In my first encounter I generated a single-player world named Ferros, then created my character sprite from a handful of hairstyles, clothing colors, and skin colors. After a brief loading screen as the world was being generated, I popped into an area with an NPC named “Guide”. Talking with the Guide, I received information on how to use the basic set of tools that I started with to chop down trees, dig up minerals, and construct basic crafting items. Information was even provided on how to get other NPCs to move in and populate an area. After some digging, gathering of stones, and baking of gray bricks in my homemade forge, I was able to construct a stone building with doors, walls, and torches. As soon as the final wall went in, the Guide walked up to the door, opened it up, and moved right in, thus forming the foundation of my new town.

A new member to the neighborhood.

As with Minecraft, the day and night cycle is a very prominent mechanic. While there are slimes which populate the surface world during the daylight hours, they are easily slain for gold and gel, which can be used to craft torches. When the sun goes down, however, zombies and demon eyes roam the earth, pounding at the doors of your fortifications in an attempt to reach your delicious brains. For those well-equipped and brave warriors willing to wade through the moonlight, there is ample reward. Falling from the sky every night are shooting stars, which may be picked up and combined together in order to raise your character’s maximum Mana Points. Through dynamic character progression which carries over from single-player to any multi-player server you join, one may learn advanced spells, bolster their health points, and carry over high-tiered gear.

This wand shoots thorns. Through anything. It's kind of a big deal.

After my first session playing single-player, I tried my hand at hosting a server in order to see what the multi-player was like. To me, this is where the game really shines, despite the fact that it is currently a little bit difficult to set-up and get working properly. After a fair amount of time figuring out port-forwarding, setting up a static IP, and downloading Hamachi, I was able to connect with a few friends from out of town. One friend explored to the East and found a pit where the “Corruption” had set in, a seemingly random occurrence where the sky darkens, the terrain looks blighted, and massive worms and flying baddies roam the surface. She put up a wall stronghold at the edge of the pit, creating a symbolic line of defense and a perfect staging area for future excursions. While the building in Minecraft is far more intricate and involved, the construction in Terraria has a level of utility that feels like you’re accomplishing something beyond simply building for building’s sake.

Another exciting addition to the gameplay in multi-player mode is the addition of events. Whenever a few of us were online at one time, we would receive foreboding messages in the chat box indicating that something was about to happen. For instance, one day when the sun went down, the message of “The Blood Moon is rising…” appeared, causing some confusion as to what that meant. It soon became clear, as swarms of zombies began assaulting our fortified town. Much to our dismay, fueled on by the crimson moon rising in the sky, these super-powered zombies began to destroy walls and open doors to flood our protective constructs. Fighting back to back until the morning, we pushed off wave after wave of the undead hordes until finally the sun came up. As we caught our breath, we checked our pockets and counted our gold to find a healthy sum of loot from the long night of relentless assault. These events seem to occur only when multiple people are connected at once, and can range from goblin invasions, to the announcement that a meteorite has landed somewhere, prompting players to explore the surface to find these incredibly rare sources of meteor rock which can be crafted into high-end armor and even ammo for guns.

Upon a full week of playing online with friends, we are still managing to discover new loot, and with new updates already being released and planned, the opportunity for continued exploration and discovery is potentially limitless. We’ve just begun to explore the deepest reaches of hell, an area populated by fire imps and devastating bone worms. I look forward to all of the future plans for the developers, as the sheer fun factor can only improve as the systems become more refined and robust.

Also, for those willing to drop 10 dollars on this gem through Steam and join us on-line, Geekspective has a community server. Don’t be a dick, take only what you need, and respect others’ buildings when not involved in a time of war.

The IP for this server is : 24.12.110.116:7777

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Pirates of Black Cove is scheduled to release later this year on PC.

The Witcher is easily one of the best RPGs out there, twisting mature themes throughout a dark fantasy realm. It has a fantastic story told through some very realized characters. And one of the best aspects is its decision ambiguity; there were multiple instances where I really had to think about my choices, ultimately not having a good/bad, right/wrong scenario.

CD Projekt may be taking a risk building the sequel from the ground up, but it’s looking good so far. And just remember: this demo footage is Pre-Beta. It’s fairly raw graphically, and the video quality doesn’t do the game any favors either.

If touch-screen interfaces float your boat, then take a look…. here.

The intro of the second title in the series finds the player controlling Subject Delta, a Big Daddy with little to no memories of his past. Delta wakes up a decade after the events of Bioshock to the voice of familiar secondary character Brigid Tenenbaum. It seems over the last 10 years, things have been getting even worse in Rapture. For those familiar with the shit/fan levels of discord in the first title, one can imagine that the city is pretty biblically boned. Thanks to the atmospheric Big Daddy suit, you’ll be able to wade through the damaged and submerged portions of Rapture, as well as a few trips out to the ocean floor, allowing you to gain some pretty awe inspiring vistas of the underwater metropolis.

