• Mirror’s Edge (already beaten – they weren’t kidding when they said this was a short game)
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
• Prince of Persia (the new one)
• Crysis Maximum Edition
• Torchlight
• Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition

Backlog doubled, just like that :(

In any case, I’ve put a little time into Crysis, Torchlight and PoP Warrior Within. Crysis is pretty awesome so far – not only does it look nice, but there’s a fair amount of open-endedness in how you can approach enemy encounters. You can run in guns blazing, or you can choose to play Solid Snake and pick off enemies one-by-one. And of course with either approach there are different ways to go about it as well. So far I’m favouring a stealthy approach since it’s just a lot more fun.

I still don’t like PoP Warrior Within’s darker aesthetic, but the improvements to the combat system are appreciated. I wish they hadn’t added the ability to do the platforming tricks in battle, though; while trying to roll out of the way of one of the enemies the Prince decided that he needed to take a jump off a cliff instead. Bleh.

Mirror’s Edge was short, but it was pretty good. That said the combat is not the strong point of the game – I had the most fun when I was running around and actively trying to avoid combat. On top of that the time trial stages are pretty much exactly what I expected them to be – exercises in maintaining momentum and finding the best route to hit all the checkpoints – very old-school Sonic.

Torchlight is basically a single-player Diablo II clone with some elements from Diablo I chucked in – namely spell scrolls/books. I’m playing a Vanquisher on Hard, and it’s fairly entertaining in short bursts. Without online I can’t see myself playing this for extended periods of time, though.

Anywho, on to something a bit more topical.

I’ve been playing a fair bit of TF2 since the new patch hit, mainly because my primary class (Soldier) got updated. I’m kind of at a loss when it comes to understanding how Valve designs their updates – on the one hand the Soldier got a set of very useful, if a little buggy, items that added new ways of playing the class, but on the other hand the Demoman got completely shafted with a new sticky launcher that limits his offensive potential, and a pair of melee items that encourage them to run around and engage in melee clusterfuckery (and subsequently get gunned down by Scouts, shotgun-wielding Soldiers and Heavies).

I suppose the Demoman is already good enough that he doesn’t need any new weapons, but at the very least it means I have to deal with less sticky spam as idiot Demoman players run around with their swords and shields, trying to hack people’s heads off. It’s also proved to be a great way to improve my aim with the shotgun!

I wrote up some quick impressions of the new Soldier weapons on the TF2 forums, which I’m reproducing below:

The Direct Hit
This thing shoots rockets ridiculously fast – think Quake III rockets fast. That said, it has virtually no splash damage so awesome aim is pretty much a requirement. That said the faster rockets make airshotting a lot easier – so much so that I think the fact that it minicrits on midair opponents is a little overpowered. Particularly since the game treats anyone not standing on a solid surface as being in midair. So if someone walks off a ledge and you hit them with a rocket from the DH, you just got a 35% damage bonus.

The Buff Banner
I see a lot of people use this, but honestly I’d rather have my shotgun. The minicrit effect depends on you being in the Soldier’s general radius, which can be tricky if you’re trying to flank or sandwich the opponent.

The Gunboats
This is the fourth item that the two classes were competing for. It doesn’t have a corresponding achievement so the only way to get them are to hope for a random drop or to use the new crafting system (more on that in a bit). They’re quite nice, if you want to play roaming soldier – using these, my regular horizontal rocket jump only takes off 10HP. Losing the shotgun is a big deal though, so you’d better have really good aim with your rockets.

The Equalizer
This is a straight up upgrade over the shovel, but then again I don’t really care. It’s really handy for the roaming soldier – I actually played a round of ctf_well where I ran into the intel room, killed all the defenders with 40HP left, grabbed the intel, whipped out the Equalizer and sprinted all the way back to my base unchallenged.

As for the other parts of the update:

Crafting System
You can now combine your excess items to make new items (think Diablo II’s Horadric cube). This is pretty much how I got my Gunboats (although the first time my crafting failed and I got another Buff Banner, argh). The list of ‘recipes’ is located here: http://www.tf2items.com/crafting/blueprints.php
There are tons of people whining about how it takes so many items to craft new hats, but honestly I don’t really care too much about that stuff. Although it would be nice if the game would give me another hat already…

New Maps
cp_gorge is rather nice – Lots of open spaces so there’s less spam, and lots of flanking routes. I like it.
ctf_doublecross has a metric ton of alternate routes, making it possibly the first CTF map I’ve ever played that hasn’t ended in stalemate all the time. Quite a fun map, I have to say.

• Added some more titles to my backlog thanks to Steam holiday sales: Mirror’s Edge and the last two titles of the PoP trilogy (as well as the newest one).
• Immediately removed Mirror’s Edge from my backlog because I beat it in 3 days
• Removed Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword from my list after beating it over Thanksgiving weekend.

