So MWO is out in open beta now. I've commented about it several times, and have raised many concerns as to its future. Unfortunately, I was right. Very right.
It's a F2P game that is very shallow in nature, repetitive in its grind, and completely unsuitable for release in its current stage. Netcode sucks, performance sucks, the awful motion blur, film grain, HDR, and bloom are obnoxious, content is lacking, game mode is boring, mech prices are WAY too expensive, matchmaking is nonexistent, the grind is painful even for the cheapest mech, and they still pushed it out the door into open beta anyway. The developers knew too, but they had deadlines to meet, which is a shame. They settled on releasing a minimum viable product (their words), and thus, I do not understand how they expect to receive anything more than a minimum viable score. What a terrible business plan.
They cited a bunch of other similar F2P games (namely World of Tanks) to justify their pricing and launch quality, but like I said before... F2P isn't a cureall, and a game released years ago shouldn't be used as the measuring stick for today.
Sadly, I really wanted to be wrong on this one, and for MWO to succeed. But I don't think it will. The biggest chance for MWO to get noticed was at launch, and they blew their chance. Even if they do fix up the game, it'll be too late, as Mechwarrior has always been a small community without the same level of magnetism. Even though it has only been the first 2 weeks of launch, the numbers are disheartening. The devs, PGI, have smartly pulled out the online players counter that was present in every iteration of beta. Worse, they're using a terrible engine (CryEngine 3) which suffers from persistent netcode problems and poor handling of fast moving vehicles (CryEngine 1+2 also had this problem, so MWLL was affected). Its engine also has shockingly poor performance despite being tailored to adhere to console specifications.
Well, I tried my best back in beta to warn the devs of this problem. I even spoke to them personally. They did stall beta few times to increase it's standard of quality, but this isn't enough. At least I enjoyed my time in the beta with it. You know, back when these flaws were 'acceptable'.
"It's just a beta, it'll be fixed on release." Yea, right.
Showing posts with label Multiplayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Multiplayer. Show all posts
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Leaked SWTOR developer's meeting
SWTOR Dev Lackey: GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GAIZ GAIZ! I has idea! What if we take our game, which nobody thinks is worth paying for... And then strip content out of it, and sell it back to them as individual components at a collectively higher price?
SWTOR Dev Lead: GENIUS. Let's take 6 months to covertly plan and develop our new F2P features, while subscribers continue to pay a monthly fee and receive no content updates. Then when F2P arrives, they will have to pay TWICE just to get back the items and perks they've earned and already paid for.
And thus, an already shitty game became a cosmic joke. In retrospect, I guess they achieved something original with the franchise after all, instead of just cloning another MMO.
If you haven't heard, SWTOR announced F2P some time ago, after the TORtanic prophesies proved true. Waves of players and developers abandoned the sinking ship, and EA hastily branded it a failure, and the sole unpredictable blemish on their otherwise flawless business strategy, deferring all blame onto Bioware. When your own parent disavows and abandons you, you know you've fucked up. Around that time, BW/EA tried to excuse themselves with data claiming that subscription based MMOs were dead, and an unsuitable payment model for the times. They also tried to reference F2P MMOs like LOTRO, DCUO, etc for their relative success. But the truth is, F2P isn't a cureall. I will probably make a dedicated post about that later, but F2P doesn't automatically make your game better, nor will it alleviate the existing flaws. However, no need to worry, because SWTOR never got the memo on how to make a F2P game; they focused all their time on fixing their public relations problems instead, so it would be a farce to even call this F2P.
Back to the headlines then: SWTOR officially launched their F2P today, and now all servers are open for you to play for free. Not that I would recommend it.
SWTOR's F2P restrictions are so tight, that many players are labeling it an 'extended trial', as it allows a player to level from 1-50, but little else. For the first time in any F2P MMO I've heard of, SWTOR restricts your UI, and makes you pay money to use it. It doesn't end there. Let's list some moronic restrictions:
SWTOR Devs: Herp derp, you don't want to pay $15 a month for my game? How about $20 for only 1/5th of my game? ULTRA DEAL!
It is clear that this F2P change won't draw in any more players than their free trial did. Because that's all this is: another free trial. And a chance for Bioware to double-dip into their subscribers and make them pay again for something they've already paid for months ago. And which ex-subscriber would be stupid enough to pay? If they didn't think the entire game was worth the money then, why would it be worth the value now? Nothing's changed, except for getting even less content. Sickeningly, it also means Bioware gets an excuse to put in a CASH SHOP into a P2P game. People would have been outraged if they did it while it was still technically P2P, but now they can call it F2P, however unfaithful it may be to that label. It shocks me that Bioware promises more content every 6 weeks from now on, when they've broken that promise repeatedly since release, when people were already supposedly paying monthly for content. Now that people don't have to pay monthly... They're promising monthly content again? How gullible do you think your subscribers are?
These guys have no fucking clue how to run a MMO, or a F2P game. Since release, more than half their employees and major project leads were fired, and I'm not sorry to see them go. They were trash and should never work in the industry again. My only regret is that their replacements are just as deluded and out of touch with gaming and the community.
What a fucking waste. And I'm not even surprised. I came to my senses in March, but that was already too much time wasted on this crap. So I'll redeem myself with a prediction, nay, a prophecy: SWTOR F2P is going to flop hard, and will not get any more players than a wave of trial offers. Not even close to the 50 million predicted (this guy should be fired too btw). Bioware won't shut down SWTOR so soon, so I foresee massive revamping of the F2P system, an admission of guilt and a shallow apology, then a reduction in its restrictions, and more incentive for ex-subscribers to return. New periodic content of substance will still be scarce. Cash shop profits will keep SWTOR afloat, and they'll attempt to use it to bolster their reputation and initial claims, despite subscriber numbers not actually increasing (but they'll conveniently avoid that data).
Update: Just read this at wired.
While the rest of the article points at a conclusion I'm not quite ready to accept, this segment of it is spot on. The game is bad, that's why it's not worth $15 a month. If they focused on trying to make the game better to match the $15, it would be harder, but ultimately a better product. Instead, they weakened the product to market it at a deceptively cheaper price. I also don't think the problem is with the p2p MMO archetype, it is with the games being lackluster and ultimately, lacking the frequent updates you'd expect with a monthly bill. Imagine subscribing to a magazine, and paying a monthly fee only to get the same issue over and over again. Not enough content? Re-read it! Read it backwards! Fold it into origami! Keep yourself warm at the fireplace! The sad thing is, f2p moba games update every 2 days, yet $15 a month, despite server maintenance costs, give you an update every 6 months if you're lucky? I'm afraid the problem lies with the developers and publishers, not with the model.
SWTOR Dev Lead: GENIUS. Let's take 6 months to covertly plan and develop our new F2P features, while subscribers continue to pay a monthly fee and receive no content updates. Then when F2P arrives, they will have to pay TWICE just to get back the items and perks they've earned and already paid for.
And thus, an already shitty game became a cosmic joke. In retrospect, I guess they achieved something original with the franchise after all, instead of just cloning another MMO.
If you haven't heard, SWTOR announced F2P some time ago, after the TORtanic prophesies proved true. Waves of players and developers abandoned the sinking ship, and EA hastily branded it a failure, and the sole unpredictable blemish on their otherwise flawless business strategy, deferring all blame onto Bioware. When your own parent disavows and abandons you, you know you've fucked up. Around that time, BW/EA tried to excuse themselves with data claiming that subscription based MMOs were dead, and an unsuitable payment model for the times. They also tried to reference F2P MMOs like LOTRO, DCUO, etc for their relative success. But the truth is, F2P isn't a cureall. I will probably make a dedicated post about that later, but F2P doesn't automatically make your game better, nor will it alleviate the existing flaws. However, no need to worry, because SWTOR never got the memo on how to make a F2P game; they focused all their time on fixing their public relations problems instead, so it would be a farce to even call this F2P.
Back to the headlines then: SWTOR officially launched their F2P today, and now all servers are open for you to play for free. Not that I would recommend it.