One new feature that was never introduced in the first title is the multiplayer mode. Fans of FPS mainstays like Call of Duty and Halo will find a lot of familiar mechanics here. Individual Loadouts can be arranged to combine a vast number of weapons, plasmids, and gene enhancers for your character. These weapons and plasmids are unlocked by gaining experience, or ADAM in this case.

ADAM is acquired through many different means. Hacking a gun turret to only target your opponents will earn you ADAM, not to mention giving you an advantageous position on the field. Killing your opponents and then researching their corpses to gain a damage boost against them will also earn ADAM. ADAM can even be collected in vials which are spawned only once in areas all over the maps detailed environments and secret passages. All of these things combine to force the players to stay moving around the field in order to take advantage of opportunities to gain ADAM.

There are several different modes of play, including renditions of Free-for-all, Team Deathmatch, Territories, and Capture the Little Sister. All of these game types feature the 1959 Civil War between Atlas and Ryan, with the player fighting on the side of one of the charismatic would-be-Rulers of Rapture. The whole experience is wrapped up in a stylish hub where your character can change weapon loadouts, costumes, and listen to audio journals from the main characters as they fight through this Civil War. Everything blends together to create a multiplayer experience that feels more like a canonical account of the civil strife going on in Rapture during the actions of the first Bioshock title. The multiplayer experience is innovative and easily on par with many of the other popular multiplayer titles out right now.

My only issue with the feature so far has been a small margin (approx. 5-10%) of matches which were cripplingly laggy. I’m sure this could merely be the rush on the servers for being the first day of release, or an early bug that will be quickly resolved. Time will tell, but for now I think that the inconvenience is minor enough to ignore for the sake of such a fresh multiplayer dynamic.

One of the other main differences in the first two titles is the ability to dual-wield plasmids and weapons. This allows players to execute a quick left trigger freeze plasmid followed by a right trigger shotgun blast moments later, causing the splicer on the receiving end to shatter into pieces. The hacking mini-game has been replaced as well, with focus on mid-combat hacking being a very viable option. Instead of completing series of tubes, you’re now tasked with stopping a moving needle on green zones instead of red zones. The rest of the action will not be paused however, requiring you to dive into cover in order to turn a sentry gun against your enemies.

All things considered, I think the game is innovative enough to warrant some more accolades to be piled onto 2K Marin’s titan shoulders. It remains to be seen if and when the lag issues will be dealt with, so unless you’re the type that doesn’t mind the occasional setback, you may want to wait a bit before dropping any money on the title. Otherwise, I think the innovative multiplayer is more then ample enough to warrant a solid regret-free purchase. One more thing, if you can still manage to get the swag-riddled Collector’s Edition, don’t make my mistake of missing out on it. Buy the damn thing, the multitude of goodies are more than worth the cash.

In Return to Ostagar, the player is tasked with returning to the battlefield of Ostagar where a majority of the Grey Wardens were exterminated by the Darkspawn. Arriving on the scene, you find there are no survivors and a lot of Darkspawn to be punished. Along your way, you’ll reclaim the lost arms and armor of King Cailan and Duncan. Not only do these look pretty cool, they are statistically superior to much of the armor in the game.

This is basically where the content stops, however. Ostagar hasn’t changed much, aside from now being covered in snow and in a state of crumbling disrepair. There is one additional achievement to be earned, and all in all the Return to Ostagar mission takes all of 30 minutes if you’re quick about it. For the amount of content, I can’t personally see what caused all the delays.

The price point seems to be on par with the rest of the DLC for the title. 15 bucks will get you a new character and a few new quests and items. 7 bucks will get you a new quest, a storage box, some new powers, and some new items. And apparently for 5 bucks you can just get a new quest and some items. If you’ve already got the MS points burning a hole in your pocket, or 5 bucks is just a trifle to you, by all means add this little bit of spice to your already zesty RPG experience. If not, I would certainly wait for the chance of a sale or DLC bundle to be released on the cheap.

Left 4 Dead 2 takes so much of what was great about the first title and galvanizes it with some sturdy new elements. As before, we are following the exploits of four survivors of the sweeping zombie infection of the United States. The game takes place in and around New Orleans and features a high school football coach, a cynical riverboat gambler type, another nondescript female, and an unlikely storyteller. Each chapter this time tells a linear tale, starting with our survivors being stranded at an evacuation point atop a hotel, ending with their eventual dust-off on the other side of town, and including everything in between.

