I spent a couple of hours finishing off NFS Undercover last week.
I’ve now completed all the races, dominated over half, have 3 tier 1 cars with Ultimate parts.
You know what happened when I finished the last race?
Nothing.
Not even a congratulations screen. Nothing.
I’ve sampled all I need to now, I’ve driven a Bugatti Veyron at 400km/hr down the highway and disabled 50 cop cars in a pursuit. Undercover is getting uninstalled. Let’s hope the next iteration is a lot better.
I finished the “story” part of NFS Undercover over the weekend. Once you get access to Tier 2+ cars and full upgrades the game becomes a lot more fun (not to mention easier). 380km/hr down a highway with the ocean on one side and mountains on the other is a fantastic way to drive.
The final mission however, is officially the most frustrating, painful and stupid of the entire modern NFS series.
If you’re really into the “story” beware, spoilers follow.
The story goes that your handler (random asian-american actress I don’t know) double crosses you and frames you, leaving you in the shit. We find this out through a really poorly acted FMV sequence. She drives off in a BMW M6 which kicks off the mission…. Take Out asian lady (whose name I forget).
So you’re chasing a BMW M6, not in your car from career mode, but in a BMW M6.. with no nitrous.. that is less than half the speed of your career car. This in itself is immensely frustrating. I’d gotten used to nitrous boosting up to 280km/hr from standstill in my Lamorghini, now I have to drive a stock BMW with a top speed in the mid 200s?
Don’t get me started on the “Take Out” game mode either. The idea is to ram the other car into submission but in reality is incredibly boring, as ramming them from behind at speed appears to cause the same amount of damage as ramming them full speed into a police roadblock, causing them to flip 3 times. Your car is also invincible for these races which makes total sense.
Anyway, because you’re being framed, you’re also being chased by a metric shittonne of cops. They take great delight in ramming you, jamming you into corners and generally being a pain in the arse while you’re trying to smash into your target as hard as possible. I realise this is to make the final mission challenging, but in combination with the shit car you are driving it just adds to the frustration.
Once you ram asian lady’s car enough the cops get called off and you can finish her off, which queues more poorly acted FMV, then that’s it. End of story mode.
Thankfully, you can continue once story mode is finished (unlike Fallout 3) and I still have another 40 races to do, plus I have only dominated half of the total races. I have also got to buy a Bugatti Veyron and try out a couple of the other interesting cars. I’ll continue playing Undercover because with super cars it can be great fun but whoever wrote the story/mission side of this game should stick to day time TV.
On a side note, the physics in Undercover break spectacularly once you reach silly speeds. I have hit traffic coming head on at 380km/hr and had them fly through the air across lanes to land hundreds of metres away, while my speed drops to 120km/hr instantly. I have also had them get stuck on my bonnet for a good couple of minutes until they eventually roll off. My best bug so far I experienced when re-doing one of the first races in my Tier 1 car with Ultimate upgrades. With a top speed well over double that of the competition I had a huge lead, when I messed up a corner and went flying towards one of the crane pursuit breakers. Instead of hitting the side and releasing the pipes I hit it head on and instead of spinning out of control the entire crane went up the bonnet, onto the roof and caught me underneath. I spent a good 15 seconds maneuvering/ hammering nitrous and eventually found my way out. You will also find invisible walls in the air when hitting some of the jumps in earlier parts of the game in fast cars.
The other game I’ve been playing recently (in combination with Fallout 3, see below) has been Need For Speed Undercover. I am a fan of the arcarde racing series having completed all modern iterations (Underground, Underground 2, Carbon, Most Wanted, Prostreet) and having played some of the older ones too. The last release, Prostreet, aggravated a lot of fans by moving away from the illegal street racing theme of underground and its kin and moving to a professional racing system. EA have either listened, or saw reduced sales of Prostreet, as we are back in the illegal street racing scene in Undercover, albeit as an undercover cop.
It seems odd to be talking about story when discussing an arcade racer, but Undercover tries really hard to wrap story around its gameplay. From the bad boys style intro (sweeping seaside city vista, follows helicopters into car chase) to the copious live action video, the developers have obviously tried to make this less arcade racer, more Fast and the Furious: The Game. Thankfully you can quite happily ignore all this fluff, mission/story based races will normally tell you what to do when you start them, even if you ignore the cutscene beforehand.
