Episode One and Ghost Recon.

New school vs. old school.
by AC - permalink

I was going to write up a fairly detailed review of Half-Life 2: Episode One tonight, but then I read this review at 2404.org. Just read that, because it's what I would have said, with only a couple of modifications. First, I don't agree that Half-Life 2 was artificially lengthened with the long vehicle sequences. They may feel a little out of place if you've played four or five dozen other shooters, but that doesn't mean those levels don't have their own merits -- and it definitely doesn't mean they aren't fun. Second, I like HL2's weapon load. I think it takes a lot of time to get used to them, but eventually you realize that every one of them is useful throughout the entire game, and the hugely diminished ammo capacity from Half-Life is, in the end, a plus. I also don't have a problem with the "bucket" weapon-selection method, but that's probably because I've spent so much time playing the original Half-Life series and Counter-Strike: Source.

In any case they made a lot of right calls in their Episode One review, so read it if you still haven't decided to get the game. After I finished it, I let it simmer for a couple of days, then plunged back in, and had a much better time with it. I tackled a couple of areas with a completely different strategy, and I'm already kicking around new ideas.

The brilliance of the gravity gun in HL2 and Episode One is how it lets you move around almost anything in preparation for an upcoming fight. You can gather explosive barrels so they're easy to reach for toss-and-bangs when the baddies advance on you, or you can strategically place them for remote detonation via pistol. Or you can move around heavier objects to create a defensive bulwark, funnelling enemies into presighted avenues. This is no tactical shooter, it's simply an action game with an unprecedented amount of depth.

But speaking of tactical shooters, I've just about finished my new campaign in Ghost Recon. I'm up to the last mission, the one at Red Square in Moscow. The depth of this game is just phenomenal, which is probably why it still has an active fan community five years after it was released. This time around I've reversed strategies on a number of missions, moving hard and fast through maps where I had previously had success with stealth, and creeping my way through the missions that had always seemed to call for full-on assaults. I also ended up taking a couple of the standard operatives - a support soldier and a demolitions guy - much deeper into the campaign. The demo tech in particular has been upgraded to the point that his stats are on par with the specialists, and in fact I'm taking him into Moscow on a tank-busting fireteam with Tunney.

I'm really going have fun with this mission. Instead of two versatile fireteams, I'm putting a stealth team of Ramirez and Grey on point, with my demo team of Tunney and Allen following to take out the tanks, and a sniper team, Ibrahim and either Stone or Galinsky on reserve to pick off distant sentries on the push through Red Square. In the past I've always used two teams with OICW-using Jacobs and Cohen leading, each with a sniper and a demo in tow. But what fun is that? If you didn't need more than one demo to clear all the tanks, you could get through that mission with just one team of three guys, and that's hard to justify realistically when you're talking about wiping out thirty or more entrenched enemies.

Besides, Ghost Recon is just more fun when you've got half a dozen armed badasses under your mouse -- especially when a fireteam you've left alone for a while unexpectedly comes under fire and cuts down all the attackers before you can even switch back to them. I love that game.

Can't get enough Half-Life.

Best... franchise... ever.
by AC - permalink

Picked up Half-Life 2: Episode 1 early this morning at Wal-Mart. Officially, I went to pick up a new 20-foot tie-down for Maggie the Abnormally Strong Rottweiller after she broke yet another one last night. Unofficially, I wanted this game. Bad. Good news is, it's all good news. I found a heavy-gauge lead this time, and I don't think our friendly little terror can tear this one apart. Plus, Episode 1, so far, is pretty fucking sweet.

Lately when the gaming itch hits me - which is every day - I've had a yen for the Half-Life series. I played through the Source edition of Half-Life (up to Xen, which everybody loathes for good reason) for just the second time. Once again, I kept wishing I was just playing regular old Half-Life, because the high-def pack that came with Blue Shift simply makes it look better than HL: Source, except for the water and that one part on the cliffside. I haven't let myself play Blue Shift or Opposing Force for a long time, because at some point I'm afraid I'll just get sick of them, and I love 'em too much to let that happen. So I've gone back a couple years and started a new campaign in Ghost Recon. I've said it before, but that really is an all-time classic game for me, especially when you consider its expansion packs, Desert Siege and Island Thunder. You can lose hours and hours to that game without even realizing it.