The level design has been improved greatly between the two titles. Whereas many of the stages from the first game felt like mundane treks through various generic cityscapes and sewer lines, each level in L4D2 contains something unique to set it apart from the others. The first stage sends the survivors down from the roof of a burning high-rise hotel into a zombie-filled mall. After that, the survivors find themselves fighting clown zombies in an amusement park, crazed zombie yokels in the bayou, and escaping through downtown New Orleans.

Various environmental effects add to the terror in this title.  While wading waist-deep in a swamp or river, survivors are slowed greatly. This causes the players to seek out higher ground throughout the chaos. One level finds the players traveling through a suburban neighborhood to retrieve gasoline cans from a sugar mill, only to have the area completely transformed on their return trip by a blinding rain storm and flash flood. As if the onslaught of undead weren’t enough to put you on your nerves, gamers are now forced to acknowledge the environment in a big way.

Another addition to the mix is uncommon infected. These zombies don’t command the great powers that the special infected do, but still have something to set them apart from the rest of the horde. The best example is the clown zombie of the amusement park episode. Amongst the common infected of the Dark Carnival are zombies which will, when alerted, squeak their shoes and attract even more flesh-eaters to the cabal. It becomes clear that many of these uncommon infected become priority considering their unique and sometimes inconvenient effects.

New special infected have been included as well. The Jockey will leap onto the shoulders of a survivor and yank them away from the group, pulling them into dangerous situations, out of sight from the rest of the group, or even pulling them off of ledges. The Spitter can lay down a patch of bubbling acid that causes severe damage to those that stay in it too long, especially devastating against survivors who are already incapacitated or pinned down by another infected. Last but not least are the Chargers. As implied by the name, a Charger will barrel down on a group of survivors, scattering everyone in its path and slam one unlucky soul into the ground repeatedly until it is stopped.

A new gametype has been added for multiplayer entitled Scavenge. Similar to versus mode, teams in scavenge must take turns as zombies and survivors to either collect gas cans within a time limit or stop the opposing team from collecting them. Various techniques can be employed by both sides to achieve an end, and the action is made even more frantic by the stationary nature of the matches. At any given time, the special infected know exactly where the survivors are located.

Finally, the arsenal has been greatly improved this time around. There are now multiple types of shotguns, automatic weapons, and rifles to keep one’s ranged experience varied and intriguing. Melee weapons have also been introduced and can be used to replace the pistol as one’s sidearm. Magnums have even been included as a more powerful sidearm alternative to the original 15 round peashooter. Couple these powerful new weapons with much gorier zombie death animations, and the player is immediately and completely immersed in a visceral adrenaline-fueled undead bloodbath.

Due to the short wait between the two titles, I suspect that many expected there wouldn’t be as much new content added in such little time. In some ways, this is correct. The basic mechanics and elements of game play have been essentially kept intact, but for a title that got so much right the first time around, this is a good thing. The handful of new characters, weapons, and game mechanics that have been included act as a catalyst however, filling in the holes of the first game and providing a complete package that excels at bringing random strangers together to cooperate under threat of extinction.

Final Verdict – 10/10

Worth releasing this soon, no reason to keep this masterpiece from the fans. Valve knows how to make a good game. I played on the 360 version and have completed all 5 campaigns with various random XBox Live gamers.

To start, the player creates their character from a fairly straightforward character creator which is essentially a much simpler version of Origins‘ creator. The player’s character begins on a journey with their unit to the Deep Roads to do battle with the rising number of Darkspawn in the area. Barely escaping an ambush by an unusually large force of Darkspawn, you escape to the Dwarven capitol of Orzammar and attempt to rally support against the Darkspawn threat. Throughout the game, battle goes down on a hex grid in a style similar to the Might and Magic series. As you gain experience, you can level up your characters and assign their talents, giving you a little bit of insight into the way characters will advance in Origins.

For a program constructed in Flash, the visuals are fantastic. Characters and environments contain a high level of detail by Flash standards, thanks in great part to Adam Phillips of Brackenwood fame. My only beef with the visual design of the game is that the dungeons one must crawl through are quite mundane, repetitive, and flat. Some effort could have been made to at least throw in the illusion of vertical depth. One assumes that a massive series of underground caverns would not be a perpetually flat plane. All things considered, the visual experience is quite refined for a platform that is primarily used as a workplace time waster.

