April to June recap part 2
Monday, June 7, 2010So to continue my text from Part 1.
The last month I’ve been playing a wide variety of games ranging from Sports to Horror , but as the last part I’m going to list and give my impressions of the games that I’ve actually finished or spent enough time with to feel comfortable enough to give a real opinion about them. I guess I’ll start off with the game Red Dead Redemption.
Red Dead Redemption
I was just as hyped about this game as any other gamer out there, I knew from some simple videos what the game would be about and to some extent I knew about the game mechanics and features of the game. I got the game on the release day, I plugged in my headphones into my tv and turned up the volume since I knew I was in for an enjoyable experience.
Red Dead Redemption starts off amazing, you play has John Marston a former western gang member trying to quit his old life and live in peace with his family. Marston then get in trouble with the government, he gets blackmailed and forced to leave his family behind to hunt his old gang members. As you all probably know the game takes place in the Western America and Mexico, so you’ll see your share of cacti. The visuals of the game is amazing simple models allowing for a really nice view-distance and some awesome lighting. The game also uses blending normal maps, for example the horses one normal map to detail the horse in its’ idle state, and another with the muscle flexed when running. Overall the game looks really good and really gives a sense of a real and realistically brutal world.
The thing that impresses me most must be the random and unique events that happens to the player sometime, you can walk outside a saloon and see a drunk guy come-a walking down the street, or see a prostitute get attacked on the street, sometimes you get challenged to a duel. Lots of events keep happening depending on where you are in the game, so far I’ve encountered 30+ unique random events. And there is also plenty to do with regular static events as well. You can play differnent types of betting games, hunt criminals, hunt animals, complete ambient challenges and much more. The game is truly worth it’s money even though it has some glitches.
I’ve also tried the multiplayer mode, the competative mode is all fun and games forcing players to play against each other in team deathmatch, free for all, capture the flag type game modes. There is also a freeroam mode which allows up to 16 players to roam free all over the big map. However me and my 4-5 friends quickly realized that it’s not much to do in the freeroam mode after you’ve completed all the gang hideouts, you could of course try to finish all the challenges but it’s not as motivating. I really feel that Rockstar could’ve done the freeroam mode just as exciting as the singleplayer mode and I hope that in the future, they’ll release more stuff to do. Then we’ll definitely keep playing the game on our LAN-parties.
Alan Wake
We all have been waiting for this game, I remember five years ago (E3 2005) I looked at the first images released on the game. Back then the game was meant to be an open world horror game taking place in Bright Falls, allowing the player to go from place to place and to solve the mystery of the game. Five years later the game came out as a linear experience, with an interesting story and nice gameplay. Alan Wake is about the writer Alan Wake who decided to take a vacation in Bright Falls with his Wife. Wake cursed by the nightmares he’s having is looking to get some time off and relax from the pressure of writing his new book.
Upon arrival in Bright Falls Wake notices that the place almost looks like his dreams, the couple gets to stay at a cabin at the Diver’s Isle on Couldron Lake. The cabin is a cozy cabin on a tiny island on the lake, connected by a less than safe wooden bridge, once situated in the cabin weird juju stuff happens and Wake realizes that his vacation just turned into a nightmare.
Without spoiling to much I’ll move right into game mechanic, Alan Wake is a third-person horror action game, you play as Alan Wake trying to solve the mystery in Bright Falls and battling the forces of darkness. The game follows Alan as he visits different places in Bright Falls searching for clues during the days and fleeing from the darkness at night. Throughout the game Alan will happen upon The Taken, the Taken are the enemies in this game, they are people/creatures/things touched by the Darkness brewing in Bright Falls. To defeat them Alan uses a flashlight and most of the time a revolver. You use the flashlight to blind the enemies and to take away their darkness aura that keeps them protected from the physical damage, after you’ll want to use your revolver to take them out. The developers of the game are also the inventors of the Bullet-time effect seen in the games Max Payne 1 & 2, so of course Alan Wake also has some slow-motion cinematic effect to it as well, the game allows Alan to dodge & evade incoming blows or ranged attack at the touch of a button sometimes invoking a slow-motion effect to see how close you actually were to escape the incoming blow. It’s a nice touch to keep it fresh and it looks really good as well.
Even though you’ll see your share of battle the game is more about exploring and following a relatively linear path to your next goal, however even though it feels stale when I write it like this, Alans choices in the game feels natural and the flow of the game is good so it’ll keep you playing and on your toes while playing. The game is diveded into five or six episodes which is really nice since you can easily take a break from the game at each episode, and when you start a new episode you’ll get a quick recap of what happened in the last episode to keep you up to date. It’s a really nice touch that allows gamers with less-than-1½ hour of game time a day to stop at good checkpoints in the game.
I wouldn’t exactly say that the game is hard on Normal Mode, but for less skilled players or easily scared people it might prove quite a challenge sometimes. In the end I would say that the game looks great, plays great and is overall a great game even though it might get a tad repetitive to fight the enemies however the story keeps you motivated and interested throughout the game.
Alpha Protocol
I was really hyped about this game, however the game got released without much fuzz almost under the radar for some. Alpha Protocol is Obisidan Entertainments latest game, they’re known for Neverwinter Nights 2, Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic II both great games and they’re currently working with Fallout: New Vegas and an unannounced title using their Onyx Engine. Obsidian are known for their RPG-style games and I’ve really liked all of them so far.
Alpha Protocol is third-person action/RPG hybrid where you take the role as Mike Thorton an Alpha Protocol recruit agent. When I first started playing this game I was pretty satisfied with how it started I though the game looked decent and had good voice-acting however after just a couple of missions my mind had already gotten disappointed with the gameplay. The game isn’t good enough to be a good third-person action game, not with other amazing spy games out there like Splinter Cell, and the game isn’t deep enough in customization to be a complex RPG. HOWEVER I kept playing the game and was able to look past its’ flaws and I realized that the game is actually pretty decent, it’s not the hit of the year but it’s definitely a game you could play on a rainy day from start to finish.
I’m very impressed of the voice-acting and player models in this game, the VA (voice-acting) is very good in my opinion not even once did it feel silly, I believe the acting to be very serious and realistic. Before each mission you get a brief from your handler and sometimes a debrief after missions, they all felt very relevant and interesting. This game is certainly not for everyone, if you are the kind of person that can only see flaws in a decent game then this is not for you, I’m the kind of gamer that gives all games a second chance. You can’t give a real opinion after just playing a few hours, sometimes it’s needed to play form start to finish because this game picks up after the first missions and from the middle to the end it’s an absolute blast if you can look past all the gameplay quirks.
I would definitely recommend it to a friend, especially for a cheap price or if you can borrow it from someone, it’s worth at least a playthrough, and I’m actually on my second playthrough playing through the game as a different personality and it’s a lot of fun.
It seems like I need to buy a couple of games next month =)
Yeah, I’m getting more and more interested in Red Dead Redemption. I might just pick it up next month, unless something else catches my eye.
I’m also a bit more interested in Alpha Protocol no too, but still a bit unsure. Perhaps I’ll pick it up when it drops in price.
Yeah Alpha Protocol is probably the sneaky under-appreciated game this month. I didn’t like it at first but it kinds of grows on you. You get used to the quirks and start enjoying the gameplay.
Max Payne is my favorite game and i also like the movie.`’,
i love to play Max Payne all day long, it has lots of action in it.-”;