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By Michael Charge, 04/09/2010 8:00 am

(Guess What? Another Geeks.co.uk reprint)

Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Bungie
Year of Release: 2009
Platforms: Xbox 360

It’s an undeniable fact; Halo is one of our favourite pastime’s landmark franchises, up there next to Metal Gear Solid, Mario and Half Life.  It has sold over 27 million copies over all the games.  In 2007, Halo 3 was released to “finish the fight” to a rapturous audience.  Now its expansion/semi sequel is released with perhaps a bit less accompanying hype.  After all the story of the Chief is over; who wants to play another Halo game?  Well, ODST is a new style of Halo game linking itself back to the entire trilogy and providing a good final point for the Halo series.

ODST is set during the events of Halo 2 and leads into Halo 3.  Instead of jumping in as the all powerful, super-human alien butt kicking machine known as Master Chief, you instead deploy as “The Rookie”, the newest member of a team of Special Forces of the UNSC.  These are the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the title who are deployed into New Mombasa mere moments before an enemy ship enters slip space above the city.  They effectively detonate a nuke in low orbit overhead, scattering the Rookie and his squad to the four corners of the city.  You wake up six hours after the drop, suspended over the ruined streets.  After escaping your pod and dropping to the deck, your task is to set off into the city in search of your squad.

And what a city it is.  It’s obvious that Bungie has spent most of its time getting the city looking just perfect, rather than making an engine from scratch.  The setting really looks perfect, showing a side to the Halo universe not shown before, with police vehicles littering the streets as well as kiosks and a complete traffic setup.  It feels like a city that has been wrecked by war. Additionally, the city also provides some gameplay advantages with signs showing the way between various key points. It also plays host to one of the best characters in the game, the Superintendent; taking the role of the AI assistant to the player (a role previously taken by Cortana) he is your guide through the urban wreckage.  He is also the game’s hint system, showing the directions to secrets, supply depots and other important features.  However, he communicates through a selection of preset phrases that have added comedy, especially when “property damage” flashes up in big white letters if you blow up one of the city’s landmarks.

ODST utilises this setting to provide a new setup for the campaign.  All of the missions are in fact flashbacks to time between your drop and the Rookie’s awakening.  The main part of the game is a free roaming section, though channeled down certain corridors by the city’s layout. You creep around looking for any evidence relating to the fate of your squad.  When you activate a mission, you are tranported back  in time to an event that put the item there.  This might be a helmet embedded in a TV screen or a crashed fighter on a statue.  You then relive the event from the point of view of a squad mate. These flashbacks are the backbone for game, providing several different set-ups for each of the exciting missions.  I thoroughly enjoyed them all, though as usual there are a few awkward bits where the difficulty ramps up.  The free roaming sections also allow you to go back to the central areas of the missions and see them in the darkness, after the fighting has died down.  It’s dripping with atmosphere, which is increased by the audio logs you find a-la Bioshock.In turn, these tell a side story, which reveals another side to the Superintendent and also provides a civilian viewpoint on the Covenant attack.  These tapes are scattered around in phone boxes, recruitment centres and medstations.  As well as granting achievements, they also unlock new supply areas where you can rearm and heal up, as well as providing you with a good set of wheels to ride around in.

I mentioned creep for a reason.  The change in protagonist isn’t just a plot device, it also fundamentally changes the gameplay. Instead of being an all powerful genetically modified super soldier, you are instead just a well trained human in some body armour.  You’ll need to utilise stealth over sheer firepower in order to survive.  As a human you can’t jump as high, throw grenades as far, use equipment or dual wield.  In addition your health is also tweaked. Instead of both health and shield regenerating, your health can only be healed by the medipacks scattered frequently around the city in med centres.  This adds a little to the tension in the game, as well as giving it a throwback charm to Halo 1.  This is also apparent in one of the new weapons, a silenced pistol that shares many of the characteristics of the pistol in Halo 1 (sheer awesomeness being the key one). The other new weapon is a silenced version of the SMG.  Unlike in previous games in the series, where most of the time the starting weapons were crap, in ODST the pistol and SMG are in fact some of the best weapons in the game.  The automag is good for sneaking around taking out the odd guy with headshots while the SMG just sounds and looks cool.