On to gameplay. The game is set over a large, free roaming area which you will probably ignore completely in favour of using the GPS map to quickly skip between races. A useful new feature is the ability to push Tab and immediately enter the nearest (or just received mission) race. This means the time between races is minimal and you can quickly go from one to the other without downtime.
Race types are a mix of old favourites and new blood. Sprint, Circuit and checkpoint are back along with newcomers Highway Battle and Outrun. If you remember the drag races in Underground which took place on a highway with traffic, take the frustration of that, multiply it by 40 and that’s highway battle. Outrun is pretty simple, stay ahead of your opponent for a minute or so while driving around the city, wherever you choose. There are also various story missions which involve “taking out” other drivers, which are a yawn fest. Ctach up to them, ram them and their health goes down a bit, rinse, repeat. Really uninspiring gameplay and should have been axed. I have yet to see any drift races, which is a shame.
As I said we’re back in the illegal street racing scene so Cost to State, Escape and Cruiser disable races are back as are pursuit breakers.
I have found Undercover to be far more frustrating that other iterations so far. As an arcade racer it is incredibly forgiving (roaring around corners at 200km/hr with no loss of traction) but opponents are incredibly unpredictable. I have been 12 seconds ahead in a circuit race to either just win (by less than a second) or just lose, because one car out of the pack suddenly catches up. It is amazingly aggravating to see a car with similar specs to yours catching up to you on the straight despite travelling at full speed with your nitrous going. This is especially true on the Highway Battle races. Roaring down a four lane highway trying to either get ahead or stay ahead of your opponent while avoiding heavy traffic can be a huge adrenalin rush. Having to do the whole bloody thing 6 times over because your opponent gets a mysterious speed burst and roars past you, leaving you with no way to catch up has caused me to smash my desk many many times. Having to sit through the scripted intro each time doesn’t really help either.
I cannot explain these mysterious speed bursts. I am in the early stages of the game, still driving a tier 3 car (with pro parts) so it may just be their car is that much better than mine but it does seem incredibly unfair at times.
Bullshit computer cheating aside the racing is fun. Tracks are varied, some take place in the city, some in the surrounding hills, some in construction sites. Even on my older PC the game looks good and that is with pretty much everything turned off. I was able to scale down the settings enough for it to run well on my old P4 which is always appreciated.
All in all I am enjoying Undercover. Ignore the story guff, try and forgive the random speed bursts your opponents get and it’s great fun.
I’m off to try this Highway Battle again. Attempts 1-6 didn’t go so well and my fist if getting sore from hammering my desk.
Ahh games season, this year is the worst I’ve seen in a while. We’ve had Need for Speed Undercover, Red Alert 3, Far Cry 2, Left for Dead, the list goes on. I will start this season with Fallout 3.
Let me begin by stating that I have NOT played Fallout 1 or 2. I’ve not entirely sure why, maybe I was too young when it came out, maybe I was too busy playing Team Fortress. However I am aware of how amazing everyone considers the games and I am well versed in the universe and story.
I say this because there appear to be two camps in the fallout 3 players universe. Those that hate it because it isn’t “true to the originals” and those that hate the first group. I don’t happen to be either.
So, Fallout 3. After what is possibly the most creative character creation processes I have experienced it is into the game proper. We have the usual tutorial process (how to walk, how to shoot) then the G.O.A.T. which is a fairly funny aptitude test which as far as I can see has no effect on the rest of the game. From discussion on several fan sites it also appears that the choices you make in S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (the stats system) really don’t make a huge amount of difference, far less that the originals.
I won’t bore you with the details so let’s just start when you leave Vault 101. I can honestly say that that I was blown away when I first left the vault and stood on a hill staring out across the wasteland. Maybe it was the openness after being stuck in the vault or just the sheer desolation I don’t know, but for the first time in a long while I had an emotional reaction to a game moment.
