Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Shooterific!

Does anyone remember when First Person Shooters ruled the PC market? Well I do. Back in the day it seemed like that was all there was to play, but not anymore. I have had a real thirst for a good fps lately so I busted out Battlefield Bad Company 2 multiplayer again. I also tried out ArmA II, a game I bought during the Steam sales, and I bought Far Cry 2 for my birthday the other day.

I find that with any online fps there is a warm up time of maybe ten or so minutes where I have to adjust to the speed of the game, and that's definitely true with BFBC2. There are still some 'BS' moments in the game that make you want to cry hacker in chat, but I have learned that if I am not having fun and I am not 'in the zone' so to speak, then it's just best to just exit out of the game and avoid the rage chat that I have been prone to doing in the past. My main problem with BFBC2 is that it runs like crap, and to get it to run better I have to force DX9 and turn down a few settings without destroying the graphics too much. If only there was a game that played like BFBC2 but looked and ran like Modern Warfare 2. Actually, I think that's what the new Medal of Honor is going for.

ArmA II is an interesting game. For those who don't know, ArmA is a military simulation developed by Bohemia Interactive, the same folks that made Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. If you're looking for a heavy dose of realism in your shooter, these are the games you want to play. OFP was ugly, ran terrible at times, and AI was superhuman at times, but it was like nothing I had played at the time. Shooters have evolved since OFP was released, but my initial impression of ArmA II made me feel like I was playing the same buggy game just over ten years ago. To be fair I have only played about an hour of ArmA II, but I did like what I played enough not to regret my purchase.

Far Cry 2 is a purchase I made for a couple of reasons; A host on a podcast I listen to talks highly of the game and I wanted something that ran well and looked pretty. I loved the first Far Cry, that too was a game like none I played at the time. It looked great, played great and was a lot of fun. Far Cry 2 takes place in Africa this time as opposed to a tropical island like the first game, but it's still just as pretty looking. I have only put about two hours into  Far Cry 2 and done only a couple of missions of jobs I think they are going to be called, but so far it's fun. Far Cry 1&2 are known for their large open world but not in the traditional sandbox kind of way. It's more like you are confined to a certain area of the map, but you are free to traverse any part of that area you want to. This allows the player to approach missions any way they want to.

So those are my shooters for now, eventually I am going to pick up Singularity and the Crysis pack, but for now these will have to do.

7 comments:

Talyn said...

Go figure, but I have pretty much shifted all my gaming -- including FPS (and 3PS) -- to consoles simply because the majority of my friends have switched or don't even game anymore.

Yes, Medal of Honor is going for a more COD playstyle, although keep in mind that DICE is handling the multiplayer version of the game in their Frostbite engine, while the single-player campaign is from a different developer with (I think?) the Unreal 3 engine. I don't recall if DICE has said if MoH will have the Destruction 2.0 turned on. I rather hope not, because there needs to be plenty to differentiate the various shooters -- which DO rule the console market, by the way. Unless it gets fantastic reviews, I will probably skip MoH though since I pretty much despise COD gameplay. MW2 runs so fast because it's a tweaked version of the Quake3 engine (so I've heard?) on very small maps with extremely limited environmental interactivity as well as a smaller player cap. With it's run-n-gun, spray-n-pray gameplay those tiny maps make it little more than an arena shooter like the old Quake2 or Unreal Tournament games. The arena has been skinned to look like an urban environment and there is no rocket jumping but otherwise it's the same crap we cut our teeth on years ago. I'll take the larger playing field of the Battlefield games now. I want to feel like I'm in a war not a small skirmish.

I keep looking at Far Cry 2 but other than the title is it even a Far Cry game? I've heard it is pretty good except for the grindiness of the never-ending respawns.

mbp said...

I had to abandon Far Cry 2 after about a week of playing it because the game depressed me too much. I think it is perhaps too realistic at portraying a hopelessly dysfunctional country and the endlessly re-spawning roadblocks just emphasise the utter futility of the whole situation.

I really wanted to love the game too because I am a huge fan of the original Far Cry. I regularly break it out for a bout of video game nostalgia.

Jayedub said...

I am very early into Far Cry 2 so I haven't had a chance to experience the endless waves of respawns, something I always hated about the Call of Duty games.

Marty Runyon said...

I've been curious about Far Cry 2 as well, if only because it became such a meme from the Idle Thumbs podcasts. Someday I'll have to check it out.

Jayedub said...

It's only twenty bucks on Steam, figured there was no better time then now to get it. I've been playing a lot of BFBC2 so I haven't had much time to play Far Cry 2, but I do plan on it.

Bronte said...

I hated ArmA II. It was twitchy, the hyper-realism was more of a frustration factor than something enjoyable. I stopped playing FarCry2 the second the map doubled in size and I essentially had to repeat the first part of the game all over again. (In contrast, Dragon Age was just was tedious and repetitive and the dungeon crawls sucked, but the combat was awesome, and the story moved, nay, propelled the whole thing forward).

Jayedub said...

@Bronte - After playing Far Cry 2 a few hours, I have to say that I am not all that impressed. I don't hate the game, but I guess I am just not feeling it, so I don't know if I will ever finish the game or not.