Wow – things have been hectic lately at the weekends (what with training courses, Gerry’s swimming lessons etc) and updates to my gaming blog seems to have taken a bit of a hit as a result! To make up for it, here are my impressions of the multiplayer portion of Ghostbusters on a weekday (this way, it only looks like I skipped one post!!).
The multiplayer itself is generally comprised of you and up to three other ghostbusters bustin' ghosts within a relatively small environment. There are several different game types which you can play. Some of them will simply be your team trying to catch as many ghosts as possible within the timeframe. Others involve you trying to either destroy or protect artifacts from the ghosts. And with the success of Horde mode on Gears of War, its nice to see a survival mode here as well where your team tries to survive waves of ghosts coming after you.
One of the things that the developers did right was to make the multiplayer co-operative in nature as you are always fighting ghosts. The only competition comes in the form of you trying to get a higher score than your teammates. This game just wouldn't work in a deathmatch type scenario and thankfully, the developers realized this.
Anyway, you may recall that I really enjoyed the game when I recently gave my impressions on the singleplayer portion of the game. Unfortunately, my thoughts on the multiplayer are much less ambivalent. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I think the multiplayer portion of the game is pretty poor for several reasons.
Feel – One of the things which made the singleplayer game stand out was how well the developers managed to capture the feel of the original ghostbusters movies. A large part of this was the characterization of the various ghostbusters. As I said in my previous post, the characterization is spot on.
However, as you might expect, the multiplayer game doesn't have any of this. Its simply you and three other people running around in a room blasting ghosts. Why is this a problem? In itself, it isn't.
The problem for Ghostbusters is that other games have done multiplayer superbly well. Just as when I was playing Rainbow Six: Vegas multiplayer, a similar situation occurred and I started to wonder – why am I playing this? Although the multiplayer wasn't bad per se, it just wasn't anywhere as good as the multiplayer in other games. Just as with R6:V, the strengths of this game don't match up well to how the multiplayer is structured. As I said before, it's a real shame that Ghostbusters doesn't have a co-op campaign mode.
Lag – The other thing which really bugs me about this game is that it suffers badly from lag. To give you an example, when I first started playing, I was pretty much always in last position and only managed to come 3rd in very rare circumstances. To be perfectly honest, I didn't think much of this at first as I was still learning how the multiplayer game plays and most of the time, the lag isn't visually noticeable (most of the time). However, its noticeable often enough that I decided to setup matches and let people join me instead of me joining them.
I immediately started to come first in pretty much every match I played. I'm pretty honest about my capabilities as a gamer. After years of playing video games, I know I'm not bad at them. I also know that I'm nowhere near good enough to be able to consistently come first when playing ranked matches online unless I have a significant advantage.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Ghostbusters - Singleplayer impressions
Not long ago, I mentioned that I was really looking forward to the new Ghostbusters game. As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I now have the game and if you have been paying attention to my gamerscore, then you will know that I have completed the singleplayer campaign.
In other words, no better time than now to give my impressions of the singleplayer game!
Stuff I liked!
Fan service - This game is probably the ultimate in fan service and is what changes this from an okay action game into a fun experience for ghostbusters fans. The developers have done a fantastic job of capturing the spirit and essence of the movie. At every turn, you find subtle and not-so-subtle pointers to the original movies. The sound of the proton pack charging up, the reappearance of Stay Puft, the use of direct quotes as achievements - I could go on, but I would be here all day!
All of these touches help transport you back 25 years to when the movie was first released. All of the reviews seem to have picked up on this but it really does bear mentioning again - if you are a ghostbusters fan, you will enjoy this game.
Characters - Although linked to the fan service point above, this point is so cool that its worth repeating on its own. The original writers (Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis) were involved in the script and it shows as the characterisation of the ghostbusters is spot on. Venkman is still the smooth talking "game show host" that he is in the movies, Stantz is still spouting off technobabble with boyish eagerness, Spengler is still the verbose scientist and Zeddemore is still the straight talking ordinary Joe. Seeing these characters interact with each other the way that you would expect them to makes a huge difference.
Creepy - One of the things which the developers managed to do was make the game really creepy. There are quite a few areas where you are wandering around with your goggles equipped and your PKE meter out. Naturally, in this kind of situation, you can't fire your proton pack so you are on edge a little bit anyway. Throw in some dark corridors, creepy ghost noises, flying bookshelves and the steadily increasing beep-beep-beep of your PKE meter as you get closer to the ghost and you can easily understand why the game is scary. Naturally, I played in the dark with the lights off as well.
