12 Games For Christmas - Game #6

6. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (PC)

The original Dawn of War was such a huge revolution to me in terms of just how RTS’s could work. Introducing elements of cover and a more unique method of getting resources, it allowed many a person to get into the Warhammer 40K universe, and enjoy just how crazy it was. That being said, it took a long time to get a sequel, but when Dawn  of War II rolled around, the wait proved to be worth it.

For starters, Dawn of War II differs mainly due to its complete and utter lack of base building or resource management. The game is strictly focused on unit management, and this is more evident in the single player campaign than anything else. Here, the game has more of an RPG element, which involves you leveling up your characters, finding randomly dropped items and much more. It’s much less of a standard RTS in this regard, but the strategy element is still something  that’s deeply rooted within the game, forcing you to think how to best maximize what little you have. Also helps that many of the additions and improvements present in Relic’s other RTS, the excellent Company of Heroes, are present here.

The single player campaign has also seen some major changes. Instead of being a series of missions (like in the original game) or a Risk-style game (present in the Dark Crusade expansion), the campaign has opened up and become far less linear. Here, you choose you all the missions you undertake, travelling between three planets in order to accomplish them. These could be as complex as completing one of the many story missions, or just a simple defense missions against wave after wave of enemy.

The only thing that does really quite suck is the limited number of races. It goes back to the original four, with the Chaos marines replaced by fan favourite Tyranids; with the Imperial Guard, T’au, Necrons, Chaos and more left open for possible expansions. It’s unfortunate, but when you figure just how different the game is compared to the original DOW, it would take some time to rebalance the races to work with the new engine.

Besides that, Dawn of War 2 is great. The lack of resource management and base building is a refreshing change, and the focus on infantry management and near RPG-like level of gameplay is excellent. A must buy for anyone wanting to play a different RTS.

12 Games For Christmas: Game #5

5. Killzone 2 (PS3)

Going back to the first time the PS3 was announced way back in 2005, one of the first things that Sony showed off was some footage for Killzone 2, a sequel to a game that while had some cool things about it, no-one really dug. But going back to the footage; despite it later being revealed to be pre-rendered footage, it was quite possibly the most stunning CG work that people had seen for a console, and while it didn’t quite match it when it was released four years later, it’s still damned impressive stuff. And easily among the best looking games on any console.


What makes Killzone 2 great is just how different it feels to most first person shooters currently available on consoles. This isn’t the rabbit fast pacing of something like Call of Duty, but more of a deliberate, realistic pacing. It’s slow, but definitely rewarding – as the game feels just fantastic. Everything has a good weight and feel to it, which is refreshing. And it feels very satisfying to shoot someone, which is all you can ask for a good shooter.


The other big different comes in the form of a cover system. It sounds like such a simple and pointless addition, but here, it totally works. And makes dying a lot less painful, especially when you know you can take cover successfully. It can totally change the way skirmishes play out. In fact, it’s such an awesome addition that you do really wish for other games like it to have it, like Modern Warfare 2; or wish that other games that at least used it would do it right, like Rogue Warrior.

Furthermore, the game is just a blast to play online. Why? Well, aside from taking the same base game and allowing the customization elements you’d have in something like a Call of Duty game, there are plenty of modifications to ensure that it’s a different, yet still fun experience. This includes major things like being able to run for infinite lengths, or smaller things like using your own music as the games soundtrack. They add up to make one of the more fun experiences on the Playstation Network.


If anything though, the only real thing that Killzone 2 doesn’t do well is originality. Sure, there are some cool new features and what not, but there’s very little originality, and does feel like yet another space marine shooter. But the games truly biggest success is just how much of an improvement it really is over its PS2 predecessor. And really, if you’re looking for a great FPS experience that you can only really get on the PS3, Killzone 2 is right up your alley.

12 Games For Christmas - Game #4

4. The Beatles: Rock Band (PS3/360/Wii) 

Thanks to Activision, 2009 saw an absolute glut of Hero games, ranging from the excellent (Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero 5), some decent (DJ Hero, Guitar Hero Greatest Hits and the Guitar Hero On Tour games) to the absolutely pointless and execrable (Guitar Hero Van Halen and Band Hero). And despite this, only one Rock Band game was released this year, and proved to be easily one of the better games of the year. Also kinda helps that the game is focused around quite possibly the greatest band of all time.