SWTOR's F2P restrictions are so tight, that many players are labeling it an 'extended trial', as it allows a player to level from 1-50, but little else. For the first time in any F2P MMO I've heard of, SWTOR restricts your UI, and makes you pay money to use it. It doesn't end there. Let's list some moronic restrictions:
- Only get 2 of the available 6 hotbars for skills (and believe me, you need at least 4)
- Pay more at vendors and every time you exchange tokens for gear (the primary way to get good gear)
- Can't use guild bank or regular banks (any items inside are locked)
- Can't mail or trade
- Cant accept common quest rewards
- Can only post 2 auction house listings
- Cant have more than 200k credits on you (the rest is locked into an account that is never released until you subscribe)
- Can only talk in 2 channels at 1 message a minute
- Cant wear epic gear (even if earned from being a subscriber)
- Cant wear event gear (even if earned from being a subscriber)
- Can't hide headslots or display titles or legacy name (even your 'founders title' awarded from being a long term subscriber)
- Can only roll 3 times for loot in dungeons PER week (failed rolls count)
- Can only do 5 battlegrounds a week (losses and incomplete games count, and the weekly quest requires 9 battlegrounds won)
- No access to the LFG tool
- No access to raids.
- Only 1 of 3 professions allowed
- Emotes are locked
- Half your inventory size. Anything in the other half is locked until you pay.
- Quick Travel (town teleport ability) cooldown is quadrupled, now at 2 hours. Emergency fleet pass (teleports you back to main fleet hub) completely disabled
- Only 2 characters per server. Returning players must select 2 and lock out the rest.
- No rest xp.
- No using /who.
- No using out of combat move speed passive ability until level 14.
SWTOR Devs: Herp derp, you don't want to pay $15 a month for my game? How about $20 for only 1/5th of my game? ULTRA DEAL!
It is clear that this F2P change won't draw in any more players than their free trial did. Because that's all this is: another free trial. And a chance for Bioware to double-dip into their subscribers and make them pay again for something they've already paid for months ago. And which ex-subscriber would be stupid enough to pay? If they didn't think the entire game was worth the money then, why would it be worth the value now? Nothing's changed, except for getting even less content. Sickeningly, it also means Bioware gets an excuse to put in a CASH SHOP into a P2P game. People would have been outraged if they did it while it was still technically P2P, but now they can call it F2P, however unfaithful it may be to that label. It shocks me that Bioware promises more content every 6 weeks from now on, when they've broken that promise repeatedly since release, when people were already supposedly paying monthly for content. Now that people don't have to pay monthly... They're promising monthly content again? How gullible do you think your subscribers are?
These guys have no fucking clue how to run a MMO, or a F2P game. Since release, more than half their employees and major project leads were fired, and I'm not sorry to see them go. They were trash and should never work in the industry again. My only regret is that their replacements are just as deluded and out of touch with gaming and the community.
What a fucking waste. And I'm not even surprised. I came to my senses in March, but that was already too much time wasted on this crap. So I'll redeem myself with a prediction, nay, a prophecy: SWTOR F2P is going to flop hard, and will not get any more players than a wave of trial offers. Not even close to the 50 million predicted (this guy should be fired too btw). Bioware won't shut down SWTOR so soon, so I foresee massive revamping of the F2P system, an admission of guilt and a shallow apology, then a reduction in its restrictions, and more incentive for ex-subscribers to return. New periodic content of substance will still be scarce. Cash shop profits will keep SWTOR afloat, and they'll attempt to use it to bolster their reputation and initial claims, despite subscriber numbers not actually increasing (but they'll conveniently avoid that data).
Update: Just read this at wired.
The $15-a-month subscription game is dying. But it’s not because players are cheap, it’s because they’re bored.
As the game development website Gamasutra put it, the most expensive game in history is now free: With a reported $200 million budget, the massively multiplayer RPG Star Wars: The Old Republic wasn’t attracting nearly the number of subscribers that publisher Electronic Arts needed if it was going to see returns. So EA added a business model that has been lucrative for other online games: Allow gamers to play for free, then charge them small amounts for upgrades once they’re hooked.
But that may not be enough. Experts in the space say the reason Star Wars struggles while other online games are killing it isn’t because of the money, it’s because of how the games themselves are designed. It’s not the business model that’s obsolete, but the product.
While the rest of the article points at a conclusion I'm not quite ready to accept, this segment of it is spot on. The game is bad, that's why it's not worth $15 a month. If they focused on trying to make the game better to match the $15, it would be harder, but ultimately a better product. Instead, they weakened the product to market it at a deceptively cheaper price. I also don't think the problem is with the p2p MMO archetype, it is with the games being lackluster and ultimately, lacking the frequent updates you'd expect with a monthly bill. Imagine subscribing to a magazine, and paying a monthly fee only to get the same issue over and over again. Not enough content? Re-read it! Read it backwards! Fold it into origami! Keep yourself warm at the fireplace! The sad thing is, f2p moba games update every 2 days, yet $15 a month, despite server maintenance costs, give you an update every 6 months if you're lucky? I'm afraid the problem lies with the developers and publishers, not with the model.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
MechWarrior Online (formerly MechWarrior 5, or MechWarrior 3015, or MechWarrior, PayToWin)
Remember this post I made 3 years ago on the upcoming MechWarrior game?
It has been announced officially as MechWarrior Online, a free to play game, launching sometime this year, and with no singleplayer campaign at all. They're aiming at an action oriented online arena feel, ala MechAssault.
I should have added another criteria to that wishlist: that it wouldn't be a whored out f2p game with tons of cash shopping to win. In my inbox today, I received an email offer from MWO for their upcoming cash shop packages. There are $30, $60, and $120 packages, giving you 1, 2 or 3 months of exp boost respectively. You also get some exclusive founders-only mech variants with a reskin. It's not clear from the wording whether or not the variants will be exclusive too, or if it's just a reskin/remodel of an existing variant available to all players. You also get a bit of in-game cash shop currency and some prestige crap.
Holy damn, that is a massive amount of money to pay, especially before a game launch. $120 is beyond what I'd even expect for a collector's edition, so why would anyone pay that except to get massive advantages? I'm not against all F2P games, but the setup here gives me the wrong vibe. I was expecting players would pay maybe $10 and be able to buy/unlock 3-4 items which could be obtained over a period of 1-2 weeks. But 60 USD for a 2 month buff, 1 reskin and $80 of cash shop? Just how pricey are the items going to be??
Next, it really seems these guys are copying the Tribes: Ascend formula. Fast-paced, jump-into-action game with unlockable items per class in an online arena. It worked pretty well for Tribes, but I'm not so sure it will for MWO. It's going to be just like MechAssault if it does that, and that's not how Mechwarrior is supposed to play at all. MechWarrior isn't about arena-deathmatches (although Solaris Arena is), instead, you play a battlefield with objectives and smart tactics and coordinated strategy with a full arsenal of Air, Infantry, Vehicles and Mechs.
Worse, MW has an incredibly rich history of lore that's just going to be abandoned for F2Ping. No doubt they'll add more and more items as the game goes on to milk it, but the rich backstory that MW is built upon is going to be unimportant. Who cares what's happening in Tribes? Who even knows the lore for that? You just go in and FRAG. That's not a mold MW fits into, no matter how hard MWO is jammed into that role.
Last thing, it seems rather likely now that mechs cannot be customized, and players will be limited to variants. This is probably the best way the devs can continue to milk players harder and harder. It also means things will be a little more bland, and less freeform as MW is supposed to be.
Well... At least there's MechWarrior Tactics coming out soon.
Wait, that's F2P too. Shit.
It has been announced officially as MechWarrior Online, a free to play game, launching sometime this year, and with no singleplayer campaign at all. They're aiming at an action oriented online arena feel, ala MechAssault.
I should have added another criteria to that wishlist: that it wouldn't be a whored out f2p game with tons of cash shopping to win. In my inbox today, I received an email offer from MWO for their upcoming cash shop packages. There are $30, $60, and $120 packages, giving you 1, 2 or 3 months of exp boost respectively. You also get some exclusive founders-only mech variants with a reskin. It's not clear from the wording whether or not the variants will be exclusive too, or if it's just a reskin/remodel of an existing variant available to all players. You also get a bit of in-game cash shop currency and some prestige crap.