But getting back to Episode 1. First impression? Alyx is funny. And so well-realized that she seems more real than ever. Her character model and textures have been tweaked slightly, and animation is sharper, quicker, and more varied than in HL2. She flinches and shields her eyes when you shine your flashlight at her, and jokes around when there's a lull in the action. Best example is when you first run across combine-zombies and she calls them the "Zombine," then groans at her own pun. Most importantly, having her tag along very quickly stops feeling like an escort mission, and feels natural and real. I can't stress that point enough.

Although I'm only at roughly the midpoint of Episode 1, Alyx's AI and unexpected interaction has been so good that it actually feels like a co-op game. And I've never said that about any game I've ever played. I know, of course, that she won't seem as real on the second play-through, but this is a Half-Life game. There will be new things to discover.

In fact one of the reasons Half-Life 2 is in my all-time top five is the depth of exploration. The last time I played that game, and it must have been the seventh or eighth time, I found two new areas I'd never come across before in just the first couple hours of the game. The time before, I found two more. Once you know where the lulls in the action are going to be, you can take some time to walk around and explore, maybe gather some crates and barrels, stack 'em up, and see where you can get to. I love that.

Anyway, the HDR in Episode 1 really adds to the game, when compared to Half-Life 2. And I might be wrong, but there seems to have been some optimization done to it, as there seems to be a much smaller framerate hit when it's enabled when compared to Lost Coast. I inadvertantly played through the first section of the game - the part in the Citadel - with Catalyst forcing completely maxed-out settings for AA and AF, and it was still very playable. Reverting to just 8X AF and 4X AA for the next hour made the game silky smooth, even with HDR still on, though at the admittedly low res of 1024x768.

But there is one downside. After installing Episode 1 from the DVD-ROM, I had to wait several hours while I downloaded updates via Steam over dial-up. The retail package is only five days old, but apparently it's so out-of-date that Valve won't let you play it until you've downloaded several hundred MB's worth of updates. That really is irritating if, like me, you drove to a store, pulled cash out of your pocket for the game, and just want to play it already.

Additionally, the retail edition comes with no extras, other than Half-Life 2 Deathmatch and Half-Life 1 Deathmatch: Source, which came with Half-Life 2 Game of the Year Edition and are available over Steam for free anyway if you have even the bare-bones HL2. And Episode 1 is short. Again, I haven't finished it yet, but I hear it's very short, even for just $20. $20 really isn't much for a brand new game, but you have to keep in mind that in the world of PC games, $20 can get you a lot if you're willing to wait. I bought GTA San Andreas on DVD, Call of Duty, Halo, Ghost Recon Gold Edition, Far Cry, and Doom 3 for $20. I got GTA Vice City and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for $10, and Unreal Tournament: 2004 Editors Choice on DVD for $15.

But those were old games. I am incurably addicted to the entire Half-Life franchise, and I needed Episode 1 now. And even after playing just half of it, Episode 1 was worth twenty bucks.

Pacific Assault is iffy.

One step forward, one step back.
by AC - permalink

I saw a copy of Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault sitting on a retail shelf for twenty bucks the other day, so I grabbed it. I also saw the Medal of Honor War Chest, which I thought was out of print, for thirty, but I passed. I might have been wrong about that. The War Chest has MoH: Allied Assault, which I already have, plus its two expansion packs, one of which I know is supposed to be really good, and I do want it. Just not for thirty dollars.

Anyway, back to MoH: Pacific Assault. I've been meaning to get this for a while, because Allied Assault is one of my favorite shooters, and I knew from reviews that I trust that it's pretty good, if not great, and makes some interesting and significant gameplay changes to shift more towards the realism side, and that it pushes the Quake III engine much further. After playing the game roughly halfway through, I agree with all that. But I do have some beefs.

First, though, the good stuff. The graphics really are pretty damn nice. I've never seen the Quake III engine, which was already five years old when this game was released two years ago, pushed this far. It actually looks a lot like Far Cry. Not because of the jungle settings so much, but for texture detail, especially in character models and the little detail objects. Textures look so good that at times they fool you into thinking they're bump-mapped and have specular lighting. It looks nothing like Allied Assault or Call of Duty. Pacific Assault is a breakthrough in terms of up-close detail for the Q3 engine, while CoD's expansion United Offensive created the same sense of immersion with massive battle sequences. Both deliver framerates that seem almost unnaturally high on modern hardware considering how good the games look. But that's the genius of the Q3 engine, isn't it?