After you have finished with the campaign, the game also gives you another co-op mode.  Firefight is the traditional survival game, where up to four players have to triumph over a set of waves in order to win the game. The game, however will throw in the skulls from Halo 3, slightly tweaking the difficulty on the fly and making the bonus rounds really worth their extra points. The Firefight mode has the promise to be as good and addictive as Nazi Zombies but unfortunately lacks matchmaking, meaning you’d better hope your friends list is stacked with ODST players wanting a game. Additionally, this is the only mode that uses your customised ODSTs in a system similar to the character customiser in Halo 3.  These characters, and some levels, are unlocked by playing through the campaign.  This benefits the game in two ways. First, most players will now play the campaign as opposed to skipping it and second, you now know that there is a better chance your team mate actually knows what they are doing.

As with any Halo game, the graphics are top notch. Although the engine has aged since its release in 2007, this game manages to still look up to date due primarily to a clever use of shaders.  The game still runs at 540p so it can look a little jagged at the edges when at 1080p.  Other than that there seems to be a general improvement, with the character’s face and general models looking a lot better.  The new weapons also appear more impressive, though this may in part be due to the lighting they appear under.  Overall, the game is still rather pretty.

When it comes to achievements and other features, ODST is once again bursting. The achievements are all either singleplayer or co-op based and all of them are easily do-able, with only two being mutually exclusive.  ODST still contains the theatre mode of Halo 3, allowing players to share videos of both Firefight and the campaign.

For any Sci-Fi fans, the cast of ODST is one of the main draws of the game.  The voices of the main squad include most of the cast of Firefly, namely Nathan Fillion as Buck, Adam Baldwin as Dutch and Alan Tyduk as Mickey.  If that wasn’t enough to get the fans rolling in, the game also feature the actress behind Number Six in Battlestar Galatica, Tricia Helfer as the ONI spy, Dare. The voice acting is of an exceptionally high quality, making it feel more like a movie than Halo 3 ever managed to be.  It is a bit surreal seeing the squad, who also leant their likeness to the game in a few cases, almost acting out their old Firefly roles but in the ODST armour sets.  Seriously, Nathan Fillion’s character is almost a carbon copy of Mal.  In addition the audio logs are all well acted, with what may well be the best South African voice actor ever heard in any game. They are a real joy to listen to.

As well as the new ODST campaign and Firefight, the game also comes with a second disk called Halo 3: Mythic.  This is a complete version of Halo 3′s main selling point, the multiplayer.  It has all the features of the main Halo 3 game (apart from the campaign of course) and comes packed with all of the available downloadable maps as well as 3 maps exclusive to the disk.  This seems a good idea, but many of the people buying ODST will probably own Halo 3 and its DLC anyway and there’s a good chance that the extra maps will be released as DLC soon.

To conclude, Halo 3: ODST is a brilliant package for every 360 owner.  For those already in the Halo fanbase, it’s an alternative take on the adventures you’ve been through before.  For those who have been put off by the gameplay of the main series, the tweaks made may make it more to your liking.  And to those yet to experience Halo, this edition will guide you into the story from an outside perspective while also giving you the complete multiplayer suite to get frag in. I’d get ready to drop.

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By Michael Charge, 03/09/2010 8:00 am

(This is a Geeks.co.uk review being reprinted with corrected formatting and post review thoughts added)

Publisher: Codemasters
Developer: Codemasters
Year of Release: 2009
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3

The year 2009 will go down as a pretty good year for Operation Flashpoint fans. Not only did we get the sequel of a sequel in the form of ARMA 2 from Bohemia Interactive, makers of the original; we also got a new game from publishers Codemasters. But has the publisher kept the feel of the classic Operation Flashpoint? Or are they linked in name only ?

Instead of the same basic USA vs. Russia scenario we have been tackling since the original, this time we’re on Skira; an island in the Sea of Japan amidst a conflict between the Americans and China. It turns out that Skira, which is owned by Russia after they stole it from Japan in 1945, actually has a huge amount of oil beneath its shores which lies untapped due to its depth. When the world economy goes south and China experiences a rebellion due to mass unemployment, communist hardliners decide to gather troops on the border near Russian oilfields, whilst also capturing the speck off the coast. Seeing as they can’t multi-task, Russia asks the UN to send US Marines to push the Chinese off. This back story is presented quite snappily in an animated video quite similar to the introduction in The Kingdom. That said, all the back story does is set the context and the opposing sides – there is no real political novel unwinding.