Holy damn, that is a massive amount of money to pay, especially before a game launch. $120 is beyond what I'd even expect for a collector's edition, so why would anyone pay that except to get massive advantages? I'm not against all F2P games, but the setup here gives me the wrong vibe. I was expecting players would pay maybe $10 and be able to buy/unlock 3-4 items which could be obtained over a period of 1-2 weeks. But 60 USD for a 2 month buff, 1 reskin and $80 of cash shop? Just how pricey are the items going to be??
Next, it really seems these guys are copying the Tribes: Ascend formula. Fast-paced, jump-into-action game with unlockable items per class in an online arena. It worked pretty well for Tribes, but I'm not so sure it will for MWO. It's going to be just like MechAssault if it does that, and that's not how Mechwarrior is supposed to play at all. MechWarrior isn't about arena-deathmatches (although Solaris Arena is), instead, you play a battlefield with objectives and smart tactics and coordinated strategy with a full arsenal of Air, Infantry, Vehicles and Mechs.
Worse, MW has an incredibly rich history of lore that's just going to be abandoned for F2Ping. No doubt they'll add more and more items as the game goes on to milk it, but the rich backstory that MW is built upon is going to be unimportant. Who cares what's happening in Tribes? Who even knows the lore for that? You just go in and FRAG. That's not a mold MW fits into, no matter how hard MWO is jammed into that role.
Last thing, it seems rather likely now that mechs cannot be customized, and players will be limited to variants. This is probably the best way the devs can continue to milk players harder and harder. It also means things will be a little more bland, and less freeform as MW is supposed to be.
Well... At least there's MechWarrior Tactics coming out soon.
Wait, that's F2P too. Shit.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Mechwarrior 5 - FEUDALISM. IN SPACE.
The game is just called Mechwarrior, since its a series reboot. It still isn't too clear to me why a series reboot is justified in having a name that allows it to be easily confused with the original Mechwarrior game. That just sounds stupid to me.
"Hey lets reboot Spiderman and give him a new image that will rejuvenate the franchise"
"Alright, so we want to make it different from the original Spiderman right?"
"Yea, for sure. The old Spiderman is too boring, so we're making him different. This way fans can't even complain about inconsistencies."
"Uh okay. So what do we call it, if we want to make it differentiable?"
"How about... Spiderman?"
"..."
Seriously, that must be the conversation that occurs in Hollywood or wherever reboots may be made. Only God knows what is wrong with these people... And how they should be punished in hell accordingly.
So anyway, I will be referring to this new upcoming 2009 game as Mechwarrior 5, since it makes far more sense. Here is a trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl4eI3htAuA
It uses the UT3 engine. Cool that they were able to adapt the UT3 engine; it looks good. Not so cool that I can already bet that many sacrifices to gameplay were made to cater to this engine. Also, when a developer reuses an engine, they save development time and money. I fully expect that these resources are reinvested to the game itself, and the game should be even better than if it had its own engine. So, the bar has been raised, even though the game hasn't even been released. Well, they brought it upon themselves.
So whats the problem?
There is no problem! Yea! What a surprise, coming from me, the pessimist of the century. I am actually glad they are doing this game, as I am a big fan of Mechwarrior, and although I hate unfaithful adaptations, Mechwarrior's franchise was dead because its original IP holder, FASA had been liquidated. Microsoft held the rights, but they weren't going to touch the money-losing franchise with a 10 feet pole. Basically, the Mech fans had lost hope of having another game for ages... And here we have an opportunity to restart it... And its on PC! Man that sounds great way to bring back some old memories. Considering how I've been waiting on a MW mod that has been in development for years (and still is)... You can see how eager I am to play MechWarrior again.
With my optimism though, there are some things that bother me, although I won't really mind either way. Just think of it as a wishlist.
- I don't think that MW5 will support fully customizable mechs like in MW4. It may be following more of the boardgame rules in this sense, and only allow pre-set variants. That's a shame, because it makes it a little less fun, but it comes with the benefit of cutting out cheap variants that can abuse certain aspects. The gameplay will be more well balanced instead. I can appreciate both results in this case, although having full-customization for unranked or offline play would be the best of both worlds.
- The date in the trailer says 3015. The clans invaded in 3050 (late 3049 if you're really anal) so clan tech will probably not be in the game. That's a shame, since a lot of my favorite mech designs were from clans, and some of the best weapons in the game were also clan weapons. While this is alright from a lore perspective, clan weapons have always been plain superior upgrades relative to standard weapons. It made standard weapons instantly obsolete and redundant. I can understand the advantages to having clan weapons in the game, but also not having them. Like I said above, having the option in unranked/singleplayer would be amazing. However, I doubt clan chassis will be in, since that requires a lot more work for the developers. A friend though notes that the Atlas-C in the trailer is a variant made in 3080, so it could be possible that the reboot cheats the standard lore a little bit, and clans could be in anyway. How's that for geekdom?
That's really it for my wishlist. I'm really excited about this game, like I have not been for a game in a long time. I hope it'll have a larger and more tightly knit multiplayer community than the previous games.
Edit: Apparently the game is being called MechWarrior 3015 by the community. Fair enough.
"Hey lets reboot Spiderman and give him a new image that will rejuvenate the franchise"
"Alright, so we want to make it different from the original Spiderman right?"
"Yea, for sure. The old Spiderman is too boring, so we're making him different. This way fans can't even complain about inconsistencies."
"Uh okay. So what do we call it, if we want to make it differentiable?"
"How about... Spiderman?"
"..."
Seriously, that must be the conversation that occurs in Hollywood or wherever reboots may be made. Only God knows what is wrong with these people... And how they should be punished in hell accordingly.
So anyway, I will be referring to this new upcoming 2009 game as Mechwarrior 5, since it makes far more sense. Here is a trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl4eI3htAuA
It uses the UT3 engine. Cool that they were able to adapt the UT3 engine; it looks good. Not so cool that I can already bet that many sacrifices to gameplay were made to cater to this engine. Also, when a developer reuses an engine, they save development time and money. I fully expect that these resources are reinvested to the game itself, and the game should be even better than if it had its own engine. So, the bar has been raised, even though the game hasn't even been released. Well, they brought it upon themselves.
So whats the problem?
There is no problem! Yea! What a surprise, coming from me, the pessimist of the century. I am actually glad they are doing this game, as I am a big fan of Mechwarrior, and although I hate unfaithful adaptations, Mechwarrior's franchise was dead because its original IP holder, FASA had been liquidated. Microsoft held the rights, but they weren't going to touch the money-losing franchise with a 10 feet pole. Basically, the Mech fans had lost hope of having another game for ages... And here we have an opportunity to restart it... And its on PC! Man that sounds great way to bring back some old memories. Considering how I've been waiting on a MW mod that has been in development for years (and still is)... You can see how eager I am to play MechWarrior again.
With my optimism though, there are some things that bother me, although I won't really mind either way. Just think of it as a wishlist.
- I don't think that MW5 will support fully customizable mechs like in MW4. It may be following more of the boardgame rules in this sense, and only allow pre-set variants. That's a shame, because it makes it a little less fun, but it comes with the benefit of cutting out cheap variants that can abuse certain aspects. The gameplay will be more well balanced instead. I can appreciate both results in this case, although having full-customization for unranked or offline play would be the best of both worlds.
- The date in the trailer says 3015. The clans invaded in 3050 (late 3049 if you're really anal) so clan tech will probably not be in the game. That's a shame, since a lot of my favorite mech designs were from clans, and some of the best weapons in the game were also clan weapons. While this is alright from a lore perspective, clan weapons have always been plain superior upgrades relative to standard weapons. It made standard weapons instantly obsolete and redundant. I can understand the advantages to having clan weapons in the game, but also not having them. Like I said above, having the option in unranked/singleplayer would be amazing. However, I doubt clan chassis will be in, since that requires a lot more work for the developers. A friend though notes that the Atlas-C in the trailer is a variant made in 3080, so it could be possible that the reboot cheats the standard lore a little bit, and clans could be in anyway. How's that for geekdom?
That's really it for my wishlist. I'm really excited about this game, like I have not been for a game in a long time. I hope it'll have a larger and more tightly knit multiplayer community than the previous games.
