times, a lag is apparent after swinging a bin where you are vulnerable, especially in amongst a crowd of zombies.

I am currently renting Dead Rising thanks to using LoveFilm. The main reason is to check out some films, so any recommendations are greatly appreciated. They also have games to rent, so my thinking is to have a game for about a week at a time, and swap films like every three days or something, I dunno I’m just trying out the service atm, but if I can get that going, then that would be very smart.

Here’s looking forward to Tuesday, where once that GTA4 disc goes, I think it’s gonna be a long time before it comes out.

Insert Coin #4The big fight! Halo 3 vs COD4

The other day I decided to jump back on to Call of Duty 4 after a fairly lengthy absence – I’m afraid a lot of my gaming time has been consumed with WoW. Anyways, I could go on about how my progress in WoW is coming along, so yeah I fired up COD4 and obviously went straight to the multiplayer. Both COD4 and Halo 3 came out at about the same time. Both games utilise the matchmaking system for their multiplayer, and it’s their respective multiplayers which have made the games so popular, but which multiplayer is the best?

Now this may prove to be unfair, I am basing this on my time with COD4 recently and comparing that to what the Halo 3 multiplayer was like when I played it last, i.e. a few months back. Now both games have different style of multiplayer – Halo 3 is much pacier and it’s not unnatural to jump about all the place like a loon. COD4 on the other hand is much slower and if someone sneaks up on you, you’re practically boned. In that respect, COD4 is terribly unbalanced compared to Halo 3. At least with Halo 3 if someone starts shooting you, it’s actually possible to turn around and kill them first if you are truly the better player. In COD4 you are rewarded for patience, maybe times I’ve seen on the KillCam my killer has set up shop round a corner and has simply been waiting for me to emerge and then sprays me with bullets = me dead, and not happy.

Both of them use the matchmaking system as I mentioned previously, but it seems a little redundant in COD4, I am quite a low rank as I haven’t played much but it’s pretty standard to playing in the same games with some very highly ranked players, often 30+ levels higher. Also when it comes to sorting the teams, they’re not usually that balanced in my experience. Halo 3 multiplayer, on the other hand, if you jump into a ranked game at a certain level, then you will almost certainly play others at your own level, maybe some higher, some lower, but there’s usually only a few levels in it. That way seems the best way to get better. That way you’re playing people at your current level, and you can learn and improve, and then face the next level of players.
In COD4 leveling is performed by gaining experience as opposed to wins, or finishing in the top 3 as in Halo 3. That’s a little flawed as given enough time I will be able to max out my level on COD4, it becomes a war of attrition, and not one of improving skill. I’m also not a fan of having to unlock game modes in the multiplayer. The idea of upgrades to your weapons and the global challenges that will earn you bonuses are rather cool goals to aim for.

Overall I think the kicker is the unbalanced matchmaking that ruins the COD4 multiplayer experience, and therefore I prefer the Halo 3 multiplayer. The Legendary map pack was released a short while ago, I won’t be paying for it, I’ll wait until it’s made freely available, but to reinforce my argument, I’ll obviously have to jump on Halo 3 and touch base with a game that received a lot of criticism, but I actually think it’s an awesome and very solid game, the amount of achievements I have gained for Halo 3 probably proves how much I’ve played it.

Insert Coin #3The (format) war is over…

Catching up with some posts I started a while back but have yet to finish, welcome to Insert Coin #3, not ultimately about games this time but as you may have guessed a winner to the format war was announced a few weeks back. That is of course the war between the two rival formats HD-DVD and Blu-ray who were duking it out to become the new Hidef optical medium. Sony are the creators of Blu-ray and have been pushing their format with the inclusion of a drive in the PS3, and of their Vaio laptops too. Toshiba sat in the other corner with the HD-DVD format. Now I can’t be bothered to go into the specific pros and cons of each format here, but will say that technically blu-ray is the "better" format in terms of storage capacity. This has reminded many of the VHS/Betamax war many years ago, personally I was too young to remember this but VHS won outright as it was the cheaper to produce despite Betamax providing the better quality. In this format war, the "better" format won, although it is widely believed that Sony bought out many of the HD-DVD supporters.

This feature is supposed to be about gaming, so what does all this have to do with anything? Well I’ve been interested in the outcome of this war and like a lot of people am surprised that it ended as quickly as it has. Now, myself being an owner of an HD TV, I would like to test it’s capabilities. Whilst the standard def signal looks ok, it’s still quite obvious that that signal suffers because it is on a higher resolution TV. Now that blu-ray is the winner, I find myself thinking, hey it would be cool to have in my possession a blu-ray player. That being said, the cheapest blu-ray player out there is, OMG the Playstation 3. I never gave any serious thought to buying a PS3, the price point being far too high and the lack of quality titles available for the console – or at least titles which I could not already get for the 360. But now, there are some quality games on the horizon, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo 5 are two upcoming titles I am very interested in.

As I said I would like to see blu-ray now I have the HD TV goodness, and being a fan of a fair few revision3 shows, all of which (that I’ve tried at least) are made available in HD format. That is good in that, I am experiencing some non-game HD content, also Netflix are a regular sponsor of the shows, and blu-ray rental is incredibly tempting. Netflix is of course US only, but there are easily enough UK alternatives out there. Online DVD (+game) rental is the way to go it seems so tempted to sort that out and then switch over to Blu-ray when I finally sort out a PS3. It is probably not much of a coincidence that following the announcement that the format war is over, there must have been a noticeable spike in their sales. Now recently with the help of my good buddy Wilson, I’ve been looking into getting a new pone contract with the promise of a PS3 as a free gift. The catch is that you obviously have to go for one of the higher rate contracts, they seem to start at ~£35 and you are tied into a 18 month contract. Crunching the numbers and that works out as ~£17 to cover the PS3, and the rest being the cost of the actual contract. Now I’m getting very off topic here but my mobile phone usage is pretty low in the whole scheme of things so it doesn’t seem that worthwhile for myself, although it is very tempting to spread the costs and get a PS3 now. Thinking about it, I do feel a little guilty spending all the money for what is effectively going to be primarily a Blu-ray player. There are more crucial purchases that I should be considering first plus GTA4 comes out in a couple of weeks, I’ve pre-ordered a 360 copy (obviously), so maybe when I start to get bored with that (lol?), I’ll properly reconsider the PS3 again, although like the iPod Classic, it’s pretty much a definite purchase, it’s more of a case of when rather than should I.

This has been a little off-topic but it needed to be posted sooner rather than later, as the more I put it off, the less relevant it gets (especially if by the time I actually posted, I was an owner of a PS3, that’s not the case here). I wanna post an Insert Coin about WoW (sorry), and after seeing Kidderminster Harriers play the other day, I have a strong urge to actually play football and/or football manager lol.