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5 Aug 05
I mentioned Blitz: The League briefly in my talk about football. I have concerns about it, but remain optimistic. Gamespot has an article up Here listing the Midway advertising sites where they're giving out (or hiding) information about the game. Also on the football front, there are rumors that 2K games and the Visual Concepts team are working on a Football Legends type of game using retired greats from the past to man the rosters. Perhaps we'll have options after all.
The F.E.A.R. single player demo came out today. If you haven't tried it yet, I can recommend it. You can find it at the Usual Suspects. It does have a slower, tactical feel to the movements. The graphics are stunning even on my aging rig. I'm sure a lot of people won't have the horsepower to play it at their preferred resolution with all the bells and whistles. It certainly seems to be holding its own with the likes of Half Life 2 and Doom 3.
Excuse me while I break off on a side rant for the moment. FEAR (periods assumed) borrows the flashlight from Half Life (& 2). Why do these high tech teams build flashlights that have to be turned off every 30 seconds? If you don't want players running around with their lights on all the time, why don't you punish them logically within the context of the game? If you have your light on all the time, you attract more attention, bad guys get hit bonuses on you, etc. /rant
The game gives you three weapon slots. That's one up from Halo. You still have to make choices about what weapons you carry, but it doesn't feel quite as restrictive. The demo shows you a pistol, sub machine gun, assault rifle, armor penetrating rifle, a combat shotgun and a particle gun. Forgive me if I missed anything. The particle gun was clearly the star of the demo as it had a nice range on the scope, cool firing effects and turned enemies hit by it into charred skeletons reminiscent of Mars Attacks. The sub machine gun seems kind of worthless unless you use it in bullet time when it's nice to have lots of bullets to spray.
Did I mention the bullet time in the demo? At its heart, it's a fairly bare bones implementation, but they have a wonderful effect where enemies are given a slight sheen or glow during bullet time. This makes picking them out and targeting them easier without breaking immersion the way a stark outline would.
The enemy AI certainly made the demo fun. They wouldn't attack the same way twice. I did see them jumping over and crawling under obstacles, providing cover fire, using realistic and accurate chatter, and making intelligent use of grenades (while responding well to my grenades). I hope the teammate AI stacks up as well. The game is supposed to be about you being the junior member of a special ops team, but the demo was completely solo.
They only put a few freak out moments in the demo. They did a good job messing with you. The music did its job conveying that something wasn't right. They could still go a lot of ways with it. If they do it right, it will be an instant classic. The demo was certainly good enough to get this game added to the radar. If you're on broadband, be sure to check out the demo if only to see where graphics are headed. If you're not on broadband, well the demo weighs in at about 650 MB. You probably don't have that kind of time.
Jason
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4 Aug 05
Normally, when I don't feel motivated to rant on long topics, there's enough news and info on the strategy/tactical front to fill the gaps for me. I'll try to get back to normal next week. I just feel a bit sub par when writing columns this week. I do have a bunch of things I want to go over at some point, but I've got to be in the right mood. Thanks for your patience.
Today, I go after another low hanging fruit. Games I'm looking forward to. I thought about using a time frame like Fall, but that would require me to research when all these games are coming out, and we all know how reliable release dates are when they come to games. I could throw all the links at you, but I knew there was a reason I keep up the Web Links database. I'm sure I'll mention a few that I haven't used yet, but Google almost makes life too easy.
Let's start at the top. I'd say the game I'm most looking forward to is Rise of Legends. I enjoyed the parts I've played of Rise of Nations. I love the art style. Everything I've heard about the design has me excited. Running a close second is Heroes of Might and Magic V. Again, I love the art style. If they try to remain true to the series at all, I have high hopes.
I'll jump to the tactical side for a moment. Operation Flashpoint 2 is probably at the top. It seems like they're revamping it a bit, so it could be a while before we see that. The sequels to Full Spectrum Warrior and Star Wars Battlefront have me intrigued. I had high hopes for both of the originals. Let's hope they fulfill a bit more potential with the sequels. Then there's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Unreal Tournament 2007. Both feel like they're off forever in the future. Ghost Recon 3 is coming. It should be interesting to see where they go with that.
On the 4X front, there's Civilization 4, GalCiv 2 and Sword of the Stars that all have me interested. Did I mention the Rome expansion? On the RTS front, of course I'm waiting for the Warhammer expansion. I'm looking forward to Conquest 2 (but I haven't heard anything in a long time). Speaking of conquests, I just found out that Seven Kingdoms: Conquest has been delayed until Q1 2006, but I'm still interested.