On its surface, Journeys is a pretty unassuming strategy RPG with some solid dialogue and graphics. As mentioned previously, EA2D has employed some distinguished veterans from the field of Flash gaming, so the game doesn’t mess around. Where the game truly shines is the way it factors into the overall Dragon Age marketing plan. For completing surveys, unlocking achievements, or accomplishing certain quests, one may unlock equipment which can be downloaded and used for your characters in Dragon Age: Origins. In this way, a continuity is created between platforms, and the IP gains integrity as a well-constructed, connected mythos. This manner of storytelling and multimedia integration is truly an epoch-making endeavor.

In terms of replayability, the game will take up several hours for each playthrough. Also, considering that the greatest of the unlockable items, the Helm of the Deep, requires an achievement that demands playing through the game as each of the three classes, it will take multiple replays of the game to unlock everything. The multiple dialog choices and varying talent specs for each class allow for a fresh experience each time, making the replays quite enjoyable.  Overall, between the immaculate crew of flash authors, brilliant marketing tactics, and superb storytelling, Dragon Age Journeys is a franchise that I look forward to seeing more of. Keep up the good work, EA2D.

The game follows Sofi, a young girl who follows an increasingly dangerous path through her dreamscape. Sofi constantly moves towards the right side of the screen, and it is up to the player to place randomly selected tiles into the level to adjust her path and steer her clear of obstacles. Despite Sofi’s slow gait, this gets very frantic, very fast.

Graphically, this game is exceptionally pleasing. For a game that handles the subject of dreams, the visuals certainly do the subject matter justice. Landscapes vary from level to level, with backdrops and obstacles running the gamut from pleasant valleys to treacherous, craggy, oceanic trenches.

The musical score varies depending on the landscape Sofi is traversing. While utilizing a staircase tile, the music will lightly step upwards in pitch, for example. The ambient nature of the music complements the dreaminess of the piece very nicely, creating a whimsical sensory experience that is brilliant and inspired.

Overall, the game has enough to keep you going back to get the most out of your money. To collect all of the fireflies, the collectible items placed throughout each level, requires many replays of each level. The challenges can be very unforgiving, causing me to step away from the game for a while in a few situations. So, those of you who are fans of surpassing paramount difficulty will be quite pleased.

Final Verdict : 8.5

Graphically, the game is a stunning achievement for the 360. Dark corridors have never been such a pleasure to skulk down. No detail is spared. The lazy whirlings of ceiling fans cast windmill shadows on the walls, water drips from the age old arterial water mains of the oldest correctional facility in Gotham, and the tattered sleeves of torn straight jackets waggle lifelessly from the flailing arms of escaped mad men. Rocksteady has crafted a world that is an absolute pleasure to explore. Given any amount of time, I’m sure one could still manage to find something previously missed.

The game’s audio is a great boon as well. The characters are all voice acted by some familiar actors. Mark Hamill lends his spectacular talent to the voice of the Joker, gracing you with his vocal skills not only during cutscenes, but in raucous heckling through the PA system of Arkham Asylum as well. Voice acting aside, for every bit of attention to detail that they spent with the graphics, they shared with the environmental sound. The whoosh of Batman’s cape as he spins to connect with a foe at his aft, the roar of the wind as he glides through the sky, or the thunk of the grapple gun finding purchase on a distant ledge: everything is carefully concerted to provide the most immersive experience possible.

People that are not fans of the Batman series need not worry. Rocksteady has crafted a game where, if Batman were not present and all the franchised characters were replaced, it would still happen to be an incredibly engaging game. The addition of Batman’s mythos to that equation simply made the title all the more exciting. The character bios and Riddler challenges provide plenty of new information for those already into the franchise and are a great launching point for any neophyte’s Dark Knight journey.

My only real issue with the game is that, unless you know exactly what you’re looking for in your environment, you will be spending a great majority of your time in Detective Mode which renders the entire world in x-ray blue. Many times I found myself forgetting that the world did in fact have colors, and then I would switch my visor off for a moment and marvel at the detailed surroundings. I only suffered from one or two graphical glitches, but it was just enough that you could simply get into character and blame it on Scarecrow’s fear gas and consider it adding to the experience.

All things considered, this game is paramount. Every year, there is one game that defines the interactive media art form for that moment in time. 2007 had Bioshock, 2008 had Fallout 3, and based on it’s originality and intuitiveness, I think it is safe to say that Batman: Arkham Asylum will be the signature title of 2009.

Final Verdict – 9/10

While playing through Batman: Arkham Asylum, I realized that there are a lot of random characters that have little to do with the storyline aside from being passive observers whirled about in Joker’s chaotic maelstrom. In an effort to lend some voice to these ancillary characters, I will be writing small letters, journal entries, etc. from the perspective of various guards and inmates of Arkham Asylum. I will try to keep these as spoiler free as possible, and so far I think I’ve accomplished that. So, without further ado, the first installment of Letters from Arkham.