ARMA 2 and Dragon Rising both start by establishing you as Special Forces preparing for a full-scale invasion. Where DR diverts is that it shows the campaign through various infantry roles instead of you taking charge of just one squad. This paradigm actually works better as open action games are generally terrible at relaying a plotline. The main problem with the story is a lack of escalation, it’s missing a bit of oomph. While ARMA 2 progressed from single squad antics to controlling resistance troops, you are always controlling a single team of infantry soldiers, there are no missions featuring control of an armoured vehicle or helicopter.

The gameplay for Dragon Rising is similar to ARMA 2 but you are able to drive vehicles which is refreshing. The game feels more like a cross with the SWAT games which is primarily due to the radial command system, designed to make it a bit easier to get into than the overly complex and clunky system we have been using since the early days of 2001.It is easier to use than ARMA 2, but still isn’t snappy enough for someone trying to command a squad when in the thick of the action; despite being a multilayered system, there is no back key so one mistake and you’ll need to restart an entire drill down. This isn’t always a problem, but as soon as the shit hits the fan and you’re in the middle of battle, it all goes downhill. This actually links to a key problem with DR.

It isn’t designed for a hardcore realism fan despite being marketed in that way. The game feels like a Call of Duty with a few changes: shots are affected by gravity requiring you to aim slightly higher. Your objectives can be approached from pretty much any direction and AI units don’t respawn. It plays like a more streamlined version of ARMA 2 and is quite enjoyable. However there are some major issues.First and foremost is the camouflage. I know the game is trying to be realistic but the camo is insane. It makes it virtually impossible and thus incredibly irritating to spot enemies at long range, forcing you to rely on the HUD. Additionally, it can feel like enemies take one too many rounds to take down, even if you shoot someone repeatedly in the chest with an M4 at close range. From this you can decipher that the game is quite brutal, which to some may be desirable but to most is very annoying. This is due to the AI flipping between an evil-genius level of tactic to a brainless one thus refusing to accept an order that ends in the entire squad being ripped to pieces. Finally, for a game based on the same engine as Dirt, the vehicles in the game all handle horribly. Jeeps are prone to tipping over the tiniest things even at slow speeds. I swear at one point a Humvee flipped over a pebble in the road.

There is one blissful area where Dragon Rising beats ARMA 2 and that is in its graphics, sound and making the game run well. The artists on DR have done wonders on the island of Skira, making lighting very atmospheric and scenery very realistic. Effects like the gunfire look great with clouds of mud and smoke erupting where a shot registers. Weapons sound punchy, with a tank blast sounding terrifying as it resonates and trembles on the ground at your feet. The sound is generally excellent; voices which have been uniformly terrible since the original Operation Flashpoint actually sound decent with fewer mistakes than in sister game ARMA 2. The music is understated and atmospheric making it pleasant to hear when it is used. But of course none of this matters if the games doesn’t run, and DR runs perfectly fine on even a low-end system. With a two year old setup, I can still get a smooth 30fps at 1920×1200 with settings on full. It is much better than the pile of junk that is the ARMA 2 game engine. That said, Dragon Rising is not bug free, with some oddities appearing once in a while.

Of course no Operation Flashpoint game can be without multiplayer and DR doesn’t fail to disappoint. There are the usual deathmatch and assault modes but also a number of other smaller multiplayer engagements which can be played in four player co-op. This would be great fun, if not for a fatal flaw made by Codemasters for the release. Despite recommending using a dedicated server, Codemasters failed to release dedicated server files on day one, requiring players to either play and host at the same time (therefore creating a worse connection) or dedicate a PC for hosting which in some situations just isn’t feasible. This was fixed but unfortunately it came a little too late. Additionally, the PC version (and PC version only) ships with a mission editor, allowing you to easily create your own missions on Skira. It is a little bit easier to use when compared to the ARMA 2 editor.

Post release, the game received several DLC packs. These added some new maps and missions as well as the balance changes. However, the multiplayer never really seemed to be buzzing, with forums filled with complaints.

Overall, Operation Flashpoint is not a bad game, yet it’s still shy of being a good successor to the original. It would be a good game for those moving from run and gun up to ARMA 2. If someone sat me down and told me to chose a game to be sent to war in, I’d choose ARMA any day but you find Bohemia’s game a bit hard going and are fed up of firing AK’s maybe give Dragon Rising a look.

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By Michael Charge, 02/09/2010 12:14 am

Publisher: 505 Games
Developer: Bohemia Interactive
Year of Release: 2010
Platforms: PC

I’ve already covered Armed Assault and ARMA 2 in an article here. This piece coveres the additions in ArmA 2 patches, as well as the expansion and the first DLC.