Bustin' ghosts - Some reviews actually dinged the game for the repetitive nature of capturing ghosts which is one of the areas where I disagree with reviewers. In my opinion, the game actually does a good job of mixing up the types of ghosts you face - some of them need to be captured while others need to be obliterated (I believe neutronised is the technical term). In fact, according to the end of game stats, there are actually more ghosts that need to be obliterated than there are ghosts that need to be captured although this number will be skewed slightly by the fact that some of the minor ghosts can be obliterated quite easily.
And this doesn't even take into account the boss fights. In any event, the key point is that I never got bored with grappling ghosts into the trap.
Dislikes!
AI - I know its very easy to bash AI and that all of the reviews have already done so - but its just not possible to comment on this game without mentioning the AI. In short, the AI of your squadmates really is atrociously bad.
There are a couple of areas near the end of the campaign where you literally spend more time running around trying to heal the other ghostbusters than you do shooting at ghosts. In fact, there were a couple of times when all I did was run around healing ghostbusters (eventually the ghosts knocked me down and I had to reload as, without me healing them, everybody else died within 2-3 seconds). This just shouldn't happen - not even if you are playing on the hardest difficulty setting.
PS If you have watched Yahtzee's review of the game, his description of "retard roundup" is absolutely spot on.
Rookie - The other thing I disliked was the fact that you played a nameless mute. Throughout the entire game, you never speak and are only ever referred to as rookie, intern, new guy etc etc. I've heard all the reasons why this was done (eg to not taint the original ghostbusters, to let people be the rookie without breaking their immersion and, based on the end credits, to set up possible game sequels where the "rookie" sets up a new ghostbusters franchise in a different city) but really, what a cop-out. It really made the cutscenes and story feel weaker for having them jump around the 5th mute ghostbuster.
No coop - This isn't really a dislike per se. However, I really think they missed an opportunity here as I think this would have made a great co-op game.
Overall, a thumbs up from the Meister and a recommendation for you to play this game - but only if you can identify who made the below quotes!
"Yes, its true. This man has no dick."
"Listen ... do you smell something?"
"I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought"
"when someone asks you if you're a God, you say YES!"
In other words, no better time than now to give my impressions of the singleplayer game!
Stuff I liked!
Fan service - This game is probably the ultimate in fan service and is what changes this from an okay action game into a fun experience for ghostbusters fans. The developers have done a fantastic job of capturing the spirit and essence of the movie. At every turn, you find subtle and not-so-subtle pointers to the original movies. The sound of the proton pack charging up, the reappearance of Stay Puft, the use of direct quotes as achievements - I could go on, but I would be here all day!
All of these touches help transport you back 25 years to when the movie was first released. All of the reviews seem to have picked up on this but it really does bear mentioning again - if you are a ghostbusters fan, you will enjoy this game.
Characters - Although linked to the fan service point above, this point is so cool that its worth repeating on its own. The original writers (Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis) were involved in the script and it shows as the characterisation of the ghostbusters is spot on. Venkman is still the smooth talking "game show host" that he is in the movies, Stantz is still spouting off technobabble with boyish eagerness, Spengler is still the verbose scientist and Zeddemore is still the straight talking ordinary Joe. Seeing these characters interact with each other the way that you would expect them to makes a huge difference.
Creepy - One of the things which the developers managed to do was make the game really creepy. There are quite a few areas where you are wandering around with your goggles equipped and your PKE meter out. Naturally, in this kind of situation, you can't fire your proton pack so you are on edge a little bit anyway. Throw in some dark corridors, creepy ghost noises, flying bookshelves and the steadily increasing beep-beep-beep of your PKE meter as you get closer to the ghost and you can easily understand why the game is scary. Naturally, I played in the dark with the lights off as well.
Bustin' ghosts - Some reviews actually dinged the game for the repetitive nature of capturing ghosts which is one of the areas where I disagree with reviewers. In my opinion, the game actually does a good job of mixing up the types of ghosts you face - some of them need to be captured while others need to be obliterated (I believe neutronised is the technical term). In fact, according to the end of game stats, there are actually more ghosts that need to be obliterated than there are ghosts that need to be captured although this number will be skewed slightly by the fact that some of the minor ghosts can be obliterated quite easily.
And this doesn't even take into account the boss fights. In any event, the key point is that I never got bored with grappling ghosts into the trap.
Dislikes!
AI - I know its very easy to bash AI and that all of the reviews have already done so - but its just not possible to comment on this game without mentioning the AI. In short, the AI of your squadmates really is atrociously bad.