Edit: Apparently the game is being called MechWarrior 3015 by the community. Fair enough.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
HAWX, the Arcade Sim that Appeals to No One
I played through the entire campaign on PC with a Logitech 3D Pro in under 3-4 hours. I was beyond disappointed. I'm going to mostly compare it to the Ace Combat series, as it was intended as its primary competition in development, but really, you should keep in mind that whether or not you liked Ace Combat, it won't matter: this game appeals to nobody. You won't find much to like in this game whether you're a fan of arcades, simulators, or bullet-hell coin eaters.
After accepting the game for its surreal tone, and the ridiculous maneuvers and poor assist-off camera, all things that are recognizable from the in-game-footage trailers, I was hoping it'd at least match up to being somewhat entertaining as the Ace Combat series for me. That is, I wanted the game to have interesting mechanics, challenging missions, larger-than-life boss fights, and some wild environmentals like in Ace Combat. I got none of that.
HAWX is has 19 missions, all of which are either defend a specific airspace, escort a platoon or another aircraft, bomb a set of ground targets, slip through radar, or shoot up all your objective targets as they close in on your position. Or a combination of any of those. It gets pretty tiring after a while, since there really isn't much more to it than that, and you wouldn't be able to tell some of these missions apart. Their biggest and best gimmick was when your plane's electronic systems go haywire and you were unable fire any missiles. That's kinda funny, since I thought assist-off turned off all your computers anyway? Regardless, I like gimmicks, but if that's the best they can do, that's pretty lame. You have to really dig to find creativity or inspiration that went into the mission or map designs. (Oh wait, I forgot. They didn't design the maps, since they just took satellite images and converted them to landscapes. Fantastic.)
What did Ace Combat offer? You got to fight spaceships armed with laser batteries. Gigantic bomber fortresses with a cloaking field. Fly through caverns in training jets with no armaments dodging the detection of enemy ace fighter pilots. Sinking submarines with splintering ICBMs raining metal shrapnel from the sky. Flying through narrow vent openings in nuclear compounds to blast missiles within the silos ala. Death Star. Or dodging giant pillars of lasers fired from space. It was ridiculous but once you got past that, the game was actually enjoyable... It's an alternate universe. Think of the game more like a bullet-hell game where you slaughter hundreds of enemies until you get to the end where you fight a massive firepower-excessive boss. Those were always fun. The problem is that HAWX went halfway and fell short at pleasing anyone. You get past the insane flight mechanics (or lack thereof) but there really is nothing left for you to enjoy. HAWX's big problem is that past its thin unpleasant exterior shell, there is only a hollow, lifeless, generic game underneath, with an unfulfilling story, forgetable characters and monotonous gameplay.
Speaking of the plot, for a Tom Clancy storyline, wow... Was it ever predictable and just mundane. I won't spoil it for anyone here, but the story was something you could see coming a mile away, and wasn't particularly noteworthy anyway. Maybe they wanted to really keep it down to earth (relative to Ace Combat) and possibly even within the framework of the Tom Clancy novels, despite a few of the aspects about Artemis being outlandish, but what really bothered me, was the lack of personality in both of your wingmen. They both like money, whores and money. Did I say money? They can't get enough of that. At least, until they need to be patriotic all of a sudden. Then it's all honor and glory. But now they want medals. And women. And medals. Did I say medals? So first they fall in love with their new job in exchange for a vast sum of material payment, then they turn on a dime and decide they don't care about the pay at all and are willing to work for free? Inconsistent and contradictory doesn't even begin to describe it.
Furthermore, did they just cookie cutter these guys out of Army of Two or something? They're shooting down hundreds of pilots, tanks, bombers and reducing bases to rubble... Yet they mind as well be fist-pounding. Even when your own cities (read: civilians) are being burned to ash, its just an "Aw, shucks" here and there. There is not the slightest air of seriousness in any of the pilots you encounter, which really ruins immersiveness as to them, it really is just a video game. Coming from the pilot instructors who describe your movements as 'drifts' and 'power slides', I guess I shouldn't be surprised. At least in Ace Combat, when your cities are being destroyed, your wingmen are either too shocked or enraged to say much of anything like this.
Its even worse that at the end of every mission, you get the most juvenile dialogue out of these two, and its even REPEATED. As in, Ubisoft was too lazy to give them new lines for scripted triggers. And these are scripted dialogue lines, so obviously someone at Ubisoft didn't give a shit that you had to listen to the same ignorant crap that they already made you hear 3 missions ago. Beer, bling, tits and ass after every successful mission.
Thankfully, a few of the missions you fly will have your wingmen mysteriously not be by your side. I'm guessing that it's because of an infiltration directive or possibly they're off fulfilling their own missions at the time. What a relief right? Nope! They still come over your radio just as often (and their portraits show them flying in their planes??) to pester you with their frat-boy depiction of warfare. "Alright, score one for the good guys, we just sprinkled radioactive debris all over our cities. Let's go back for some booze! Oh, and some medals."
Ace Combat, which has little story-writing base, at least does fairly well throwing in lively characters with differing (usually foil) personalities. In some games, where your wingmen actually die, you do miss them somewhat, which is already leagues more than what I can say for my wingmen in HAWX (I've tried killing my wingmen, trust me, they can't die). I won't say the Ace Combat characters are deep, but compared to HAWX, they're the Mariana Trench. Your wingmen in AC will actually play a role in establishing relationships and connections with other NPC characters... Especially those you save in several missions. Even better is that those you SAVE and assist actually often come back to help you out in your final missions. Cue the cutscenes of a fleet of jet fighters, bombers and AWACS and heavily-accented Russians singing along with your wingmen (who could do without that?). Damn that is awesome, to for once, have the numbers on your side, a good payoff feeling for having saved so many people and struggled against impossible odds all the way up until the end. Characters actually mean something in AC, especially since the cutscenes show them having some persona outside of their cockpits. If anything, at least they have a face. In HAWX, you'll never see your wingmen's faces. Talon and Casper (your wingmen) are as generic as can be.
Worse, I would have thought that the Ghost Team you save in the very first mission, who tells you they 'owe you one' and they 'won't forget'... never actually come back to repay their due. What a letdown. Everything is very impersonal in HAWX, you don't really feel anything from any of the characters, save whoever is debriefing you... Since he's probably barking his head off at you (if anyone has played GRAW2, it's the same sort of 'way too loud and obnoxious authority'). I figured hey, maybe since its a video game, and they've established that they're not aiming for realism... They'd actually try be entertaining instead.... Nope.
Characters aside, the storyline in AC's 3,4,5 and Zero still trumps that of HAWX. Sad to know huh? Fun events happen in AC, and you can have multiple mission choices. Depending on how well or what you do on your previous mission, your next mission may be something different. You may also unlock special planes by doing things differently. Your carrier gets sunk while you are being debriefed on it, so you get to emergency takeoff with whatever plane you want (a relief after being stuck with carrier-based planes for a good 3-4 missions). You deal with several layers of conspiracy and internal sabotage. You're led into traps. You have to fight people who were your allies in the past. You find unexpected help from people you thought were your enemies or who you thought were dead. You get framed for war-crimes that you didn't commit. They're not great plot twists, and some are more predictable than others, but at least they are there. For HAWX, they guide the player on a monorail of boredom: there are no alternative missions; you unlock planes purely by your grinded experience level; replayability is hugely lacking. Grinding experience and achievements to unlock new planes and their weapon packs (which you need to do if you want to use the other planes in Multiplayer) is not my idea of fun. There aren't any surprises either. People who start evil end evil... Those who start good end good. Not like it even matters, since everyone is so single-layered and predictable. The story basically follows the same stereotypical, overdone route. Its a war, and you're winning it step by tiny step. You don't ever feel like you're being pushed back, or have the carpet pulled out from under your feet... It's pretty linear, drawn-out progression.
HAWX singleplayer was a huge letdown. There's not much to do after you complete the campaign, other than doing it again on harder difficulties (or for achievements)... or free flight (fly around the map with no enemies). I don't remember for sure, but I don't think there were multiplayer modes outside of team deathmatch and coop either... So that will definitely get stale as well. Apparently most reviews have labeled the multiplayer as being the weakest aspect of HAWX, so I wouldn't expect any sort of recompensation by graduating from singleplayer to multiplayer - it only gets worse.