At a base level, it’s still very much Rock Band 2, just reskinned and focused around the Beatles. Totally understandable, but where the real fun lies in just how much of a Beatles experience that Harmonix have crafted into the game. The tour mode is the perfect representation of this, with all of the stages taking place over the different stages of the Beatles career, and all the unlockables are of note, from a lot of rare photographs to some curious little videos and what not.

But where the game really shines is in the dreamscape levels. Because the Beatles were a studio band for most of the latter part of the 60’s, the game attempts to recreate what the band were seeing when they were writing songs like “Yellow Submarine” or “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”. And for the most part, it does look quite nice. This is despite the latter levels not looking as spectacular as the earlier ones.

Though really, the one point that may disappoint a lot of people is the track list. Sure, it has representation from every Beatles album, but some key songs (like All You Need is Love, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life, Help!) are missing, leaving you to purchase these when they are released as downloadable content; and at the moment – you can only purchase A Day in the Life and All You Need is Love.

Overall, the Beatles Rock Band is possibly the best rhythm game of the year. Sure, it doesn’t do anything spectacularly new and what not, but it doesn’t really need to. Plus, it’s a fantastic way to get into the music of one of the greatest bands ever.

12 Games For Christmas - Game #3

Game #3 - Red Faction Guerrilla (PS3/360/PC) 

June 2009 might as well be known as the month where Sandbox games reigned supreme. Why? Because three somewhat remarkably sandbox games were released onto the market. You’ve got Sony’s infamous, which was a good, though flawed attempt. You then have Activision’s Prototype, which wasn’t very good at all. And then you come to THQ’s Red Faction Guerilla, which is probably the more interesting of the trio, for several reasons.  For starters, there’s no need for superpowers – though the sledgehammer you get for the duration of the game is pretty damned super.

The first part is that it’s an interesting reboot of the Red Faction series.  While the first two were somewhat decent first person shooters that never really did take too much advantage of the Geo-Mod  feature that made it a big deal back in the day, here the Geo-Mod engine actually works to the games advantage. Destroying buildings and objects has an extremely large part to do in the game, and it never gets old. Never. And it’s not the stock standard video game destruction here – tearing down buildings in specific places does affect how the building will fall over, so if you hit the supports just right, you’ll have a much easier time taking the building than just randomly attempting to destroy the building. Or you could just drive a car into the building and use that to destroy it.

The second part is just the way the game feels. As an open world game, it compares very similarly to developer Volition’s own Saints Row series, but improved in some regards. For starters, the ‘respect’ system where you needed to consistently fill up a respect bar (by doing activities) in order to attempt any missions? Not present. As long as there are missions available to you, you need nothing more to actually do them, with the last missions appearing as you drain control away from the evil EDF. You can do the activities still, and some of them you can do repeatedly to earn more salvage (the games currency) and get closer to achieving some trophies or achievements.

That being said, there are some elements of the game that don’t quite work well in its favor. The first comes in the mission triggers – there’s an alert system in the game where green means you’re alright, yellow means that the EDF are onto you, and red meaning that the EDF are going to kill you. All well and good, but if you’re driving out to go do missions, you need to have a green alert to do them. It’s a pain, especially when it’s tricky to shake off the EDF at times. Furthermore, the difficulty becomes absolutely punishing at times, which really does hurt the game some.

Overall, Red Faction Guerilla is a fantastic return to form for the Red Faction series (RF2 wasn’t quite good), with the reboot working to create one of the most fun experiences you’ll have in a video game. Sure, it’s quite derivivative of Saints Row 2, but then again, is that really a bad thing? And also, it does get quite difficult at times, but that’s put aside when you watch as you take down a massive building with nothing more than a sledgehammer and remote charges. Quite something.

12 Games For Christmas - Game #2

2. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS/PSP/iPhone)

I’ll be quite frank with you. I really didn’t like Grand Theft Auto IV. Sure, there were some impressive things about it (such as the voice acting and the way that the game felt), but for me anyway, that was more outweighed by the bad (mission design wasn’t up to scratch, soundtrack was very hit and miss, visuals were boring, police spawning was erratic and almost unfair, and the story wasn’t too particularly great). In fact, the best GTA in recent years is a PSP and DS (and soon to be iPhone) game – Chinatown Wars. And it’s amazing that it didn’t sell – given that GTA is such a mainstream game, and that the DS is so absurdly popular. In the US in it’s first month, the game sold less than 100K. Depressing.