More significantly, I upgraded my PC pretty much as far as I think I can take it – swapped out my old Core 2 Duo E6750 for a Core 2 Quad Q9650, which is about as fast as I can take it without buying one of the ridiculously priced Core 2 Extreme models. More cores certainly make a huge difference in games like Left 4 Dead 2, and to a lesser extent in Team Fortress 2. I also replaced my 8800GTS 512 with a GTX275, which has helped with some of the more graphic intensive games that I’m still working through (like Lost Planet). I also needed a new power supply for the new card, so I grabbed a simple 650W Antec one.

Just those three parts set me back a fair amount, so much so that I think my next ‘upgrade’ will probably involve just building a new box so I can get in on all the awesome i5/i7 action.

That said, I’m tempted to download the Crysis demo again to see how well these new parts hold up.

It looks like my worst fears about Mirror’s Edge might have come true – great platforming mechanics hobbled by substandard level design. The best I can hope for is that the PC version comes with some sort of map editor so that the community can pick up where the developers seem to have failed.

In other platforming news, Sonic Unleashed arrives next week. I’m still not sold on the game, given that long sections of the speed part of the game seem to be on autopilot (or something very close to it) and that the Werehog sections are basically all the platforming bits that SHOULD have been in the main game mixed in with a pale imitation of God of War.

At the very least the sidescrolling parts of the regular levels remind me a little of Sonic Rush, although dumbed down – the level design is a good deal simpler, lacking for instance the multiple routes present in Sonic Rush Adventure and replacing the trick system with (of all things) QTEs.

I actually have a lot of things to say on the subject of Sonic Unleashed (as you might suspect) but it’s almost 1am so I think I’ll save that essay for another time.

The demo consists of a tutorial level and what I assume is the first level of the game, that takes place on a series of building rooftops. Incidentally, this is the same level that was shown when the game was revealed for the first time.

Amazingly, I must say, the demo lived up to my expectations. Somehow DICE has managed to craft a first-person platformer that feels right. It reminds me of old-school (read: Genesis) Sonic the Hedgehog games a whole lot, as in there are multiple intertwining routes you can use to navigate the level (although the progression is still very much linear) and there’s a heavy focus on maintaining momentum through good timing and using it to pull off platforming stunts in the game world.

Where it differs, of course, is in elements like combat (which, again, focuses on disarming and incapacitating your opponents quickly rather than engaging in shootouts with them). Combat is fairly simple, in that you have a single button for melee attacks and another button for disarming. The trick is to combine your melee attacks, jumps/slides and disarming moves in such a way as to get the opponent out of your way as quickly as possible – in other words, to minimise their impact to your momentum.

In addition, there’s a mode called ‘reaction time’ that lets you slow down time briefly, allowing you to execute maneuvres like frontal disarms or precise jumps with more leeway. This ties neatly back into the core platforming since the ability to use reaction time is granted when you successfully manage to maintain your momentum for an extended period of time.

If I had to nitpick, there are a couple of things I would mention:

• The game uses Unreal Engine 3, meaning that things like dynamic shadows have aliased/jagged edges, which impairs the look of the game for me somewhat. On top of that, while the NPCs are modeled and animated extremely well, they seem rather crap at emoting, much like Mass Effect and other UE3 games I’ve seen.
• I found it a little tricky to use the right analogue stick to line myself up correctly for precision jumping – this is probably more of a personal preference, though, and I imagine you can tweak the sensitivity settings to get them exactly where you want them.

Overall, though, if the final product manages to maintain the quality of the level design through to the end, this should end up being a pretty damn good game. I imagine time trial nuts (myself included) will have a blast exploring the levels, trying to find that one improvement to their route that knocks precious seconds off their best times.

(Speaking of time trials, the demo also has a time trial mode, but to unlock it you need to have preordered the game on either Xbox 360 or PS3. I’ve already decided to wait the extra two months for the PC version, so I wasn’t able to try it out)

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead is Half-Life 2.

If the whole game took place in Ravenholm.

And if the only enemies you ever encountered were fast zombies.

And if there were roughly TWO BILLION OF THEM on screen at once.

So yeah, this game looks ridiculously intense. Only the 360 version was on display, but it’ll be hitting PC as well. The part that interests me the most is the promise of an intelligent “director” that will dictate zombie spawns based on how well you and your team are playing.

On a side note, hilarious convo I overheard at the L4D booth:

Guy: So how does the difficulty scale?
Valve Employee: <explains about the intelligent director AI>
Guy: And my other question is…when is the Team Fortress 2 content coming to the Xbox?
<long, awkward silence>
Valve Employee: So anyway, this game will be out in November…

Mirror’s Edge

Annoyingly, I wasn’t able to play this either. I got within 3 heads of the demo booth but then the PS3 that was serving my line crashed and had to be turned off. A wonderful waste of half an hour (which precluded my attending the Spore onstage demo in the main theatre…grr)!