I'm fine with the fact that game developers can take liberty in modifying the genre or doing something new and unexpected with their game. It may not always work out, but it's innovative and progressive, and the only way for developers to foray into new territory, that may yet pioneer an unexplored direction of gaming. However, the main aspect, no matter what you're trying to do with the game, is to make it fun and entertaining. If this is sacrificed or lost in the concept, then the game just won't fly. HAWX is exactly like that, burdened with uninspired missions, maps, characters and gameplay, there really is no motivation to taxi to the runway, much less take off, regardless of whatever field of gaming you come from, sim-buff or arcader. Peel away all the fancies and shinies, if the game isn't fun to play, it appeals to no one.
One of the greatest, lingering facepalming moments in HAWX surely would have been the moment you hear from your wingman, "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!"... Only for him to say again 3 missions later "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!" .......... >_>
After accepting the game for its surreal tone, and the ridiculous maneuvers and poor assist-off camera, all things that are recognizable from the in-game-footage trailers, I was hoping it'd at least match up to being somewhat entertaining as the Ace Combat series for me. That is, I wanted the game to have interesting mechanics, challenging missions, larger-than-life boss fights, and some wild environmentals like in Ace Combat. I got none of that.
HAWX is has 19 missions, all of which are either defend a specific airspace, escort a platoon or another aircraft, bomb a set of ground targets, slip through radar, or shoot up all your objective targets as they close in on your position. Or a combination of any of those. It gets pretty tiring after a while, since there really isn't much more to it than that, and you wouldn't be able to tell some of these missions apart. Their biggest and best gimmick was when your plane's electronic systems go haywire and you were unable fire any missiles. That's kinda funny, since I thought assist-off turned off all your computers anyway? Regardless, I like gimmicks, but if that's the best they can do, that's pretty lame. You have to really dig to find creativity or inspiration that went into the mission or map designs. (Oh wait, I forgot. They didn't design the maps, since they just took satellite images and converted them to landscapes. Fantastic.)
What did Ace Combat offer? You got to fight spaceships armed with laser batteries. Gigantic bomber fortresses with a cloaking field. Fly through caverns in training jets with no armaments dodging the detection of enemy ace fighter pilots. Sinking submarines with splintering ICBMs raining metal shrapnel from the sky. Flying through narrow vent openings in nuclear compounds to blast missiles within the silos ala. Death Star. Or dodging giant pillars of lasers fired from space. It was ridiculous but once you got past that, the game was actually enjoyable... It's an alternate universe. Think of the game more like a bullet-hell game where you slaughter hundreds of enemies until you get to the end where you fight a massive firepower-excessive boss. Those were always fun. The problem is that HAWX went halfway and fell short at pleasing anyone. You get past the insane flight mechanics (or lack thereof) but there really is nothing left for you to enjoy. HAWX's big problem is that past its thin unpleasant exterior shell, there is only a hollow, lifeless, generic game underneath, with an unfulfilling story, forgetable characters and monotonous gameplay.
Speaking of the plot, for a Tom Clancy storyline, wow... Was it ever predictable and just mundane. I won't spoil it for anyone here, but the story was something you could see coming a mile away, and wasn't particularly noteworthy anyway. Maybe they wanted to really keep it down to earth (relative to Ace Combat) and possibly even within the framework of the Tom Clancy novels, despite a few of the aspects about Artemis being outlandish, but what really bothered me, was the lack of personality in both of your wingmen. They both like money, whores and money. Did I say money? They can't get enough of that. At least, until they need to be patriotic all of a sudden. Then it's all honor and glory. But now they want medals. And women. And medals. Did I say medals? So first they fall in love with their new job in exchange for a vast sum of material payment, then they turn on a dime and decide they don't care about the pay at all and are willing to work for free? Inconsistent and contradictory doesn't even begin to describe it.
Furthermore, did they just cookie cutter these guys out of Army of Two or something? They're shooting down hundreds of pilots, tanks, bombers and reducing bases to rubble... Yet they mind as well be fist-pounding. Even when your own cities (read: civilians) are being burned to ash, its just an "Aw, shucks" here and there. There is not the slightest air of seriousness in any of the pilots you encounter, which really ruins immersiveness as to them, it really is just a video game. Coming from the pilot instructors who describe your movements as 'drifts' and 'power slides', I guess I shouldn't be surprised. At least in Ace Combat, when your cities are being destroyed, your wingmen are either too shocked or enraged to say much of anything like this.
Its even worse that at the end of every mission, you get the most juvenile dialogue out of these two, and its even REPEATED. As in, Ubisoft was too lazy to give them new lines for scripted triggers. And these are scripted dialogue lines, so obviously someone at Ubisoft didn't give a shit that you had to listen to the same ignorant crap that they already made you hear 3 missions ago. Beer, bling, tits and ass after every successful mission.
Thankfully, a few of the missions you fly will have your wingmen mysteriously not be by your side. I'm guessing that it's because of an infiltration directive or possibly they're off fulfilling their own missions at the time. What a relief right? Nope! They still come over your radio just as often (and their portraits show them flying in their planes??) to pester you with their frat-boy depiction of warfare. "Alright, score one for the good guys, we just sprinkled radioactive debris all over our cities. Let's go back for some booze! Oh, and some medals."
Ace Combat, which has little story-writing base, at least does fairly well throwing in lively characters with differing (usually foil) personalities. In some games, where your wingmen actually die, you do miss them somewhat, which is already leagues more than what I can say for my wingmen in HAWX (I've tried killing my wingmen, trust me, they can't die). I won't say the Ace Combat characters are deep, but compared to HAWX, they're the Mariana Trench. Your wingmen in AC will actually play a role in establishing relationships and connections with other NPC characters... Especially those you save in several missions. Even better is that those you SAVE and assist actually often come back to help you out in your final missions. Cue the cutscenes of a fleet of jet fighters, bombers and AWACS and heavily-accented Russians singing along with your wingmen (who could do without that?). Damn that is awesome, to for once, have the numbers on your side, a good payoff feeling for having saved so many people and struggled against impossible odds all the way up until the end. Characters actually mean something in AC, especially since the cutscenes show them having some persona outside of their cockpits. If anything, at least they have a face. In HAWX, you'll never see your wingmen's faces. Talon and Casper (your wingmen) are as generic as can be.
Worse, I would have thought that the Ghost Team you save in the very first mission, who tells you they 'owe you one' and they 'won't forget'... never actually come back to repay their due. What a letdown. Everything is very impersonal in HAWX, you don't really feel anything from any of the characters, save whoever is debriefing you... Since he's probably barking his head off at you (if anyone has played GRAW2, it's the same sort of 'way too loud and obnoxious authority'). I figured hey, maybe since its a video game, and they've established that they're not aiming for realism... They'd actually try be entertaining instead.... Nope.
Characters aside, the storyline in AC's 3,4,5 and Zero still trumps that of HAWX. Sad to know huh? Fun events happen in AC, and you can have multiple mission choices. Depending on how well or what you do on your previous mission, your next mission may be something different. You may also unlock special planes by doing things differently. Your carrier gets sunk while you are being debriefed on it, so you get to emergency takeoff with whatever plane you want (a relief after being stuck with carrier-based planes for a good 3-4 missions). You deal with several layers of conspiracy and internal sabotage. You're led into traps. You have to fight people who were your allies in the past. You find unexpected help from people you thought were your enemies or who you thought were dead. You get framed for war-crimes that you didn't commit. They're not great plot twists, and some are more predictable than others, but at least they are there. For HAWX, they guide the player on a monorail of boredom: there are no alternative missions; you unlock planes purely by your grinded experience level; replayability is hugely lacking. Grinding experience and achievements to unlock new planes and their weapon packs (which you need to do if you want to use the other planes in Multiplayer) is not my idea of fun. There aren't any surprises either. People who start evil end evil... Those who start good end good. Not like it even matters, since everyone is so single-layered and predictable. The story basically follows the same stereotypical, overdone route. Its a war, and you're winning it step by tiny step. You don't ever feel like you're being pushed back, or have the carpet pulled out from under your feet... It's pretty linear, drawn-out progression.