Which makes me wonder why Pacific Assault doesn't support anti-aliasing out of the box. I couldn't even force it to work via Catalyst, like you can do with older games like Quake III or Half-Life, which were released before AA was a major feature. That means AA is intentionally disabled in Pacific Assault. I assume that's for performance reasons, but still, what the hell? It's the only game I own that won't let you use anti-aliasing. Turns out I'll have to download more than 220MB worth of patches to even have the option of enabling AA at any level, and even then the only options are 1X, 2X, and 16X. Since I generally use 4X and 6X, this is less than helpful. Thanks, EA.

Anyway, Pacific Assault's presentation, the game's "feel," is all nice and polished. One of my favorite little things is the wartime radio station that plays in the background of the main menu mini-map. The cut-scenes are pretty nicely done (better than Far Cry's, anyway), but are a little long and are basically just exposition for a plot that doesn't really exist. They let you get to know the game's main characters - your squad - who stick with you throughout the game. It's a nice touch to elaborate more on persistant squad members, who seem to have their own AI tendencies during a firefight. One of the things I liked about Call of Duty and United Offensive was how a number of missions kept you with the same NPC's, and how they appeared in that game's various episodes (US, British, and Russian). Pacific Assault takes that aspect about as far as I've seen in this type of shooter.

It ain't all ham and jam, however. In Allied Assault and Call of Duty, you can take down enemy soldiers pretty easily with just about any weapon, even the pistols, and one rifle shot is almost always enough. This keeps those games moving along nicely, and it's really satisfying to snapshot a bunch of guys in a row. But in Pacific Assault, it takes way too much to kill the bad guys. Submachine guns like the tommy are so ineffective that even using aim-down-the-sight, which Allied Assault didn't have, doesn't work unless you're less than ten feet away. That makes those weapons pretty much useless, because you're constantly running into situations where you're faced with a dozen or more enemy grunts, spread out behind cover and having no trouble at all hitting you with whatever weapons they may be holding - even pistols. The rifles aren't much more useful. Landing a headshot with a sniper rifle won't take down a guy wearing a helmet. That's just wrong. Is this a game or a training manual for SWAT teams?

It's this balance between realism and, well, fun, that Pacific Assault doesn't get quite right. If you get wounded, there are very, very few medpacks to pick up. Instead you have to call your medic, which you can only do so many times. And he might be busy patching up one of your squadmates, leaving you to find cover before he can help you. Even when he's coming, you might have to cover him from enemy fire. This is good stuff, but adding enemies that are almost unkillable really slows down the game and requires frequent saves and loads.

And that's another issue. Even quickloads take a long, long time. On a fast PC by today's standards, waiting so long for a two-year-old game to load gets irritating real fast. Even starting the game takes too much time, as you're forced to sit through little ads for EA Games, THX, and Intel, then spend a few more seconds reading the game's ESRB rating, and then the main menu has to load.

Pacific Assault does have its moments, though. Again, I haven't finished it yet, but so far it's the less conventional missions I've had the most fun with. Making your way through the listing and burning USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, carrying wounded soldiers to safety - that's good times. Following the previous Medal of Honor games, you earn medals as you complete the game, but the "hidden objective" medals, like finding that captured airman in Lighting the Torch in Allied Assault, are scattered throughout every mission in Pacific Assault, and are harder to find, adding to the replay value. But some of the missions just don't make you want to replay them. You'll know you're not playing Far Cry, despite the jungle environment, when you suddenly realize you're on a corridor-crawl, leading your team down a very tightly constricted path and running into a half-dozen enemy grunts every forty feet. In fact, you might think you're playing Doom 3 in that respect - not good times.

So Pacific Assault is hit-or-miss for me, at least so far. For $20, I'd say it's probably worth it. On a technical level, it's much more impressive than Allied Assault, and on par, for different reasons, with CoD: United Offensive. But from what I've seen, it's just not as much fun.