The first thing that strikes you about Chinatown Wars is that it takes you back to a pre-GTA III era of gaming, but mixed in with some of the elements from later GTA games (such as the ability to use taxi-cabs and stuff like that). The second thing that strikes you is that it WORKS. Unlike the previous attempt at a GTA game on a Nintendo handheld, everything here just seems to work a lot better – from the multiplayer, to car control and just control in general. Hell, even the touchscreen specific stuff (for the DS version), actually works really well, even if some of it can be a little cumbersome.

Probably the most compelling thing about the game would have to be the drug trading mini-game. Put simply, it plays similar to the Drug Wars game that people have known and loved for many years, you buy low and sell high, control supply and demand, and just proves to be really quite fun. And hey, having it not edited for the Australian release was quite something. Plus, it’s easily the best way to get cash in the game, because you really don’t get paid enough for actually completing missions.

That being said, the game isn’t quite right. For starters, ticking off the cops is way too easy in this game than in previous GTA games, if only because there are cops EVERYWHERE, and touching them is really simple. The music is also an issue...It’s just not great stuff. While it is all licensed music, good luck knowing any of it. Furthermore, the combat’s a little iffy, but then again, it’s always been an issue with GTA. Oh, and there are still some niggles that make the combat still not quite right, but better than in past GTA’s.

Otherwise, it’s a fantastic experience and one that needs to be sampled on any platform. It’s a really enjoyable, if not flawed, GTA game.

12 Games For Christmas 2009 - Game #1

Here we go, my annual "Game of the Year" posts. Always look forward to doing these, as it allows me to look back on the year that was and analyze what games were truly exemplary in a year full of fantastic purchases for just about anyone. Should also mention that everything here is stuff that I've played, so I can't wax lyrical on anything that I haven't sampled (i.e Borderlands, for instance). 

And here we go...

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)

The Playstation 3 has been a joke of a console since before it even launched. I'm sure I don't need to bring up the $599, Ridge Racer and Giant Enemy Crab memes to remind anyone of that. And hell, for close to a year, there was very little reason for anyone to actually own one. But ever since then - the system's slowly been getting better and better, and the line up of exclusive  software has been arguably the best of the generation so far. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a further example of that, and may very well be easily the best game released all year.

Uncharted 2 does many, many things right. It has some of the best characterization you'll see in any game, and while the story and characters can fall into stereotypes and cliches, that's the point - it's meant to be reminiscent of those pulp serials that helped inspire the Indiana Jones series of films, and really, is that a bad thing? When the game shifts to a cutscene, you're interested and excited to see what's going to happen next, and not only because the story, but also because of the visuals - Uncharted 2 is easily one of the best looking games you'll see on any console. It's no wonder why Sony went with the cringe inducing "it looks like a movie" ad campaign.

The gameplay has also seen some improvement. The difficulty now works better so that if you're playing on harder difficulties, it's still relatively manageable throughout the whole game, compared to the original, where it proved to be more of a pain than anything else. The gun combat has also been improved so that enemies don't take a ludicrous amount of damage to kill, but still doesn't feel right, compared to similar games like Gears of War 2, which has that whole cover based shooter thing down pat.

One are also worth commenting on is the improved stealth gameplay and multiplayer. Despite being initially thought as being terrible additions, they prove to be some of the best handled aspects of the game - the stealth isn't a required opiton to play the game, but it becomes incredibly useful later. The multiplayer is also one of the most fun games you'll experience on the Playstation Network, thanks to the fact that everything you can do in the single player you can do in the multiplayer, so jumping and climbing plays just as much of a role as taking cover or precisely shooting. It breaks the trend of fantastic single player games having unnecessary and often pointless multiplayer.

All in all, Uncharted 2 is easily one of the best games of the year, providing an excellent single player with a well thoughtout and fun multiplayer component. Looks absolutely stunning and matches that aurally to boot. And the best part? There's very little to actually complain about. Good news to everyone who doesn't own a PS3 - you now have your reason to pick one up.

The eGames 2009 Wrap.

From October 30^th to the 1^st of November 2009, Melbourne was once again home to the IDEF Expo, featuring the fourth annual eGames Expo. As always, the Level 3 crew was there to help cover the show and expand our reach to newer audiences. However, this year saw some massive changes to the show – the biggest for us anyway was that we had our own booth for the first time – which proved to be a much more effective HQ for us than in previous years, and helped get the word out about the show in a big way. Hell, hearing Jason talk about that he signed his first autographs for fans was quite a surprise.

So what of the show? Let’s talk about specific moments:

A Nice Change of Scenery

The biggest change to the show came in a change of venue. Instead of taking place at the Melbourne Exhibition Center in Docklands (and right opposite the Crown Casino), the show was relocated to the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton, which was right opposite the Melbourne Museum and IMAX theater. And for added value, it was a short walk to Lygon Street, home to some awesome Italian restaurants.