HAWX singleplayer was a huge letdown. There's not much to do after you complete the campaign, other than doing it again on harder difficulties (or for achievements)... or free flight (fly around the map with no enemies). I don't remember for sure, but I don't think there were multiplayer modes outside of team deathmatch and coop either... So that will definitely get stale as well. Apparently most reviews have labeled the multiplayer as being the weakest aspect of HAWX, so I wouldn't expect any sort of recompensation by graduating from singleplayer to multiplayer - it only gets worse.
I'm fine with the fact that game developers can take liberty in modifying the genre or doing something new and unexpected with their game. It may not always work out, but it's innovative and progressive, and the only way for developers to foray into new territory, that may yet pioneer an unexplored direction of gaming. However, the main aspect, no matter what you're trying to do with the game, is to make it fun and entertaining. If this is sacrificed or lost in the concept, then the game just won't fly. HAWX is exactly like that, burdened with uninspired missions, maps, characters and gameplay, there really is no motivation to taxi to the runway, much less take off, regardless of whatever field of gaming you come from, sim-buff or arcader. Peel away all the fancies and shinies, if the game isn't fun to play, it appeals to no one.
One of the greatest, lingering facepalming moments in HAWX surely would have been the moment you hear from your wingman, "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!"... Only for him to say again 3 missions later "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!" .......... >_>
Friday, April 3, 2009
F.E.A.R. 2 - Children aren't scary anymore. They're just annoying.
I never finished Monolith's FEAR 1. It's a shame I am told, but I did thoroughly experience FEAR1's multiplayer through FEAR Combat to compensate for it. Although it doesn't fill in the singleplayer aspects I missed, since I already read about the plot development, I ruined any motivation to actually play through FEAR1, and jumped right ahead to FEAR2.
Firstly, before we do that, I must say, I liked FEAR Combat; its unique fast-paced, heart-thumping frenetic melee system; its awing display of sheer firepower without excessive effects flooding; its no-holds-barred deathmatch system where players were rewarded for their fearlessness. It did everything right in turning their slower singleplayer experience into an exciting, replayable multiplayer fragfest where you just could not find any better feeling than staking your enemies to the wall or exploding them into a cloud of blood with a hitscan weapon.
But that's the problem with FEAR2. They took everything great about the old FEAR and tossed it away, leaving nothing commendable, in singleplayer or multiplayer. Already, with just the sequel, the series seems tired and uninspired, the ideas worn thin.
The singleplayer feels like work. You slog through thousands of enemies, each taking nearly an entire clip unless you take the time to solidly put a burst of fire into the target's head. But there's the problem right there. You could carefully try to set up your headshots, by getting the initial surprise shots and slow-mo headshots... but what's the point? You'll kill 5-6 enemies this way, and then everyone else in the room (at least a good 20-30) will be alerted to your attention and you'll be caught out in the open without any slow-mo to save your ass from the hail of bullet-beatings you're about to receive. Trying to sneak around is impossible, since your enemies are literally superhuman anyway, and are capable of hearing your heartbeat and maybe even the tapping of your keyboard. And you often have to kill everyone in the room to progress the mission scripting to allow you into the next room. The player doesn't feel like he has a choice, but rather that he must tediously trudge through a sea of bodies to reach his destination. But here's the main question: Is it faster to run and gun through the hordes or is it faster to plan it out? The answer is quite clear in FEAR2: you rush, you spam everything you have, and you try to pick up just about everything you can. You turn your brain off, and you repeat an unpleasant task for the next few hours for the sake of some promised recompensation. Worse, whether you try to be smart or try to be accurate, the speed at which you drop bodies isn't going to change. Applying skills or thought to your task is an unrewarded waste of time. Like I said, it's akin to menial labour. Nothing you do will get you through it faster, you just have to sit it out.
Frankly, its level of boredom and mundane gameplay is compounded by the fact that everything is too easy! You may notice that you will not always be picking up armor and health whenever you see them like everything else in the game. But it's not because you're trying to save your health/armor boosts for the most efficient moment... It's because you just have too many of them and will never use them. With excessive healthpacks and armor abound, even on the hardest difficulty, the game was never in the least bit challenging. How are you even going to try to frighten me when I'm fully capable of singlehandedly annihilating armies without a scratch? the entire game feels like a method of conditioning you to become fearless of any possible threat... But not even for the right reasons. Fear Combat had you be fearless because the more you killed and the more you rushed, the more medpacks you'd receive from your fallen enemies. FEAR 2 has you fearless because it's too damned boring to be doing things any other way!
The weapons in FEAR2 don't help. Their variety is terrible, as certain weapons are often spammier versions of another, just with a larger clip and less damage; they're just the same weapon with just about the same average damage. The only thing you're really going to be taking into consideration is whether or not you want to fill up one of your few weapon slots with something that you may find no more ammo for later on. Weapons aren't creative either. Their effects are unimpressive at best, and even the Penetrator's effect has been scaled back. Most weapons though are very conventional, and lack the sort of high-tech feel that FEAR1 had. Now it wouldn't be an issue if your guns still felt powerful... But they don't. They feel cheap and tacky, as if you were firing pellets out of your plastic gun. The problem lies in a combination of the sound, the feel, the kick and the damage dealt. It's all wrong. Even the shotgun was terrible, until you got the Combat Shotgun, which was still mediocre, even in its most optimal situations. What ended up being the best weapon that gave you a sense of lethality? The sniper rifle. Yep. The conventional Sniper Rifle trumps the Laser Gun, the Pulse Weapon, the new Penetrator, even the RPG. Despite being carried by fairly normal trash mob opponents only halfway through the game, it only makes appearances in very specific sections where long range shooting is prevalent, so ammo is scarce. The problem is, Monolith wanted you to only really use the Sniper Rifle in these specific spots and throw away the gun right after, where they expected it to be useless. Essentially, the Sniper Rifle was a mini-game weapon, a gimmick. However, since it was the only weapon they got right, in the hands of a good player, it became your ultimate weapon to get you past the baddies that were just too much of a pain to dispatch any other way. For me, it WAS my Pulse Rifle, and was worth carrying around for 2-3 levels just to use it to clear a specific chokepoint room. That either says really good things about the Sniper Rifle, or really disgraceful things about the Pulse Rifle, the supposed BFG of FEAR2. Often times developers will put in a massive drawback to super-weapons, often a low rate of fire or ammo capacity... And Monolith gives the Pulse Rifle and Laser Rifle the same treatment. The problem is they took it too far. The Laser Rifle has very limited ammo and can deplete its entire magazine in 5 seconds, and considering it takes 3.5 seconds to down a single enemy, there is no place in the game worth using it. It has the lethality of the Link Gun from UT3. In fact, I'm sure its even weaker than that. The Pulse Rifle is worse. It fires a plasma fireball, which feels like the Shockball from UT3, except its a lot smaller, and is slow. Real slow. It is slower than the speed at which you walk at. You can literally out run this projectile even when its fired in your face. The speed of the fireball slows down as it moves away from the point of origin, so it gets even easier to evade. Forget using this weapon at long range, the fireball will slow to a crawl and self-detonate before it even gets anywhere close. An AOE superweapon with low accuracy that is effective only in short range, yet has a low rate of fire and small clip? Really? Who would use this thing? It's not even like the Gluon Gun in Half Life, since that, although short ranged, was very devastating and hard to dodge in close quarters. No, the Pulse Rifle is a single slow moving projectile that starts small and is easily dodged at close range, even more easily dodged at far range, and the AOE is easily predictable. You can't even use it like a slow-ass rocket launcher, since if it were like that, you'd at least be able to aim at the wall and the ground to use the AOE to your advantage. The plasma ball BOUNCES off every surface until the full distance is covered (also the point where the sphere slows down to a crawl and expires) before the AOE effect occurs. What a bitch.
Where are the FEAR1 weapons that actually had some potential in the right hands? The Particle Weapon was godly, the G2, ASP, Penetrator could all kill with relatively few shots to the torso, and the Repeating Cannon, while difficult to use, was a guaranteed one shot kill at any range. Sorry to spend so much time on the weapons, but the weapons make up a huge part of the gameplay, and the gameplay is a huge part of any FPS.