Henry Smith – Some crazy bitch dressed like one of them Frenchy circus types nearly dropped a damn service elevator on my head. Wouldn’t have gotten out of the way in time if the Batman hadn’t pulled me aside. I guess it IS good that Batman spook was around when Joker sprung his buddies. Guy still freaks my stuff out, though…

Louie Green – Hell of a day to be on guard duty. I come in to work and they send me outside to guard the mansion. They keep playin’ this damn tune on the radio all day, it’s really buggin’ me. Found out some asshole guard helped spring the Joker. Jerk got what was coming to him, sounds like. Batman tells me Joker’s running the show around here now, turns out he’s the one that ordered me outside.

Dr. Penny Young – 5 of the Joker’s goons decided to corner me in the X-Ray room. They thought that I would make a good candidate to help them out with whatever this whole operation of theirs is on Arkham Island. Before I even had the chance to answer their persuasions, two of the damn walls get blown in, knocking out my would-be captors. Who swoops in to save me but the Batman. I always thought that guy was just a myth to spook children into being good. Seems the big black bat is trapped on this island with the rest of us, I guess there is a bright side to all of this.

That is all for the first installment of Letters from Arkham. If any of you readers are so literarily inclined and also happen to be playing through Arkham Asylum, feel free to send in your own letters to dpulley@geekspective.com and I’d be happy to include them in the next digest.

Set on the surface of Mars, RFG finds Alec Mason as a fresh from Earth demolitions expert seeking a new life on the red planet as a miner.  As he arrives, Alec finds that the Earth Defense Force has much of the planet and its inhabitants under strict lock and key. As it turns out, Alec’s brother Dan just so happens to be part of the Red Faction insurgency which would oppose the EDF’s iron rule. After much reluctance, Alec finds himself joining the Red Faction after the EDF ruthlessly gun down his only blood tie on Mars.

Right from the start you can tell why the game’s subtitle is “Guerrilla”.  This is a game about fighting an overwhelming force using hit and run guerrilla tactics.  While most games usually throw you into the fray as an army of one, Guerrilla requires some planning and tactical destruction, or else you will quickly find yourself surrounded and respawning at the nearest safe house. However, the game gives you plenty of tools with which to get in quick, take down targets, and make a hasty getaway.

One of my favorite features is the ability to do anything you wish and have it positively effect the progress of the game. While Niko Bellic may be free to go on all manners of elaborate crime sprees and car chases, these seldom offer actual advancement of the game aside from the ocassional monetary gain from the corpse of a hapless pedestrian. In Guerrilla, everything that you destroy or do will either give you salvage to upgrade weapons, raise the morale of the mining populace, or weaken the grip that the EDF holds on that particular sector.  The actions you do will often effect all three of these things.

The game offers up a slew of possibilities for completing the 100+ guerrilla missions and 20 campaign missions.  For example, the Red Faction may contact you to inform you of an EDF convoy making its way through the territory. The projected route of the convoy will be laid out on your mini-map. You could confront the convoy head on, set up a roadblock and remote charges to catch them off gaurd, or wait for them to cross a bridge and detonate it, sending the vehicles crashing into a ravine to be finished off. All of these are viable options and completely up to the player to pick and choose which tools and tactics to employ to accomplish objectives.

At times the destruction can be a bit unrealistic. A building, after having three whole walls and corners removed via sledgehammer, may still stand in defiance of all conventional laws of physics. These instances are not often enough to be much of a nuisance, and the Geo-mod 2.0 system is a vast improvement over the destruction in the first two titles. It’s the little things that set the engine apart from other gaming engines. While toting one of your guerrilla buddies in the bed of a truck across the martian dunes, slamming over a large enough bump may send your companion bouncing into the air like an NBA star with arms flailing, shouting obscenities as his trajectory finds him coming down just short of the bed of your truck.

While the single-player campaign is certianly an entertaining time sink, the multiplayer is where the true heft of the game lies. Lag, connection issues, and many of the other problems that plague most games shortly after launch are rarely present here. Of the many games that I have played, I’ve only been dropped from about as many as I can count on one hand.

The game types are familiar, nothing too out of the ordinary here.  There are of course deathmatch, capture the flag, and capture point gametypes, as well as Demolition and Siege, which are more in tune with the destructive nature of the title. Demolition pits two teams against eachother in an attempt to destroy the most structures. Each team has a player designated as Destroyer whose goal is to travel the map destroying as many buildings as possible, while the rest of the teammates work to defend their team’s Destroyer and kill the opponent’s. During Siege, each team takes turns defending and assaulting key buildings in a base. All in all, the variety in maps and gametypes allow for enough variation in gameplay to keep things fresh and entertaining for a very long time.