In the quirky department, there are a lot of games as well. Pretty much anything Molyneux (The Movies, Black and White 2) is worth taking a look at (though wait for reviews. Rebelstar Tactical Command just went gold. Don't we all have a moral obligation to support the people who gave us XCom? I think everyone and their brother is anticipating Spore from Wil Wright. Of course, I remember anticipating Simsville as well. I'm putting Ghost Wars under quirky as well since we don't know how well the first person control will work out. I should mention Hammer and Sickle as well. I don't equate espionage with a ton of combat, but if Nival does, who am I to complain?
I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones that leap to mind. Feel free to tell me what I'm forgetting. It's more likely my memory than lack of enthusiasm. Now that I think about it, with all this to look forward to, how am I supposed to get through my backlog? Oh well, game on.
Jason
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3 Aug 05
Things usually start picking up towards the middle of the month. People start getting back from vacations. Schools start up. The whole fall selling season starts gearing up. Most importantly, football starts. Here in Houston, we're hoping our Texans will put the expansion label behind them and move up to playoff contender. With Indy in the division, it's hard to expect a division win, but not being eliminated early would be a significant improvement. Last year the Texans had a number of exciting games, but they didn't pull out the W's in as many as you'd hope for. The great thing about a new season is that everyone starts even again.
On the game side, basically, you have the text manager games or Madden. Generally speaking, I like Madden. I like the controls and the sense of game momentum. Of course, I don't expect I'll buy or rent it this year. I just can't support the whole exclusive license. I could join the protest movement and buy Midway's violent football like game. However, I'm not that motivated to buy it for revenge alone. If it gets good reviews, I'll probably grab it.
Here's an article I was saving for a slow day. It seems Intel has added hard coded DRM management to its latest chips. Combined with Microsoft's DRM software, it appears your new computer won't let you do what you want with your media files. Approved uses only please. I wonder what AMD will do. I wonder how long before Intel gives DRM a brand name and calls it a feature. I picture ads implying said feature will 'unlock your media world.' Feel free to discuss.
Jason
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2 Aug 05
It's been pretty quiet on the gaming front recently. I guess everyone is keeping their head down after the San Andreas affair. Of course, you know what that means. Yes, it's time to go over the vision and purpose of the site. Some of the regulars could complain, but since they haven't been posting in the forum or submitting stories, they can suffer through it again (or click away, of course).
For those of you who don't know, Talk Strategy isn't my personal blog to pontificate on the state of gaming. No, this place is for you, the reader. It's a place to gather as a community. It's a community built around gaming particularly strategy and tactical gaming. Why those genres? Simply because they are games where you tell your own story each time you play.
If you look in the Games section, you'll find some reviews and articles, but mostly you'll find stories. A good story is one of the strongest advocates you can find for a game you love. If you can get someone else to feel the fun and excitement you feel when playing that game, chances are they'll want to experience that first hand. Stories are also a good way to explain you love for gaming as a hobby. Finally, shared stories and their discussion are what bind us together as a community here. I'd love to see more of that happening. That's the short version. You can get to work on some more stories. I'll see if I can round up some games for another contest.
Jason
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1 Aug 05
I think I'm back to normal now. My stomach is still a touch delicate, but otherwise my strength has returned. It's been a long time since I've gotten that much sleep (certainly it was before David was born). I have to thank my wife. She was feeling better by the time I crashed hard. I'm beginning to appreciate what a great kid David is. With all the chaos going on around, he didn't seem bothered by it at all. Maybe he remembers a little of his time at the hospital.
I tried to find out what I missed, but it didn't seem to be much. Drop me a line if I missed anything important. I put some news up in the news section. I must admit that I like the title Bang! Howdy much better than Puzzle Pirates. I should also point out that the Designer Diary isn't an exclusive, but it's still neat to be one of the sites they sent it to. If anyone wants to beat me up in Dawn of War to get ready for the expansion, let me know. I'm sure I'm pretty rusty, but that's ok. I'm not a sore loser.
Let's see. I'm also trying to finish up SWAT 4, Nexus and Darwinia. The problem is I got hooked on Disgaea again while anticipating Makai Kingdom. That game is just wacky fun. There are so many neat ideas in there. You can power up any item by fighting your way through its item world. If you conquer certain residents there, then they work for you. You can power them up as well. You can move residents between item to give the bonuses you want to the item you want. Then there's the whole Dark Senate where you can accomplish your goals through influence, bribery or force. All this wrapped around a sweet, strategy RPG battle system.
Since Disgaea's already been a game of the week, we'll thank Relic and THQ for supporting the site. This week's game is the Winter Assault expansion for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (official site) from Relic Entertainment. Winter Assault gives you more visceral action and strategy. The core of the game remains the same while adding new units to each side, a new faction (the Imperial Guard), and a couple of single player campaigns (rumored to be one good and one evil). The Imperial Guard is made up of common soldiers on an uncommon battlefield. They tend to be more defensive requiring mass to win battles. The Guard also sport a good deal of tanks to level the playing field with the creatures of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Winter Assault will be out this fall.
Jason
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