The story was rather bland, although I appreciated the unveiling of the conspiracy and the developing surrounding the Harbinger project. While most of this stuff should be pretty obvious to those who played the first FEAR, their presentation was decent, without a lot of intrusive 'oh btw, this is what you missed'. However, there were too many PDAs and intel documents to collect. Basically 90% of what you learn about the conspiracy, the organizations, the characters, the buildup is all from reading PDAs. Even Doom 3 didn't go overboard with it like this. Anyway, having read the PDAs, the unfolding of the story was unsurprising, and your allies weren't of much help. 'She's attracted to you like pizza at an anime convention'? Is this something you'd expect special operatives to say?
In the early stages of the game, you'll immediately notice that something feels different with the UI of the game. Then you realise, you're wearing some souped up shades with an integrated HUD display and the most obnoxious color tint in the world. At one point, you'll take your shades off, and it'll feel like a breath of fresh air. Don't get used to it; it doesn't last, and you'll be trying to peer out of a coffin again. What bothers me is I don't get a choice. You have helpful things displayed with your shades, like your ammo and HP... but also an array of paranormal hallucinations, sudden visual lighting compensation failures and a constant flickering. You won't know whether or not the contacts on your glasses need resoldering or if someone is playing with the light switch. I guess that was Monolith's objective. But also, in that case, I'd whip off the glasses and throw them away at first indication of it's faultiness. I could do without the ammo and hp meter - the game is easy enough - but Alma's hallucinatory effects are not scary, just migraine-inducing. Get rid of the glasses and the game no longer aggravates brain tumors.
Scary, the game is not. Like I mentioned, the glasses contribute a large role to the problem, but once you get it in your mind that you're a walking deathdealer with full hp, armor and bristling with weapons, there's not a lot that can shake you up. Most of the hallucinations are just that, so they can't really hurt you. The paranormals can eventually deal damage to you, but it is so minimal, they mind as well just be tickling you with their ethereal feathers. Not like it matters, one single snapshot bullet from your weakest weapon will dispatch them. What a joke, was this supposed to be difficult for any one that wasn't trying to play on a gamepad with a capped sensitivity? When Alma shows up and starts ripping people to shreds, you'd think you'd feel a little bit anxious. But you don't. They are such clear cutscene moments, that you know you are not in control of your character, and thus, Alma won't hurt you. When Alma is finally capable of inflicting some pain, it's pathetic. She tries to strangle you... And after you spam melee to throw her off, she disappears. Considering how this hardly even makes you gag, you'll be conditioned into laughing off every encounter with Alma, and just casually walking by and snapshotting her telekinetic baddies with your pistol. What a scarefest. What happened to her super powers that she utilized to obliterate each one of your teammates one by one? So much build up, and then for what? She tries to choke you to death like she's the villain of a B-slasher flick after easily being capable of sending her acid tentacles through warped time and space?
Multiplayer is really no better. It's confined to very few modes, on very few maps. It's a bit like COD4 in that you have customizable loadouts for when you spawn in, and you can pick up additional weapons from map spawns or off your enemies. Your health automatically recharges in multiplayer, but you need to stand next to an ammo box to steadily regain armor. Health kits are still present, but I haven't found any outside of actually spawning in with them. You can also pickup health injectors, but not everyone drops them, unlike in Fear Combat. Nor do Health Injectors restore 50% HP anymore, but only a mere 25%. The weapons in Multiplayer are further dampened in strength, and the Sniper Rifle requires at least 2 bodyshots to kill a medium armored target. A highly armored target requires 3 bodyshots (or 1 headshot and a bodyshot). That's weaker than in singleplayer, but not by much. Comparing to Fear Combat, people on average take about twice as long to kill. Meleeing is no longer instant kill either. It will take more melee hits, depending on how much health or armor they have remaining. A fully armored target takes 3-4 melee hits to die. Why must you ruin a good high-risk/reward mechanic, Monolith? Another thing that is gone is sprinting. While in FEAR you could run forever by holstering your weapon, you could close distance fast, get around the map quickly, and still not be completely undefended, as you could still melee while running. FEAR2 does away with this by giving you a generic stamina bar, but it's ridiculously short and unhelpful. Your sprint doesn't do much to get you anywhere, and usually it's just not worth the risk to sprint a short distance without having the one-hit-melee to defend yourself.
Basically, FEAR2 Multiplayer has been toned down. It's not as fast paced, it's not innovative, and it doesn't reward players for doing something out of the ordinary like the first one did. It is a stale and uninspired multiplayer that feels like a tacked on afterthought component. When you really have no modes outside of TDM and CTF, things can really get boring. Even FEAR Combat was more exciting in CTF, with much larger map rooms, where teams would engage each other, tearing up the walls and peeping around corners (leaning is gone btw) with much faster runners attempting to circumvent the blockages and flank or snatch flags.
Sometimes you just don't mess with what works, and FEAR2 is a perfect example.
Firstly, before we do that, I must say, I liked FEAR Combat; its unique fast-paced, heart-thumping frenetic melee system; its awing display of sheer firepower without excessive effects flooding; its no-holds-barred deathmatch system where players were rewarded for their fearlessness. It did everything right in turning their slower singleplayer experience into an exciting, replayable multiplayer fragfest where you just could not find any better feeling than staking your enemies to the wall or exploding them into a cloud of blood with a hitscan weapon.
But that's the problem with FEAR2. They took everything great about the old FEAR and tossed it away, leaving nothing commendable, in singleplayer or multiplayer. Already, with just the sequel, the series seems tired and uninspired, the ideas worn thin.
The singleplayer feels like work. You slog through thousands of enemies, each taking nearly an entire clip unless you take the time to solidly put a burst of fire into the target's head. But there's the problem right there. You could carefully try to set up your headshots, by getting the initial surprise shots and slow-mo headshots... but what's the point? You'll kill 5-6 enemies this way, and then everyone else in the room (at least a good 20-30) will be alerted to your attention and you'll be caught out in the open without any slow-mo to save your ass from the hail of bullet-beatings you're about to receive. Trying to sneak around is impossible, since your enemies are literally superhuman anyway, and are capable of hearing your heartbeat and maybe even the tapping of your keyboard. And you often have to kill everyone in the room to progress the mission scripting to allow you into the next room. The player doesn't feel like he has a choice, but rather that he must tediously trudge through a sea of bodies to reach his destination. But here's the main question: Is it faster to run and gun through the hordes or is it faster to plan it out? The answer is quite clear in FEAR2: you rush, you spam everything you have, and you try to pick up just about everything you can. You turn your brain off, and you repeat an unpleasant task for the next few hours for the sake of some promised recompensation. Worse, whether you try to be smart or try to be accurate, the speed at which you drop bodies isn't going to change. Applying skills or thought to your task is an unrewarded waste of time. Like I said, it's akin to menial labour. Nothing you do will get you through it faster, you just have to sit it out.
Frankly, its level of boredom and mundane gameplay is compounded by the fact that everything is too easy! You may notice that you will not always be picking up armor and health whenever you see them like everything else in the game. But it's not because you're trying to save your health/armor boosts for the most efficient moment... It's because you just have too many of them and will never use them. With excessive healthpacks and armor abound, even on the hardest difficulty, the game was never in the least bit challenging. How are you even going to try to frighten me when I'm fully capable of singlehandedly annihilating armies without a scratch? the entire game feels like a method of conditioning you to become fearless of any possible threat... But not even for the right reasons. Fear Combat had you be fearless because the more you killed and the more you rushed, the more medpacks you'd receive from your fallen enemies. FEAR 2 has you fearless because it's too damned boring to be doing things any other way!