In the ever-growing desert of sandbox games, it is becoming harder and harder for developers to distinguish their title from giants like Grand Theft Auto and Fallout 3.  However, with its compelling and mechanically unique single-player campaign and the fast paced smash-em-up action of the online multiplayer, I feel that Red Faction: Guerrilla is easily one of the major stand-out sandbox titles that we’ve seen in a long time. I would definitely recommend this title for purchase. Even if you are not into multiplayer, there is enough to see and explore on the red planet to keep things interesting for a while. Plus, there’s just something therapeutic about smashing things in with a sledgehammer.

To be honest this maiden game didn’t get quite the gameplay time it rightfully deserved.  It wasn’t until the summer before my freshmen year at college (Fall of 2004) that I finally gave into peer pressure and built a gaming computer; before that I was rooting exclusively for the console team.  During orientation week my roommate introduced me to Call of Duty, a game to which he and many of my friends had become addicted the months prior.

I instantly fell in love.

The way her smooth, detailed edges elegantly rendered the gritty gore of WWII;  the graceful movement that made lifelike her strafes and grenade jumps; the joy in not knowing how badly the BAR was going to be screwed in subsequent games.

With this title, Infinity Ward nearly perfected the old-school shooter (loosely defined as the medipack days).  That’s not to say Call of Duty was necessarily innovative, but it was so well polished that the sheen by itself could almost carry the game.

But as I stated previously, the original title for me was not the in-depth experience later titles were.  Much like its review here, VCoD‘s existence was limited and jagged; released just one month after my introduction to the first…

United Offensive was the only expansion pack released within the CoD lineup.  Before merging with Treyarch, Gray Matter developed UO effectively as a patch to the original with a slightly different take on content and mechanics.

What both the original and expansion pack shared, however, was a very strong multiplayer package.  They offered frantically close-quartered gameplay with a relatively high number of possible players while giving the more strategic of its followers a very finessed, competitive experience.  The gun mechanics were also great; no gun felt or played like another.  Noticeable differences in distance and impact registration reflected the era weaponry well, helping balance all the guns (except maybe the FG42).

What about single-player?  Granted both games had nice historical snippets, but single-player campaigns are typically overlooked in CoD games (and for good reason).  There never is much of a story.  Both VCoD and UO suffered from lack of forward-pushing narrative.  Everything in the campaigns came off as backstory/history rather than “here and now, you literally are in the war” motivation.  Enemies came out in droves, endlessly spilling from god-knows-where.  It’s good to see massive amounts of enemies in war games, but ever-spawning Nazis get annoying very quickly.  The level design wasn’t bad, except for the fact that many (if not all) of the scenes and scenarios came verbatim from Hollywood productions.  Enemy at that Gates, Saving Private Ryan.  Hell, I started laughing when I saw the Carentan episode of Band of Brothers because the game level is EXACTLY the same.

But what did United Offensive specifically bring to the table?  The contributions from UO still linger within the series.  Gameplay mechanics were tweaked to add sprinting and cooked grenades; the first, crude usage of a per-game ranking system was added;  multiplayer was enlightened to capture-the-flag matches;  and don’t forget the ever-loving satchel charge made its debut.  However, one piece of content made its way into the series that has only popped up once again down the road.  Infinity Ward has always stated that their Call of Duty games are about the infantry: man-to-man combat, frag grenades, and iron sights (or ACOG scope, depending on your timeline).  They wanted the combat to be personal.  So to have Gray Matter add vehicular gameplay this early in the series seemed odd.

Tanks and jeeps (and their associated artillery canons) warranted the developer to add larger maps.  In doing so, the gameplay weakened.  Sure, having a multiplayer map specifically designed to have two tanks duel old-west style is awesome, but the vehicle maps crippled the normal gameplay.  The original game was not designed with vehicles in mind, so their addition here seemed tacked on, not only changing the game, but bogging it down to near unplayability.  Thankfully, vehicles were optional.

United Offensive in my mind is a very rare gem.  Not normally does a expansion surpass its core game, but UO seemed to do it in spades.  It not only maintained the overall feel of VCoD, it grew from the foundation and became its own entity.

Around the time of the original Call of Duty, times they were a changin’.  Gaming was becoming a more mainstream “necessity”.   Consoles were becoming more like single-box, all-purpose media centers.  Games like Halo were leading the first-person shooter front, proving games on console could be fairly profitable.  It was inevitable that Infinity Ward would make the plunge.