Bohemia Interactive, the makers of the ArmA series, like to give things away for free, in patches and the like. However, there does come a time when the free stuff would be too big and this is what lead to both Arrowhead and the BAF.

But first, free stuff. ArmA 2 has received several patches since release which fixed quite a few of the issues it had at release as well as giving some performance improvements. But patch 1.05 added something else -  a totally new campaign and a AH-64 Apahce helicopter. The campaign, Eagle Wing, was a fan made 2 mission campaign set after the events of the main game with the Russians and Americans now at war. It is a quick excursion based mainly around the added Apache and is a good diversion from the fan made missions and multiplayer which should take less than an hour to play. It does however require reasonable pilot skills.

However, the first full expansion to ArmA 2 came out in July. Operation Arrowhead is set in Takistan, an Afghanistan-esque country on the receiving end of an American liberation force sent in to hunt down weapons of mass destruction. It overhauled the engine, adding in a new lighting system that allowed mod makers to finally add in the laser sights and flashlights that seemed an odd thing to miss out in a war simulation. It also added a thermal system allowing snipers everywhere to cheat by simply looking for a bad guys heat source. It is pretty cool that it acts properly – gun barrels only show when fired, vehicles won’t show if the engines are turned off and you can see through smoke using it. These improvements, alongside many other smaller ones, really make the game better and more realistic. I’m not a great fan of the campaign and its story but the single missions are all great to play. Even better is the fact all the ArmA 2 mods work in Arrowhead so all the fun of those can now take place in fake Afghanistan.

More recently still, Bohemia Interactive also released the first of their DLC packs. British Armed Forces add Her Majesty’s troops to the game. They come in three different sets of camo (Woodland DPM, Desert DPM and the new MTP) and are armed with weapons of the near future army. It doesn’t feature a full range of vehicles like the US Army in Arrowhead so the Brits are close to the amount of equipment the Czech forces have. They are actually all featured in the standard Operation Arrowhead game, but without the £8 DLC, they all have really low resolution textures which can be painful to look at. Buying the pack also gets you a new industrial map called Shapur (perfect for some CQB) and a British campaign. I think the pack is great and defenatly worth the price even if it is just paying for all the free stuff they have added throughout the game’s development.

The updates, expansions and DLC for ArmA 2 has cemented it as the milsim of choice. It’s only competitor, the new Operation Flashpoint games, are nowhere near as expansive as Bohemia’s mammoth series. In fact, Arrowhead added in some of my favourite features of Dragon Rising such as the lighting systems and the laser pointers. Bohemia has already announced plans for future DLC and, based on the number of missions on Armaholic requiring BAF, its going to do well with them. ArmA 2 will probably run and run for quite a while.

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By Michael Charge, 01/09/2010 11:06 pm

This… Batman Screens, Back to the Future Game, Super Meat Boy’s Gaming Feast and Dead Rising’s Case Zero is pretty good.

Batman Arkham City screens leak out – Goons being Beaten Up Confirmed

[View with PicLens]

Earlier today, some screens of the next Batman game from Rock Steady Studios managed to leak out onto Flickr. It looks great, more of that style that made Arkham Asylum standout. Catwoman looks perfect and Two Face is a nice compramise between the realistic Dark Knight-esque and the main comic one. I also prefer Harelquin’s new looks. She looks more sensible than her slutty nurse incarnation in the first game. I’m quite looking forward to this game’s release in 2011 – the gamplay of the first was really good and its exciting to see what the larger area brings to the action.

Telltale Reveal More About Back To The Future Game – DeLorean Confirmed

Telltale, makers of the new Sam and Max games, as well as Tales of Moneky Island, have revealed a little bit more about their upcoming series of episodic games based on the Back to the Future films. The USA Today’s gaming column, Game Hunters, has revealed that not only does Telltale have the rights for both Michael J Fox’s and Christohpher Lloyd’s likness’s but Lloyd will also be the voice of Doc Brown in the game. The series is being penned with the assistance of the film’s screenplay writer, Bob Gale, and will be set in the fictional town of Hill Valley. I’m not a great fan of the Telltale game but I do admit they seem to be the best in the point and click adventure genre at this point. But cartoon Doc? Nice.