Unfortunately I had to stop at this point and turn down all my graphics settings. Running a 6 year old P4 and a 7800GS means I had to turn off most of the detail and turn the res down significantly (I’m now running in 1024×768). At these settings the game runs well, which is my main concern. My only issue so far has to do with draw distance. With my current settings enemies can fire at me outside the draw radius, meaning I get bullets and worse flying at me from non existant models. Zooming in pops the models but it is still disorientating. I don’t blame the game for this, having the ability to turn the settings down enough to run properly is a good thing. I am however looking forward to getting a new PC in the next few months so I can experience the game in all its glory.
Anyway, a quick jaunt to Megaton gets the game started proper. You start the main quest and start picking up side quests and very quickly hit your first moral dilemna. Fallout 3 has a Karma System, do good things, good karma, bad things, bad karma. The choice is normally fairly obvious, e.g. Kill Everyone to solve problem will give you bad karma, while talk the situation through will result in Good Karma. This adds up and certain NPCs will react to you differently. As a good player I get hunted mercilessly by Talon Mercenaries and there are apparently Enforcers which do the same for evil characters.
On the whole quests are fairly interesting. There are NO go kill 500 of X to get Y, which is nice. There is normally a bit of back story which adds some character. This backstory doesn’t necessarily stick rigidly to Fallout canon, which has pissed off a large number of fans of the original. As I’m new to the universe I don’t really care, the situations on the whole are entertaining and engaging. However the delivery and voice acting are fairly awful. In my case I just skim read the text and ignore the voices. It becomes really annoying the 5th time you hear the SAME voice coming from several different characters in game in the same flat manner. I would honestly expect a bit more emotion from someone who just MURDERED HIS PARENTS AND DRANK THEIR BLOOD, but maybe that’s just me.
As mentioned before most quests have a variety of ways to complete them. This usually comes down to the Good guy and Bad guy choices, but there are also occasions to use your speech/medicine or other skills to resolve the situation in alternate ways.
On to combat. In a word, uninspiring. V.A.T.S. in Fallout 3 is an attempt to bring turn based combat into an FPS. Basically push V, which will freeze the combat, target the various target parts and then click away. Each shot takes a certain number of “Action Points”. Once you are happy you push E, and your target shots are played out in slow motion. Your action points regenerate over time, after which you can rinse and repeat. You can fight in real time as well, V.A.T.S. is purely optional but I believe you will spend a lot of time there.
The main problem with this system is that the slow motion gets really old, really fast. The last game to use slow-mo well was Max Payne, but in a similar way you eventually end up spending all your time in slow-mo because it is the most efficient, safest way to fight, even though you are sick to death of watching it happen.
This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if real time combat was a legitimate alternative. It’s not. Combat in real time uses three times as much ammo and in most cases end up costing you more health than using V.A.T.S. However, when NOT using V.A.T.S. , most weapons are your standard FPS fare, your bullets go where your cursor is. In V.A.T.S. you have a percentage to hit different body parts, which is tied to stats, perks, weapon condition etc. Which means if you are trying to snipe someone in the head from range, DON’T use V.A.T.S.
To give you an idea, in most combat situations I will sneak around. As soon as I see the Caution warning, which means that someone or something is nearby, I will push V, which will zoom in on an enemy, if they are visible (this normally overcomes the getting shot at from outside view distance issue I mentioned before). Once I know where they are, I will try and line them up and hit them in the head with a ranged, scoped weapon without using V.A.T.S.
In sewers/rail tunnels etc I will normally run around, wait for something to aggro (yes I played WoW) then wait for them to get close. Once they are right in front of me I will hit V.A.T.S. and pop them in the head. If they survive, dodge/run away until my AP recharges and repeat.
That’s combat for you.
That’s about enough for now. I will start writing up some play/quest logs later.
So I finished Diablo II on Normal. Baal dies rather easily. I had more trouble with his last set of minions than with him.
Level 34 Paladin. Hammerdin Build. It was great fun but I can honestly say I won’t be playing through Nightmare with this character. I went with what was said to be a really powerful build but it really dull to play.
Maybe I’ll start again. I’ve played a Necromancer and Paladin so far. Maybe a barbarian will be fun.