The new exhibition space proved to be quite the interesting change in atmosphere, where instead of being dominated by a dull grey and otherwise uninteresting area, we were surrounded by an older and much more visually interesting environment. There were paintings all over the roof of the building, which made it so much better to look at than before.

The front of the Exhibition Building (taken from here) 

As well as that, the larger space also made the show much easier to traverse. Last year, when the Digital Lifestyle Show was introduced, there wasn't much of a clear division between the two shows, and it wasn’t exactly clear where one show ended and the other one began. Here, there was a clear division, which made traversal just that little bit easier.

The only real disappointment in the use of the space came in the fact that it wasn’t all used. There’s a second level to the Exhibition Building which, with the exception of a ‘Develop Theater’ and a media center, wasn’t used. But I’ll get to that later on.

Though while it was a great change of scenery, there were several reasons as to why it proved to also not be a terrific location…

Pressure Cooking

The weekend that eGames was taking place at had an average temperature of around 25-30 degrees as the maximum temperature. Now, while the Royal Exhibition Building is a great looking building, it’s also listed as a heritage building. That means that no matter what, it cannot be touched in any specific way – and needs to be preserved for future generations. This also means that there’s no air conditioning.

Now, I’m not too sure what the attendance figures were, but you’d have to factor in that both parts of the IDEF show were quite populated on the day, being a weekend and what not. But good lord, despite the heat, people still came. Also didn’t help that there were a lot of powerful lights set up around the show.

Though this was thankfully alleviated by the rampant abuse of the media lounge water fridge. Thankfully, someone thought ahead and prepared a LOT of water bottles and kept them nice and cool, and proved to be a popular spot for those who could get into there. As for everyone else? Well, I'm amazed as to how they managed to survive.

Can I Hear Myself?

One of the absolute stupidest moments of the entire show came in the organization of the main stage sound. Put it this way, where the main stage is, to the left of that is the eGames Masters stuff, and to the north of it is some more competitive gaming. Both have commentary, and both are LOUDER than the main stage. And it also helps that the main stage mics? Not particularly reliable. I was on the stage once for two of the days (Saturday was to help take part in an episode of the Lobby, Sunday was for a podcast with some of the people from Thumbpad), and it was hard to hear the people actually speaking. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who thought that.      

From what I understand, the original plan was to make the competitive gaming stuff be on the second level of the building to keep it away from the main stage, but the organizers couldn’t get it approved. Though despite this, it's an absolute shame that it was really quite difficult to do stuff on the main stage.  

Level 3 and Thumbpad do a podcast (from L-R: me, Anna, Jason, Mick, Megan, Jamie and Shane)

This also extended to our booth. We were right opposite the Monash University gaming tournament (the booth was originally setup to play host to the Monash High School gaming tournament, but the space was kindly given to us by IT head Andrew Owen), and once the games of Halo decided to kick in, did we lose any chance of hearing anything from our booth – sounds of explosions and gunfire were common place. Again, no disrespect, but bloody hell it was loud.

Just WHAT were you guys giving away?

Probably the biggest exhibitor booth at the show was easily Ubisoft’s, with some extremely impressive showings – such as Assassins Creed II, James Camerons Avatar (both in regular and 3D editions – the latter of which is impressive), the new Shaun White game, Rabbids Go Home and Splinter Cell Conviction (which was unplayable, unfortunately). To the side of their main booth, there was also Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and another game that I cannot recall at this point in time.

Ubi were great for giveaways as not only did they have a LOT of Avatar and Assassins Creed posters to give away, but also plenty of DVD’s with trailers for upcoming games. The posters made for great decoration for the booth, and we had plenty of people dumping the DVD’s at our booth. On the Saturday in particular, after lunch time, came one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen.

During this time, there was a large line of people at the Ubi booth, but we hadn’t any idea what it was for. Especially when you consider the line itself was just obscene. We’re talking close to 30, maybe even more people in line. The million dollar question was just what exactly were Ubisoft giving away at their booth that caused such a huge line.

Initially, we ruled out the posters, because it’s not like they had any real value, but as we started to film interviews with reps from Madman and 2K Games (whom were bordering on the Ubi booth), I started to notice that people were being handed somewhat more valuable things, such as copies of Tom Clancy’s Endwar (don’t ask what version, it was a tin case – but given the way it was shaped, either a PC or 360 version), and even some 360 Faceplates.