Super Meat Boy Heads Up Game Feast – XBLA Games Confirmed

Super Meat Boy, a long awaited super hard platformer were you play as a cube of meat, helped to announce a new promotion Microsoft is running this Autumn. Game Feast, much like the Summer of Arcade, will include four games with one released each week. This year it will start with Hydrophobia on September 29th, Comic Jumper on October 6th, Pinball FX 2 on October 13th and Super Meat Boy will finish it out on October 20th. Unfortunately, I’ll be away at this point (see below) so will probably not have the money or time to play these. Also PC version of Super Meat Boy will probably be better.

Dead Rising: Case Zero Released – Drill Bucket Confirmed

Capcom Pre-DLC for upcoming Dead Rising 2 was released on Tuesday and it quite good. Its set several years before the main game and show the Chuck Greene and his infected daughter escaping from Las Vegas. Its a good few hours long and only 400 Microsoft Points. Yet it contains a fully realised town and plenty of the new combo weapons such as the above chainsaw paddle or the drill bucket. I’ve played through most of it but I’m not currently a fan of boss battles. Go play it only on Xbox Live

Also… August was AWESOME

(picture from Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together by Bryan O’Malley)

For Multiple Reasons:

• I got into Uni at Teesside onto a four year course
• I had a good night out to celebrate
• I passed my driving test (finally)
• My PC got rebuilt to be awesome
• Scott Pilgrim came out and was everything I wanted it to be
• Toy Story 3 and Inception were also pretty good

That’s it for this Week in Games.

Next week… Who knows?

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By Michael Charge, 26/08/2010 12:00 pm

This week in games… Release issues, Alien Swarm gets harder and a director, pirates get bitch slapped by Microsoft and crazy DLC

Elemental: War of Magic Release Broken – Stardock CEO Tells People To Not Buy Their Game

Stardock’s latest game, the fantasy 4X game Elemental: War of Magic, has been released a day early due to a physical copies and unfortunately it is for some people broken. People, including PC Gamer’s Tom Francis, have reported crashes, graphical glitches and AI problems. Some of these were fixed by a midmorning patch but unfortunatly this has actually made things worse, as it causes an issue in the game’s battle system which leads to it becoming unplayable. Hopefully by the time you read this, it will be fixed.

This would be fine if not for the responce from Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. When talking to players calling this release as an early beta, he responded by saying

"…please stay away from our games in the future. I consider [Elemental] ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games."

He later apologised for this but seriously. If you are a publisher, never say don’t buy our game. As for the issues, I have been playing this game for most of Wednesday and had no issues at all. The campaign is not the best, but the custom games are really fun and the level of customisation is insane. I’ll be reviewing it for TIMJ in the near future so watch for it there.

Alien Swarm gets AI Director – Aliens Now Know Your Stress Levels

Previously only available to those in the know of the black arts of the console commands, Alien Swarm now uses the AI Director (previous works include Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2) in a new mode called Onslaught. This will present more of a challenge to players, as swarms of aliens will spawn depending on various factors such as the stress levels of players and their situation. To turn up the heat even more, Valve have also added another difficulty level which so far no one, not even the guys at Valve, have actually finished a mission on.

This is great – Alien Swarm is totally free yet Valve are still supporting it. Not many companies would do the same

Halo Reach Pirates Are Permabanned by Microsoft – Stepto Warns This Would Happen If It Was Any Game

People who have downloaded an early release version of Bungie’s next game are being banned if they connect to Xbox Live. Pirates got hold of the game via a flaw in the Live marketplace and the review copies of Halo Reach. However, many are now receiving emails from Microsoft which are informing them of their banned profile. Additionally, the head of Xbox Live Policy Stephen Toulouse warned that this would happen if this was any game was played before release, from the next big blockbuster to cheapo budget game.

Image from Joystiq.com

Valve Proves Craziness – New DLC Coming To Both L4D and L4D2

As if the Alien Swarm news wasn’t enough, Valve also announced that a new DLC pack “The Sacrifice” is coming to both Left 4 Dead and it’s sequel. It is the counterpart to “The Passing” and looks at it from the original survivor’s point of view. It will allow players to choose exactly which one dies at the end as well as providing a three mission campaign.

Additionally, Valve will be producing a four part digital comic on the events of “The Sacrifice” and those leading up to.

But, that isn’t all! L4D2 users will also be getting the first campaign of L4D, No Mercy, added to their game. Valve are saying that this is due to its popularity but also due to its new tactics with the new special infected.

The release date is to coincide with the Mac Left 4 Dead 2 release on the 5th of October

That’s it for this Week in Games.

Next week… Who knows?