Call of Duty 2 represented the franchise’s leap into full mainstream gaming.  For the first time CoD could be played on a home console.  It was a launch title for the Xbox 360 and quickly became one of the best selling/reviewed games of the year.  The question, though basic, is – why?  Many players of VCoD and UO turned their backs on the game right out of the gate, as I almost did.  Why could a game be so well received while simultaneously shunning many of its core gamers?

The very blunt answer was Halo.  As I said the Halo series was causing a surge of FPS fandom on consoles.  Along with that, it brought one basic gameplay overhaul.  Looking back on it, the change seems minuscule; however at the time it was nearly a deal breaker for hardened players.  That change?  Regenerative health.

Med packs, pills, virgin blood – whatever the execution, these health pick-me-ups and a limited life bar were in our blood.  Switching this one thing completely changed the landscape of CoD gameplay, for better or worse.  The idea of hiding and miraculously healing seemed idiotic, again at the time.  Now, it seems only Valve still holds valiantly to the olden days of a life bar (look at their track record and decide what is best).  But I’m glad I stuck with CoD2; it became one of my favorite games, even with its faults.

Obviously a next-iteration game will have a graphics overall, and CoD2 didn’t skimp on the visuals.  Although many competitive PC players crippled their graphics down to DirectX 7 to obtain a better model distinguishability (hell, I know I did), maxing out the settings still creates a game that can compete visually with most new games coming out today.

The single-player campaign like the previous games was pretty barebones.  Minor missions took you through action set-pieces with no real storyline or reason to actually play through it.  Again, Infinity Ward seemingly spent most of their time with the multiplayer aspect of the game.

We were granted with ten new mp maps along with three recreated fan-favorites from the previous games.  The level design was exceptional.  Every place on a map had little nuances that were perfect for holding or covering a section of the map, but at the same time could be taken by a flank or flushed out with nades.  The balancing of each map was really well done.  Granted, spawning didn’t quite (or even remotely) match the quality of level design (I’m looking at you Dawnville), so the multiplayer quality can be pretty subjective.

My only real gripe with this game was the hit detection.  Right out of the box, the hit detection was buggy and subsequently never really fixed.  For a time my clan participated in “rifles only” matches; when you’re using a long-range, bolt-action weapon as your only gun, character hit boxes are much more relevant and noticeable then with spray-and-pray tactics.

Overall CoD2 was pretty solid.  The graphics, sounds, level design; all were done well.  I wouldn’t go as far as to say it surpassed its predecessors, but it was a worthy addition to the franchise.

Treyarch takes its first true crack at the main CoD lineup.  14 people play.

And so the WWII era officially dies…

Even when Call of Duty 2 came out, World War II games were starting to get stale.  I mean how many re-tellings of Easy Company’s hardships can we take before we don’t care anymore?  Infinity Ward realized this and quickly began production of their next installment right after CoD2 was finished.  Taking us out of nazi Germany and setting us down into the turmoil of the Middle East, Modern Warfare dragged us into modern day combat.

Not only did the setting change, Infinity Ward did a complete overall.  The graphics, especially the particle effects, were upgraded nicely;  the sound design reached new depth and realism; many of the gameplay elements from UO (sprinting, nade cooking, etc.) were added back; multiplayer received a fully-functional XP ranking system; singleplayer was awesome; the lev…

Wait, wait, wait.  Back up a second.  Single-player was awesome?  In a CoD game?  Is that even possible?  Apparently so.  It only took seven games (counting the console-only spinoffs) before enough effort was put forth to create a quality campaign.  IW seemingly took their time and interlaced an interesting story amongst their mini-mission formula.  Every mission was unique and helped push the narrative forward.  The overall feel was much more cinematic then prior attempts, from the opening credits to the out-of-left-field nuke scenario to the gripping finale.  I still think ‘All Ghillied Up‘ is easily one of the best levels ever created; so much tension is built up and yet no bullet is fired until halfway through.  The dialog was immersive and seemed authentic.  The scenarios felt much more organic and less scripted.  Albeit mildly short, not much if anything was bad with this single-player go-through.

Which brings me to multiplayer.  Honestly, “flash in a pan” pretty much sums it up for me.  Modern Warfare took the frantic gameplay of CoD, added modern-day weaponry, built upon the kill-streak perks from UO, and essentially made everything too streamlined, too easy.  I bought CoD4 the day it released as early as Gamestop would allow.  By midnight two days later, I had reached level 55.  Granted, the leveling system was good, and it gave me a actual reason to play CoD on public servers, but after the initial *umph* reaction, I found the multiplayer to be quite lackluster.  The weapons were too much alike (except for the sniper rifles, which were useless).  The ‘noob tube’, though amazing, was extremely cheap.  The level designs were well detailed, but none really felt unique, just more of the same (although ‘Shipment’ was an amazing official ‘Wawa‘ map).  And overall it was just flat out too easy to kill someone. Don’t get me wrong though; Modern Warfare is fun in moderation.  But I mean I put at least 1,000 hours in CoD2, a game I basically hated at the get-go; CoD4 didn’t even come close.  It just grew old and tired too quickly.

