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Nov 13th, 2010 at 05:38:35 - Shattered Horizon (PC) |
Shattered Horizon was the other freebie on Steam last weekend. I almost played it some on another free weekend back in like June, but never got around to it, and I almost ran out of time last weekend, but was determined to give it a shot. I'm glad I got to mess around with it for a couple hours because it was very interesting, and reminded me most of the old Tribes games and/or Unreal Tournament's outdoor space levels, or of any low/no gravity mod I've ever played. It reminded me of these, but really takes the low/no gravity mechanic a lot further. You play the game in a space suit. Your space-suited character is armed with a gun you load out with at the beginning of the match, as well as some special weapon, one of which, for example, is like a repulsion grenade that launches people off the surface of the asteroid or wherever you are, off into space and hopefully to their suffocating death. Pretty neat.
The levels are very cool and consist mostly of space. There are asteroid belts to fly around, mining facilities and other industrial themed levels. You basically begin each level flying toward some space rocks. You can use a boost to propel yourself faster. You can also tilt and roll to go in all directions. It can get quite disorienting because in the blackness of space, everything is, well, black, and events are happening all around you. The map tries to tell you where other players are, but I didn't get good at reading it. I often got shot and had no idea where from. Sometimes, the screen edge would flash indicating the direction, and other times not. Even if I could turn the right way, that player could now be above, below, on the other side of me, behind an asteroid, or boosted away. All the asteroids and such provide a lot of cover, basically serving as giant confusing barriers to your line of sight. Battle in space is hectic, shooting at flying characters and boosting around, looking in all directions for danger.
I found battle on the surfaces a bit more comfortable, but less exciting. If you push F, you 'attach' to a surface and can then kind of space walk on it. Attaching leaves you vulnerable to attacks from above in space, but you have to attach to capture nodes and whatever to meet victory conditions. I didn't get a good sense of the game modes, though I played a few. I did notice a domination type where you hold nodes, but I was busy figuring out how to fly around and shoot stuff. My lifespan in Shattered Horizon was generally quite short, but by the end, I was engaging in some satisfying gun fights in space, enough to make me glad I tried out the game. There were many more people online here than Lead and Gold, and the game is certainly unique.
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Nov 13th, 2010 at 05:16:01 - Lead and Gold (PC) |
Steam had a 'free frontiers weekend,' where we could play Lead and Gold and Shattered Horizon for free. I took a little bit of advantage and played around with Lead and Gold first. It's a wild-west themed team shooter, like Team Fortress 2 but with 4 complementary classes, each with their own unique team buff and type of gun and special ability. For example, my favorite was the trapper. She's a sniper with a raccoon hat who gives I think an accuracy or critical hit buff to teammates in range. Her special ability is to lay down bear traps. My favorite moment in the game was playing with the trapper. I perched on a balcony and killed 5 or so enemies in a row when one ran out of the doorway onto the balcony. I handily shot him dead and then had an 'Aha!' moment. I laid a bear trap in front of the door. The guy came back, felt some pain and went down, when I shot him. I laid another trap and killed another would-be assassin. It was really cool and I felt really smart.
Lead and Gold has an interesting third-person off-center perspective. I thought it would be weird not being first person, or at least third-person center like normal, but I got used to it almost instantly. You still fire down the middle, and it actually kind of opens up the screen a bit having your character off to the side. The gunplay itself reflects the setting. It's not as frantic a game as most shooters, which is probably one reason I liked it as much as I did. The gameplay is basic team shooter stuff with the wild west twist. So there's deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag (or sack of gold), defend the control point (or sacks of gold), take as many (sacks of gold) to your base as you can within the time limit, and demolition, which doesn't involve sacks of gold, but does involve dynamite, another olde time staple. While you're carrying the heavy loot, you move slower and can't shoot so it's up to your teammates to protect you. Unfortunately, there were very few people online playing, even on the free weekend. There were usually 10 or 15 servers online when I was logging on, and there was a big lag beast it seemed like, everywhere.
There were a couple other game mechanics I liked more or less. One is this last stand idea that Call of Duty and some other shooters have adopted. When you get shot, as long as you aren't absolutely pummeled, you remain alive enough to pull out your pistol and try for revenge until the other team realizes you aren't dead yet and shoot you again. I always had a hard time noticing if someone was really dead or not. By the end of the weekend, after spending maybe 2 hours total on the game, I was getting the hang of double-checking for movement after I shot someone. It sucked to 'kill' someone, turn around and then you be the one to actually die. When you die or go to last stand, your teammates can actually bring you back right there by interacting with you. I found that either people don't know they can do this or they don't care. I never once received any help! I did revive others though. When you die, you either spawn at your base or at a mobile spawn point that one teammate can carry around on their backs. This would also have been cooler without so much lag and if people were actually using it strategically, to push forward in domination or something. I don't have too high esteem for the few players I played with. They were in general really bad, and I know that because I am not great at shooters, and I was kicking ass. There is also a rank system where you accumulate experience and ranks as you kill enemies and take objectives and things. It's map specific, so your rank resets after each match, and I'm not quite sure what it matters. My guess is it increases accuracy and other stats. Either that or it's simply cosmetic to psych out opponents.