That said, the game still looks good. It seems to emphasise maintaining momentum and finding the best route through the level, both of which remind me of the old-school Sonic games (except with a whole lot more death pits).

Battlefield Heroes

I tried this out in the corner of the EA booth. The cartoony art style is quite nice and implemented reasonably well, but the game feels a little slow for my taste…maybe I’m too used to TF2‘s frantic pace, or the maps are way too large for the number of players allowed per map. I overheard one of the EA people mentioning that the game runs off the same engine as Battlefield 2142, if anyone’s interested.

Valkyria Chronicles

This is the second game I got to play (largely because Sega’s booth was basically deserted). Still, I was pleasantly surprised – this is a turn-based strategy game for the PS3 with a rather pleasant manga/watercolour art style. The thing that makes this one unique is that when you decide to move a unit, you can move it around from a third-person perspective on the battlefield. In addition, you can go into an over-the-shoulder aiming mode (much like RE4 or Gears of War) in order to attack enemy units (and the enemies seem to take different levels of damage depending on where you shoot them). Making your units take cover between turns is also important if you want them to avoid taking damage. Instead of each unit having a limited number of turns, you have a fixed pool of action points which you can then allocate as you see fit, for instance, moving certain units multiple times. I only played one mission so I’m not sure how these action points are awarded.

Still, the game looked good, so it’s one more to add to my PS3 watch list.

The Conduit

This game made headlines a while back when the developers announced the creation of a game engine for Wii that could produce effects on par with other current-generation titles. I got to see the game in action today, and it does look like the developers have succeeded in crafting a competent FPS for the Wii. I don’t know about the graphic quality, though – while the weapon and enemy effects are well done, the environments look rather bland and samey. It looks competent at the very least.

Random tidbits

• Fallout 3 looks very, very nice…no idea how it compares to the first two since I haven’t played either one, but the basic quest structure etc seems to follow Oblivion pretty closely.
• Starcraft II looks positively orgasmic but the queue to play it was way too long since each person got to play an entire match. It does look basically like Starcraft with a fresh coat of paint and some modern amenities, but that’s perfectly fine as far as I’m concerned.
• Wii Music looks like rubbish…this was made even clearer by the Guitar Hero: World Tour booth set up right next to it.
• No Capcom presence, except at the Udon booth, so no playable Street Fighter IV :(
• Bioware was doing periodic showings of Dragon Age: Origins, but I decided not to attend, given my somewhat uneven experience with Mass Effect so far. Also, it was late and I was getting hungry :p
• I saw a lot of families at the convention…definitely not something I would have expected!

All in all, the games I did yet to see and/or play were reasonably illuminating. I somehow think I would have had a lot more fun had I been with someone I knew, though…

1. Mirror’s Edge news (this game still looks bloody awesome)
2. Sonic Unleashed news (hopefully my dreams don’t come crashing down around me)
3. Any news out of Valve (this had better come to Steam, damn it… and Episode Three details kthxbai)

Blizzard is a no-show because they just held their Worldwide Invitational where this little game called Diablo III was revealed, and where Starcraft II was shown off in a competitive match for the first time.

Anyway, on to the few other tidbits that caught my eye.

Apparently Nintendo has announced some thingamajig that will improve the motion sensing of the Wii remote. How it does this, I have no idea. I’m more concerned about the fact that plugging that thing into the remote seems to preclude the attachment of a nunchuk for smoother aiming in Resident Evil 4.

Microsoft’s presser was largely uninteresting to me since I don’t own an Xbox 360 and they hardly mentioned PC releases. The reaction on the Internet to the news that Final Fantasy XIII would be coming to Xbox 360 has been hilarious, though. It’s a repeat of the NERD RAGE that erupted when Devil May Cry 4 became a multi-platform title instead of a PlayStation 3 exclusive – somehow they feel betrayed because Square Enix decided to widen the game’s potential market. Whatever. I’ve given up on trying to analyse the psychology of lunatic fanboys.

Oh yeah, that two-player co-op in Resident Evil 5 is pretty cool. I doubt I’ll buy it unless that rumoured PC version materialises though. For the life of me, I just can’t aim with a thumbstick at all. Don’t ask why.

Angry people on the Internet actually caused change…I WA SHOCK!
The new scheme still limits you to three installs, which is lame, but the need to activate every ten days has been replaced with a check every time new content is downloaded, which is more reasonable. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s about where BioShock’s copy protection was, which is slightly annoying but acceptable.

In other EA PC gaming adventures, both this and this are looking really cool. I don’t know what’s more surprising – the fact that DICE is making something that isn’t a Battlefield game, or that said game is an Unreal Engine 3 game whose predominant palette colour isn’t brown.