The recent announcement of Diablo III has spawned a resurgence of interest in it’s predecessor this week, at least amongst those people that had stopped playing it (you’d be surprised how many still do).
Funnily enough I recently installed Diablo II on my work laptop for something to do when I’m bored. Having integrated intel video meant that pretty much any source games (HL2, TF2) were not going to happen (I tried, it was horrible) which left me with Quake 3 CPMA/RA3, which is always a blast but can get pretty boring after a while.
Diablo II fits the bill nicely. It’s system requirements called for a P2 233 (gasp) and a video card with DirectX 7 support. I installed it (and after some searching, the expansion) and patched it up. In reading the patch notes I see that Blizzard removed the requirement to have the CD in the drive in one of the previous patches. Hurrah, I’m not being treated like a criminal!
I remember playing Diablo II with my LAN group when I was near the end of high school. Many a weekend were spent in someone’s garage with mice furiously clicking away killing hoardes of monsters. The shared achievement of bringing down Diablo, Mephisto and Baal were awesome. As were the arguments over loot (No WOW style BOE/BOP and rolling here ladies, wonder that D3 will do there) and who got what gems to transmute etc. Good times.
I had a level 34 Necromancer which I imported into my new game, but decided I’d rather try something new. I’ve always played support characters in most of the games I played (Shaman in Wow, healer/buffer in NWN) so I went for the Paladin as a change. They have a sword and shield and auras. I started hacking away in short order.
For those that have never seen or played a Diablo game (both of you) its isometric, there are lots of monsters and you run around and kill them. Each click of your mouse is either a cast of a spell or a swing of a weapon, hence the frenzied clicking. In no time I was back into it, hammering away, getting loot, casting Town Portal, identifying magic items.
Then it was 2 hours later and I really needed to get some sleep.
This is the first game I have played in years that has engaged me so. With the exception of WoW (see previous post) Diablo II is the most addictive game I’ve played. You very quickly fall into the “one more dungeon level”, “just need to find the waypoint for this area”, “just need to finish this quest” mentality that leads to many late nights. Randomly generated dungeons and areas mean you spend a lot of time exploring (and killing hoardes of monsters) especially if, like me, you don’t like leaving parts of the map unexplored.
And all that is before you get involved in decking out a character. I am following a guide for a specific type of Paladin and the guide has recommendations for gear. Suffice to say that most of the good stuff starts appearing in Nightmare, after you’ve already completed the game once. You can spend hours and hours grinding for an item, due to the fact that the item you want is probably one item in a loot table of thousands.
But you can quite happily ignore all that stuff and just plug away for an hour or so every few days, kill some monsters and have fun.
I mentioned before that I used to play Diablo II at LANs. That’s because it has LAN Co-op in the box. Difficulty scales based on the number of players. Something so simple makes this game absolutely spectacular in comparison with most of the stuff out there. How many new games have come out with little or no Co-Op? I enjoy a good Deathmatch/Capture as much as the next guy but I don’t think I’m alone in saying that Co-Op is a feature that has been sorely missed in recent years.
I also tried to play Sacred when it came out. Many called it the spiritual successor to Diablo. In my time with Diablo so far I have experienced exactly no issues. All the quests work, all the monsters died, my character hasn’t been corrupted or broken. Sacred on the other hand broke in spectacular fashion on a regular basis. Resulting in uncompletable quests (including the main storyline breaking), game crashes and character corruption. I acknowledge that the scope of Sacred was a tad more epic, but if Blizzard did it 2000, why can’t Sacred do it more than 5 years later?
Blizzard seem to have a nack for creating incredible games with deep and exciting lore to accompany them. WoW is the most visible of these, with it’s many races, hundreds of quests, thousands of items and millions of subscribers. The Diablo universe is no less developed, with plenty of back story and a plot that actually seems to be important while you are playing. Not to mention the fact that Hell/Demon/Heaven/Angel imagery is awesome, especially when realised as spectacularly as Blizzard’s art team seem to do on a regular basis. Tyrael, with his “wings” of light still stands out as one of the coolest characters in a game ever.
So there we have it. Diablo 2 is still awesome, 8 years after its release. All I need to do is track down those old LAN buddies, install Hamachi and relive the glory days of my youth.