There are a couple of areas near the end of the campaign where you literally spend more time running around trying to heal the other ghostbusters than you do shooting at ghosts. In fact, there were a couple of times when all I did was run around healing ghostbusters (eventually the ghosts knocked me down and I had to reload as, without me healing them, everybody else died within 2-3 seconds). This just shouldn't happen - not even if you are playing on the hardest difficulty setting.
PS If you have watched Yahtzee's review of the game, his description of "retard roundup" is absolutely spot on.
Rookie - The other thing I disliked was the fact that you played a nameless mute. Throughout the entire game, you never speak and are only ever referred to as rookie, intern, new guy etc etc. I've heard all the reasons why this was done (eg to not taint the original ghostbusters, to let people be the rookie without breaking their immersion and, based on the end credits, to set up possible game sequels where the "rookie" sets up a new ghostbusters franchise in a different city) but really, what a cop-out. It really made the cutscenes and story feel weaker for having them jump around the 5th mute ghostbuster.
No coop - This isn't really a dislike per se. However, I really think they missed an opportunity here as I think this would have made a great co-op game.
Overall, a thumbs up from the Meister and a recommendation for you to play this game - but only if you can identify who made the below quotes!
"Yes, its true. This man has no dick."
"Listen ... do you smell something?"
"I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought"
"when someone asks you if you're a God, you say YES!"
Sunday, July 26, 2009
FM 2006 - Brazil in the North American Gold Cup
You may recall that I took up international management again (specifically, Brazil). During the course of season 2030/31, myBrazil side took part in the North American Gold Cup.
You can see the results below. Hoozah, a tick in the tourney win column for me!
You can see the results below. Hoozah, a tick in the tourney win column for me!
Although I won the tournament though, it wasn't a great performance by any measure. The toughest team I faced was Mexico (not exactly world class) and they almost took me out. In fact, in the end, I only won via penalties.
What was most disappointing was that my team didn't play particularly well. Its one thing to lose to a drug induced GK but its altogether more annoying when your own team doesn't do well.
This ain't an isolated incident either. In some of the friendlies, I've struggled against strong opposition. In fact, I lost the following friendly against Spain (so far, my Brazil team is nil for two against world class opposition in friendlies).
Anyway, my current Brazil squad below:
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2
Other than the fact that both of these games are RPGs being developed by BioWare, you would think there isn't much in common between these games. However, in a recent marketing move, BioWare have created a link by giving people who buy the Collectors Edition of DA:O a bonus item to use in Mass Effect 2.
And as a result, a bunch of people on the forums are up in arms over what they perceive as a bad marketing decisions.
My own view? Pro-consumer as I am, I find it hard to get upset by this.
In all likelihood, the bonus item offered in DA:O is probably a relatively weak item which will only be of use in the early part of the game. As such, I seriously doubt that not having that bonus item will "ruin" the fun of ME2 for me.
Looking at the arguments of the posters, it looks like a lot of people have fallen for the ol' slippery slope fallacy. In other words, "Oh noes, if BioWare (or EA depending on your view) gets away with this then, before we know it, we will only get a complete game in future if we buy 100 different completely unrelated games!!!!!!!!"
This is an obvious slippery slope fallacy. Just because the buying public accept what BioWare are doing now, it doesn't mean that they will accept any and all future decisions. If BioWare do something in future which the buying public don't like, then you will see that reflected in sales accordingly. Ultimately, the market will decide what is and is not acceptable business practice (but then, I've always believed in strong or semi-strong markets).
And as a result, a bunch of people on the forums are up in arms over what they perceive as a bad marketing decisions.
My own view? Pro-consumer as I am, I find it hard to get upset by this.
In all likelihood, the bonus item offered in DA:O is probably a relatively weak item which will only be of use in the early part of the game. As such, I seriously doubt that not having that bonus item will "ruin" the fun of ME2 for me.
Looking at the arguments of the posters, it looks like a lot of people have fallen for the ol' slippery slope fallacy. In other words, "Oh noes, if BioWare (or EA depending on your view) gets away with this then, before we know it, we will only get a complete game in future if we buy 100 different completely unrelated games!!!!!!!!"
This is an obvious slippery slope fallacy. Just because the buying public accept what BioWare are doing now, it doesn't mean that they will accept any and all future decisions. If BioWare do something in future which the buying public don't like, then you will see that reflected in sales accordingly. Ultimately, the market will decide what is and is not acceptable business practice (but then, I've always believed in strong or semi-strong markets).
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