The weapons in FEAR2 don't help. Their variety is terrible, as certain weapons are often spammier versions of another, just with a larger clip and less damage; they're just the same weapon with just about the same average damage. The only thing you're really going to be taking into consideration is whether or not you want to fill up one of your few weapon slots with something that you may find no more ammo for later on. Weapons aren't creative either. Their effects are unimpressive at best, and even the Penetrator's effect has been scaled back. Most weapons though are very conventional, and lack the sort of high-tech feel that FEAR1 had. Now it wouldn't be an issue if your guns still felt powerful... But they don't. They feel cheap and tacky, as if you were firing pellets out of your plastic gun. The problem lies in a combination of the sound, the feel, the kick and the damage dealt. It's all wrong. Even the shotgun was terrible, until you got the Combat Shotgun, which was still mediocre, even in its most optimal situations. What ended up being the best weapon that gave you a sense of lethality? The sniper rifle. Yep. The conventional Sniper Rifle trumps the Laser Gun, the Pulse Weapon, the new Penetrator, even the RPG. Despite being carried by fairly normal trash mob opponents only halfway through the game, it only makes appearances in very specific sections where long range shooting is prevalent, so ammo is scarce. The problem is, Monolith wanted you to only really use the Sniper Rifle in these specific spots and throw away the gun right after, where they expected it to be useless. Essentially, the Sniper Rifle was a mini-game weapon, a gimmick. However, since it was the only weapon they got right, in the hands of a good player, it became your ultimate weapon to get you past the baddies that were just too much of a pain to dispatch any other way. For me, it WAS my Pulse Rifle, and was worth carrying around for 2-3 levels just to use it to clear a specific chokepoint room. That either says really good things about the Sniper Rifle, or really disgraceful things about the Pulse Rifle, the supposed BFG of FEAR2. Often times developers will put in a massive drawback to super-weapons, often a low rate of fire or ammo capacity... And Monolith gives the Pulse Rifle and Laser Rifle the same treatment. The problem is they took it too far. The Laser Rifle has very limited ammo and can deplete its entire magazine in 5 seconds, and considering it takes 3.5 seconds to down a single enemy, there is no place in the game worth using it. It has the lethality of the Link Gun from UT3. In fact, I'm sure its even weaker than that. The Pulse Rifle is worse. It fires a plasma fireball, which feels like the Shockball from UT3, except its a lot smaller, and is slow. Real slow. It is slower than the speed at which you walk at. You can literally out run this projectile even when its fired in your face. The speed of the fireball slows down as it moves away from the point of origin, so it gets even easier to evade. Forget using this weapon at long range, the fireball will slow to a crawl and self-detonate before it even gets anywhere close. An AOE superweapon with low accuracy that is effective only in short range, yet has a low rate of fire and small clip? Really? Who would use this thing? It's not even like the Gluon Gun in Half Life, since that, although short ranged, was very devastating and hard to dodge in close quarters. No, the Pulse Rifle is a single slow moving projectile that starts small and is easily dodged at close range, even more easily dodged at far range, and the AOE is easily predictable. You can't even use it like a slow-ass rocket launcher, since if it were like that, you'd at least be able to aim at the wall and the ground to use the AOE to your advantage. The plasma ball BOUNCES off every surface until the full distance is covered (also the point where the sphere slows down to a crawl and expires) before the AOE effect occurs. What a bitch.
Where are the FEAR1 weapons that actually had some potential in the right hands? The Particle Weapon was godly, the G2, ASP, Penetrator could all kill with relatively few shots to the torso, and the Repeating Cannon, while difficult to use, was a guaranteed one shot kill at any range. Sorry to spend so much time on the weapons, but the weapons make up a huge part of the gameplay, and the gameplay is a huge part of any FPS.
The story was rather bland, although I appreciated the unveiling of the conspiracy and the developing surrounding the Harbinger project. While most of this stuff should be pretty obvious to those who played the first FEAR, their presentation was decent, without a lot of intrusive 'oh btw, this is what you missed'. However, there were too many PDAs and intel documents to collect. Basically 90% of what you learn about the conspiracy, the organizations, the characters, the buildup is all from reading PDAs. Even Doom 3 didn't go overboard with it like this. Anyway, having read the PDAs, the unfolding of the story was unsurprising, and your allies weren't of much help. 'She's attracted to you like pizza at an anime convention'? Is this something you'd expect special operatives to say?
In the early stages of the game, you'll immediately notice that something feels different with the UI of the game. Then you realise, you're wearing some souped up shades with an integrated HUD display and the most obnoxious color tint in the world. At one point, you'll take your shades off, and it'll feel like a breath of fresh air. Don't get used to it; it doesn't last, and you'll be trying to peer out of a coffin again. What bothers me is I don't get a choice. You have helpful things displayed with your shades, like your ammo and HP... but also an array of paranormal hallucinations, sudden visual lighting compensation failures and a constant flickering. You won't know whether or not the contacts on your glasses need resoldering or if someone is playing with the light switch. I guess that was Monolith's objective. But also, in that case, I'd whip off the glasses and throw them away at first indication of it's faultiness. I could do without the ammo and hp meter - the game is easy enough - but Alma's hallucinatory effects are not scary, just migraine-inducing. Get rid of the glasses and the game no longer aggravates brain tumors.
Scary, the game is not. Like I mentioned, the glasses contribute a large role to the problem, but once you get it in your mind that you're a walking deathdealer with full hp, armor and bristling with weapons, there's not a lot that can shake you up. Most of the hallucinations are just that, so they can't really hurt you. The paranormals can eventually deal damage to you, but it is so minimal, they mind as well just be tickling you with their ethereal feathers. Not like it matters, one single snapshot bullet from your weakest weapon will dispatch them. What a joke, was this supposed to be difficult for any one that wasn't trying to play on a gamepad with a capped sensitivity? When Alma shows up and starts ripping people to shreds, you'd think you'd feel a little bit anxious. But you don't. They are such clear cutscene moments, that you know you are not in control of your character, and thus, Alma won't hurt you. When Alma is finally capable of inflicting some pain, it's pathetic. She tries to strangle you... And after you spam melee to throw her off, she disappears. Considering how this hardly even makes you gag, you'll be conditioned into laughing off every encounter with Alma, and just casually walking by and snapshotting her telekinetic baddies with your pistol. What a scarefest. What happened to her super powers that she utilized to obliterate each one of your teammates one by one? So much build up, and then for what? She tries to choke you to death like she's the villain of a B-slasher flick after easily being capable of sending her acid tentacles through warped time and space?
Multiplayer is really no better. It's confined to very few modes, on very few maps. It's a bit like COD4 in that you have customizable loadouts for when you spawn in, and you can pick up additional weapons from map spawns or off your enemies. Your health automatically recharges in multiplayer, but you need to stand next to an ammo box to steadily regain armor. Health kits are still present, but I haven't found any outside of actually spawning in with them. You can also pickup health injectors, but not everyone drops them, unlike in Fear Combat. Nor do Health Injectors restore 50% HP anymore, but only a mere 25%. The weapons in Multiplayer are further dampened in strength, and the Sniper Rifle requires at least 2 bodyshots to kill a medium armored target. A highly armored target requires 3 bodyshots (or 1 headshot and a bodyshot). That's weaker than in singleplayer, but not by much. Comparing to Fear Combat, people on average take about twice as long to kill. Meleeing is no longer instant kill either. It will take more melee hits, depending on how much health or armor they have remaining. A fully armored target takes 3-4 melee hits to die. Why must you ruin a good high-risk/reward mechanic, Monolith? Another thing that is gone is sprinting. While in FEAR you could run forever by holstering your weapon, you could close distance fast, get around the map quickly, and still not be completely undefended, as you could still melee while running. FEAR2 does away with this by giving you a generic stamina bar, but it's ridiculously short and unhelpful. Your sprint doesn't do much to get you anywhere, and usually it's just not worth the risk to sprint a short distance without having the one-hit-melee to defend yourself.
Basically, FEAR2 Multiplayer has been toned down. It's not as fast paced, it's not innovative, and it doesn't reward players for doing something out of the ordinary like the first one did. It is a stale and uninspired multiplayer that feels like a tacked on afterthought component. When you really have no modes outside of TDM and CTF, things can really get boring. Even FEAR Combat was more exciting in CTF, with much larger map rooms, where teams would engage each other, tearing up the walls and peeping around corners (leaning is gone btw) with much faster runners attempting to circumvent the blockages and flank or snatch flags.
Sometimes you just don't mess with what works, and FEAR2 is a perfect example.
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