Modern Warfare definitely switched around the reason I enjoyed it.  The single-player campaign was spectacular, but multiplayer came off neutered to me.  That is not my recipe for greatness or even longevity.

Welp, Treyarch returned, sucking the teet of their every-other deal with Activision.  Seems they backtracked a tad, ignoring IW’s transition to the present.  We find ourselves back in World War II, fighting Nazis again and wondering why this company is still attached to this franchise.

World at War is basically a cut-and-paste job, and a bad one at that.  It looks like they opened CoD4 in Microsoft Paint, splashed a little axis/ally color around, converted the game to a jpg, and released a pixelated mess.  Treyarch tried their damnedest to replicate the juggernaut that CoD4 had become.  In almost every way they stumbled.

The single-player campaign is modeled exactly after Modern Warfare: you get a seemingly much more cinematic experience with a grittier storyline weaving the missions together.  However, most aspects of this journey just did not work.  The voice acting was pretty bad;  Kiefer Sutherland must have gotten his paycheck early, because he was phoning it in like nobody’s business.  The dramatic in-game sequences were probably pretty cool, but I missed every last one of them since I was too busy trying to get through the level and didn’t pay attention to the non-existent queues (I even knew about the flamethrower death toward the end and still missed it).  The AI was simply idiotic, period.  The dragged-out, never-ending-onslaught, just-to-fill-time events got exceptionally annoying; didn’t you, Reichstag exterior?  Oh, and the dramatic heartbreak of seeing my Russian psyche die twenty times was so very refreshing.  Needless to say, I thoroughly disliked playing through this campaign.  It was much more a chore than fun or even interesting.

Hmm… If I disliked the multiplayer of CoD4, I wonder how this one fared.  Yup, horribly.  Atop the reasons I disliked the former, Treyarch managed to throw a few more displeasures into WaW that irked me.  For one, please stop putting vehicles in this series.  THEY DO NOT WORK!  Everything becomes off-balance.  Just stop it.  On top of that, the game also felt pretty sluggish.  Movements weren’t as crisp; weapon switching was slowed. Everything felt like it was happening a step behind what it should.

I will say though that WaW had one aspect I really liked, even if it wasn’t something new.  The weapons were well designed.  Everything had enough distinction that no weapon played the same as another.  That is one thing I always liked about WWII games: the variety and stats of weapons can be many and exaggerated to keep the game interesting, rather than everyone effectively running around with the same gun.

This is where I’ll end that mediocre praise and state that if I hadn’t received a free copy with my video card, there is no way I would ever pay money for this game.

Ah, Modern Warfare 2.  What do we have to look forward to this coming November?  Hopefully something worth $60 since even the PC game looks to match the price point of the console versions.  However, I feel my hopes will be thwarted.

The Call of Duty series for me has been a roller coaster time-line (can you guess which titles constitute the valleys?).  Even though each Infinity Ward attempt was good, if high school physics taught me anything, each subsequent peak of the coaster is lower than the previous.  If Modern Warfare 2 follows the trend, it’ll sell like mad, like 11.1 million copies this year mad.  But something won’t quite be right, causing another addition to the series to collect dust on my shelf before its time.

Let’s look at what we know so far.  The game seems to be an overall slightly tweaked version of CoD4.  This is fine given that the main storyline is a direct continuation, and the fact that CoD4 looked damn awesome in the first place.  Aside from a few teasers, we’ve only had one official trailer.  Come to find out the successor to CoD4‘s Zakhaev is pissed and launching his own “just” cause.  Based on what I saw of the E3 demonstration, the quality of Modern Warfare 2‘s single-player matches its predecessor exactly.  I’m actually somewhat giddy to play through the campaign.

Multiplayer though has not been mentioned as of yet.  Infinity Ward tends to hold off info until late in the game.  No demo nor beta has been officially announced either (or even rumored).  But if I had to guess, there will not be too many changes to the game in any regard; more of the same will tend to please most Call of Duty gamers.  We will just have to wait four more months to find out.  See you on the battlefield.

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PS – To those of you wondering about the side games (Finest Hour, Big Red One, or even Roads to Victory), seriously?  Did anyone actually play those?  If so, why?