So I picked up the Orange Box before the turkey-based holiday. It was getting nothing but rave reviews and since I hadn't played anything new since the last Civ IV expansion, I needed something different.
Installed on Wednesday night and have played for about 15 hours total.
Portal is neat game. It's definitely nice to see an innovative game that is willing to take a chance on new ideas. And it's basically a very simple concept at heart. You are given the ability to make an entrance portal and an exit portal, and you have to somehow use these portals to solve various puzzles. Portal does an excellent job of easing you into the gameplay by introducing the game concepts as well as suggesting solutions and different ways to use the portals before ramping up into the more difficult situations. Even my girlfriend wants to play it almost every night!
I'm also really enjoying Team Fortress 2! I'm not much of a standard FPS player. Of course I played Quake and such games back in the day, but now I tend to lean towards the slower-paced Day of Defeat instead of the over-the-top, explosion-filled frag fests that most FPS games cater to. But I think they've hooked me this time around.
I was a little dubious at first, and my initial evening of playing didn't completely bowl me over. But I went back to it again the next night and put at least one effort into each of the different classes, testing out their various abilities. And somewhere in there it all clicked! Once I had a basic understanding of each class and what it was capable of, my enjoyment of the game skyrocketed!
Every class has its use. And a team that doesn't have a good selection of all the classes will find itself at a disadvantage.
The cartoon graphics are great, and perfect for this sort of Acme Inc. inspired mayhem. And as I've talked about before, I think these sorts of graphics give the developers more freedom. When you're going for the realistic look, you're very constrained in what you can do.
I haven't played the new Half-life 2 episode at all, but I already feel like I got my money's worth from the two games that I have played!
Showing posts with label FPS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FPS. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Re-Visiting an Old Friend: Day of Defeat
Back in the days of Counterstrike, when a good friend and I used to cart our computers up to his office at the university so we could play together over their T3 lines, there came along a little mod that didn't receive as much attention as Counterstrike did, but still had a lot of charm, enough so that it was eventually released as its own box set. That mod was called Day of Defeat. I was hooked immediately and it wasn't long before many of my friends followed suit.
DoD took Counterstrike's realism, warped it to fit WWII weapons, created more open and varied maps and really solidified the teamwork aspect of the game. Unfortunately, it has a steep learning curve. It's easy to die. Very easy. And if you aren't familiar with the current map, you can expect to die at pretty much every turn until you learn it. But, the plus side of this barrier to entry is that the players tend to be a lot more mature and team oriented than you find in most FPS games.
But what shines about DoD is the reliance on teamwork. There will never be a single player that can single-handedly win a match for his team. Every map has specific goals, and players will keep respawning until one team or the other accomplishes those goals. The maps are generally complex and have lots of flavor such as mounds of rubble, broken walls and abandoned cars, that not only provide an engaging setting, but that also have an impact on gameplay as well! Bushes, while just simple 2d sprites, do provide a lot of visual cover. DoD is all infantry based, which may annoy those who like the Battlefield type games. But what they do have is done well!
I hadn't played DoD in several years, but my recent foray into Battleground Europe, an online game with a similar WWII theme, made me remember the good old days. So I reinstalled Steam, updated
the client and logged in. The years have not been kind to my twitch reflexes, but it's still as much fun as it used to be. The only real downside is a lack of players. Many of the servers that are around these days seem to like to fill empty player slots with bots. And while they do decrease the empty fort feeling, it's still a very hollow experience. Luckily, there are other servers that don't use bots at all and also have an active population.
DoD has what Battleground Europe lacks... and mainly, thats the fun factor. I think that BE goes a bit over the edge in realism which cuts into the fun of playing a game. If someone could come up with a decent mashup of the systems in DoD, Battlefield and Battleground Europe (and maybe some Planetside), we could have a really awesome WWII MMO! Take the fun and the infantry/town combat from DoD, add in vehicles from Battlefield and Battleground Europe, then layer it all with an interesting, intuitive, dynamic meta-game that is designed well enough to handle widely varying population numbers and maybe throw in a little bit of character development. Stir gently and enjoy!
DoD took Counterstrike's realism, warped it to fit WWII weapons, created more open and varied maps and really solidified the teamwork aspect of the game. Unfortunately, it has a steep learning curve. It's easy to die. Very easy. And if you aren't familiar with the current map, you can expect to die at pretty much every turn until you learn it. But, the plus side of this barrier to entry is that the players tend to be a lot more mature and team oriented than you find in most FPS games.
But what shines about DoD is the reliance on teamwork. There will never be a single player that can single-handedly win a match for his team. Every map has specific goals, and players will keep respawning until one team or the other accomplishes those goals. The maps are generally complex and have lots of flavor such as mounds of rubble, broken walls and abandoned cars, that not only provide an engaging setting, but that also have an impact on gameplay as well! Bushes, while just simple 2d sprites, do provide a lot of visual cover. DoD is all infantry based, which may annoy those who like the Battlefield type games. But what they do have is done well!
I hadn't played DoD in several years, but my recent foray into Battleground Europe, an online game with a similar WWII theme, made me remember the good old days. So I reinstalled Steam, updated
the client and logged in. The years have not been kind to my twitch reflexes, but it's still as much fun as it used to be. The only real downside is a lack of players. Many of the servers that are around these days seem to like to fill empty player slots with bots. And while they do decrease the empty fort feeling, it's still a very hollow experience. Luckily, there are other servers that don't use bots at all and also have an active population.
DoD has what Battleground Europe lacks... and mainly, thats the fun factor. I think that BE goes a bit over the edge in realism which cuts into the fun of playing a game. If someone could come up with a decent mashup of the systems in DoD, Battlefield and Battleground Europe (and maybe some Planetside), we could have a really awesome WWII MMO! Take the fun and the infantry/town combat from DoD, add in vehicles from Battlefield and Battleground Europe, then layer it all with an interesting, intuitive, dynamic meta-game that is designed well enough to handle widely varying population numbers and maybe throw in a little bit of character development. Stir gently and enjoy!
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