I’m still a little unsure on what exactly was given away, because everything I heard was heard via hearsay more than anything else.

Booth Organization Extraordinaire

As I mentioned in the intro, Level 3 had its very first booth at the show, making us the second media long term media outlet to have our own dedicated booth at the show (Australian Gamer being the first). Unlike with the media coverage, this is where I spent most of my time organizing it and ensuring that people came to the booth to talk all about Level 3.

The first day proved to be an unmitigated disaster for a large portion of it. We had only two things setup that day – a TV with episodes of the show running, and a Dreamcast with Street Fighter III – 3^rd Strike running all day. Since Jason and most of the cast/crew were either absent or elsewhere, we had very few people coming to discuss the show, and we were known as “the booth that the Dreamcast and Street Fighter at”. After I had left, I was told that it improved some, since Jason had actually returned and there was some discussion of the show actually happening.

The Level 3 crew, manning the booth all weekend!

The second and third days improved exponentially. Mainly because we had a really interesting competition going on; this also doubled as an excuse to get others to create content for us. Put simply, we had a green screen setup at the booth, with a camera. We’d get people to come to the booth and do a review for us. They could review any game they wanted, provided that they didn’t curse and that the review lasted no more than three minutes long. The catch was that not only would they win a game should they make a top three, but the best three reviews would be featured during Christmas time. We got over 10 of these, which were great, got a great representation, from some of the Swingamers people, to randoms, to forumites. We had even asked Yug from Australian Gamer to do some reviewing for us, which would’ve been awesome if he had gone ahead with it.

The Greatest Thing Ever?

Taking place on Halloween weekend, and given the fact that it’s a gaming expo, you would expect there to be some form of cosplay, or people dressing up in some spectacular fashion. And for the most part, I was very disappointed in this regard, because there wasn’t much there. Sure, there were a few awesome examples (such as a Midna, a Yuna, an Eva with a box, and a Meryl), but only one really takes the cake. And for good reason.

On the Saturday, there were a couple of dudes dressed up as Knights. I don’t think they were from any particular game or whatever, but they were in the full armoured suits and everything. In itself, it was a pretty cool feat, made even more awesome by the fact that these dudes were doing it on an absurdly hot day. And yet, that still isn’t the most awesome thing about this weekend.

Ubisoft had a Wii game on display known as “Just Dance” (ironically, the Lady Gaga track of the same name isn’t present), it proved to be quite popular, with people dancing all weekend to it. Towards the end of the Saturday, we were let known that the two Knights were actually playing this dancing game, and low and behold, they were.

I have video of the knights dancing to MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”, as well as Blur’s “Girls & Boys”, and it remains one of the greatest things that I have ever seen in my life; to see two dudes in full plate mail waving a Wii-mote and just dancing like an absolute tool. It’s amazing. Utterly, utterly amazing.

 

What Could Have Been Improved?

While eGames 2009 was a good show, it could have been a much better show. The biggest thing missing was a lack of big exhibitors from last year – namely Sony, Nintendo and EA. Granted, Sony probably would not have had a lot to show that was particularly new (aside from EyePet and the new Ratchet game) and the same case could’ve been made for Nintendo. Then again, Microsoft were only there to show off Forza Motorsport 3, a game that had only come out the week before the expo had begun, and arguably their second biggest game for the holidays, so make your own reasoning.

Megapowers collide! Yug from Australian Gamer, Jason and I talk business.

The other thing that was needed was more content on the main stage. Sure, while there was a lot of Rock Band, eGaming and stuff from the webshow “The Lobby”; gone were most of the other interesting show panels. Sure, there were things there from EA Melbourne (whom are an offshoot of Dead Space/Dante’s Inferno developers Visceral Games), and a few other developer things, but that’s it – there was nothing else, which proved to be a huge disappointment.

Personally speaking, my biggest disappointment was my ‘attempt’ to interview Ubisoft. I write attempt in that way because it never happened. Ubisoft PR blew me off the day we were meant to do the interview, citing that they prefer to let the developers of the products talk about them. Okay fine, understandable, yet tell me that next time before I ask you to do an interview THE DAY BEFORE, and BEFORE you commit to it.

Otherwise, it was a decent show. Could have been improved, but then again, what show can’t? Thanks to everyone that made it possible for the show to exist, and thanks to everyone that stopped by. Made from a great weekend, and let’s try do it again next year, kay?

Oh, and before I forget…

WE ARE THE SHOW!