The maps are very nice and fun. There are a lot of places for sniping, multiple paths everywhere, lots of height levels, like stories of buildings and rooftops, places for close-quarters combat in buildings and alleyways, and so on. The two maps I played the most were a saloon town and like a mining quarry with a giant bridge. They were excellent and I wonder what others are like.
The game also unfortunately enjoyed crashing to my desktop on occasion. Still, I had a whole lot of fun with the game. I just wish more people had been playing it because I doubt I would ever buy a shooter with less than 1000 players online on a free weekend. There's no single player component either, no story, so it would only be an online thing. Yeah, so too bad, because it's a fun game. I realized at some point that I'd been smiling the whole time I was playing.
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Oct 31st, 2010 at 03:57:18 - Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC) |
Mmm, good ending. I expected basically what happened to happen, but without the twist Raynor pulled. I was pretty stunned, but man, very cool. Such an epic story and so well integrated with the missions. Too bad the Zerg campaign is going to be like a year from now! I expect many people will have become so good with the other two races in the interim between expansions that the missions will not present much of a challenge, on normal at least, like a few did early on this time before I became more proficient with Terran. Even some hard missions were getting easy towards the end. Luckily there's a brutal mode if hard is too easy. Stupid achievements are so fun to try and get but after I've beaten the campaign, much more campaign play is going to feel like wasting time chasing achievements. Fun time, but could be spent on other stuff. Ah, the tension I feel with achievements.
And I'm glad the multiplayer is such fun. I thought about it and realized I like the randomness of it. I've no idea who I'm going up against, or what race they are if they choose random (I always choose random for these reasons). I've no idea their strategy until I encounter them. Online games are so dynamic. I mean, you've generally got to prepare to attack or defend a rush at first, and then it gets more dynamic. The beginnings are where RTS games have always been purely mechanical, following build orders and such to maximize income or get the fastest rush or whatever. I prefer the middle stages of a match where the rushes are over and it's like, "Ok, so now what? What are they going to do and what am I going to do?" Poking around their base, scanning, sending overlords and observers, sending that marine or probe on a suicide mission to find out my Terran opponent has blocked his entrance, all so much fun and so important to gather intelligence to plan and enact my particular strategy.
I'm still in the learning stages of all the units, and definitely most comfortable with Terran because of the campaign. It's a little confusing having spent so much more time with the campaign than online because some of the units and abilities are different. I remember going into multiplayer games thinking I was going to amass an army of Marines, Firebats, and Medics to find out there are no Firebats or Medics in multiplayer. And then being so used to my bunkers always holding 6 Marines and realizing that's an upgrade now, and various other stuff. I'll get used to it sooner or later.
And one final thing...Since so many of the Terran troops are criminals, I wonder if the game is making fun of the idea of using ex-cons or current cons as cannon fodder. All the more normal citizens seem to be in command posts, although they are either pirates, mercenaries, corrupt and power-hungry emperors, strange delusional emperor's sons, or whatever. Some are normal. But the troops are mostly convicts. Is this funny or not? Is this a serious idea or not? In context of course, it's just the Starcraft universe, but that idea has been tossed around and employed forever by real armies. I wonder why they fight? Like Tychus, maybe some made deals for freedom. Maybe they have no choice. Maybe they just like killing. Maybe they want to die. Maybe they found something to believe in or something worth fighting for. Maybe they are only criminals from one perspective, like in the New Folsom mission, where Mengsk was holding all kinds of political dissidents, scientists, and other free-thinkers the Dominion called dangerous criminals. I like the tooltip on one of the unit upgrades or somewhere. It might be the Medivac ship. But anyway, the tooltip says something like "Led to a doubling increase in Marines' lifespans from 8 seconds to 16." It's a rough life.
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Oct 30th, 2010 at 10:15:10 - Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC) |
Incredibly excited because I'm almost done with the campaign. I've got one more mission to go. The game has been absolutely stunning for me thus far. Every level is unique in some way. The slow phasing in of new units over time in a logical way consistent with the story has helped make each level something to look forward to. Then the levels themselves are so fun to play through, and I've happily played each one multiple times to unlock all the achievements. 25/26 missions down and I think I've only been unable, with a reasonable amount of attempts, to complete 2 on Hard. I've had so many memorable moments in the campaign so far, like killing the Brutalisk in the lava, using the giant laser to barely score the minimum number of enemies killed for an achievement, racing the wall of fire, swarming with armies of battlecruisers or marine/medic combos for fun, and finally today, getting to use nukes.
The last bit of dialogue after the blowing up the platforms mission just emphasizes how great the game and story are for me and how nice of a presentation it's been. Warfield brings out the Protoss relic, and Tychus, always ready for action, cautions something like, "I don't know Jimmy. This thing might upset the time-space continuum or something." Raynor responds, "Come on now Tychus. This ain't science fiction." I love it. Can't wait to finish tomorrow.
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