Battlefield 2

I was born to lead. The day I came out the shrink wrap DVD case and on to the dusty field, I just knew it. A good squad leader, especially of a full six man unit, has respect. I would lead a silent, on-foot point capture, spotting enemies and spurring on my men. We'd run into the opposition - my lethally accurate spec ops class G36 tearing down enemy players as my teammates scrambled for the flag. Once obtained, our engineer would grab the captured chopper, and my men, already boarded, would wait for me as I planned the logistics of our next move. Lift off.

Battlefield 2, like every other game, is based on a number of experiences the designers have planned the player to go through. Multiplayer makes the order and specific circumstances of these less predictable, but the principal is the same. It's the surprisingly excellent design choices that makes BF2's memories so alarmingly cinematic. The gap between events chartered by the previous Battlefield game's intro FMVs, and the interactive version you were about to play, is now bridged seamlessly.

For those who've missed out on the highly popular FPS franchise from Dice studios, the difference with the BF games is it's niche blend of diverse vehicular death, accessible controls, lots of class based players and a degree of semi-realism that works pretty well. The third work of the series follows a rather luke-warm receiving of Battlefield Vietnam, that was criticized for not moving the series forwards enough. Suffice to say that for an EA published game, and for most fans of BF, Two will easily provide a fresh enough experience to warrant the sequel moniker.

Everyone's bored of multiplayer that feels like offline botmatch. Players run around, shoot at each other, never say please or thank you, team kill, and generally, outside of clan play, act like those kids who hang around the corner, near Budgens. A fundamental new feature of BF2 is the way teams are arranged. Individuals can join or form 'squads' of up to six friendlies who can then benefit from internal voice comms and the ability to spawn on the squad leader. A leader can issue commands that appear on members’ mini maps, and thanks to an excellent radial voice macro, members can instantly confirm or deny the order, as well as a host of other statements/requests, all of which are useful.

I won't go into the low-level technicalities, you can read about them anywhere. What's important is that the system is subtly, eloquently engineered to make team play easy. This is great, because team play is also fun. Inwardly embarrassing, perhaps, to be shouting 'pull back, artillery coming in! GET DOWN!' down the mike, as if we were back in the fifth grade playground, ha! Good thing we're all confident sixth graders. But it's that you might find it embarrassing that proves how good it is - you care about your situation, your teammates, where you wouldn't have done in previous games.

This is due in no small part to the invention of persistent stats - a first in mainstream multiplayer FPS. On ranked servers (at time of writing mainly lag festive and full) your scores are recorded in great detail for your perusal on an account page of the main menu. Play long and well enough, and your rank will increase for all your envious teammates to see. Play even better, and class specific weapons can be unlocked for use in any ranked game. Your score gained per match is doubled if your team wins, making the stakes that much higher. Fail, and you are personally responsible for wasting other people's time. It's an innovation timely fitting to the genre, removing an element of stand-still pointlessness sometimes argued of multiplayer shooters.

As well as the (rugged, manly) intimacy you quickly come to share with your squad, the single position commander role is another that effects the emotion of every battle. He Who Reigns On High has a number of abilities, governed from an RTS style interface. Artillery barrages, radar scans and supply drops all can have significant bearings on battle, as can the authority to issue orders to squad leaders. It's in this Godly power that the humanity becomes fierce: squad leaders can choose to reject commands, you can rebuke or commend your (real, human) underlings, they can ask for assets that you can then tactically deny, Machiavelli style. Then the logistics fade away in the overhead 3D view as you watch two six man teams decimated by an M1A1 tank you could have protected them from. Their hot keyed screams of 'medic!' and 'we need reinforcements over here!' biting at your digital conscience.

Back on the ground, more gushing praise can be sung for the graphical splendour of the game's Eastern theatre. Enemy black hawks cast down ominous shadows, artillery sends up giant, devastating spews of opaque debris, specularity reflects the evening sun off the runway, and the environmental detail observed from a lonely dam-top watch tower takes the breath away. At maximum detail anyway. Weigh it up - graphics card vs non-essential internal organ.

A 50. cal hole in this review is where criticism should be. The support class is repairing as we speak - there are a couple of issues, most consistent with the failings of the previous games. The server browser is inexplicably rubbish and by all accounts, regardless of machine spec, quite unstable. There's no 'favorites' function, refreshing is slow, and the menu takes three of four seconds to load from in-game. Bot matches are poor, in keeping with BF tradition. Dice say they've been improved, but they still obviously run across mapped paths, and will resort to the melee knife a little too readily. If you are on 56k, be advised - offline is not worth buying the game for. This review is written a couple of days after the EU release of Battlefield 2, and EA's servers have been a bit worse for wear having faced a peak of 25,000 players. High speed European ranked games are few and far between, but this is expected to balance out as hosts rise to the demand.

Team play innovations, graphical supremacy and the thundering roar of enemy jets combined with persistent stats all work together to really put you There. There being any one of the varied, immaculately crafted maps, each available in 16, 32 and 64 player sizes. The generous choice of class, vehicle and squad dynamics allow for combinations and emergent tactical options that will keep you playing for weeks. Battlefield 2 is one of the best multiplayer first person shooters ever made, you should probably buy it.

Splinter Cell 3

For Thunderbolt Games

Grimly, I pulled on either end of the wire. His feat raised off the ground as he scrabbled at a tightened neck for only a second or two. Between the sheets of rain, I supported the uniformed Cuban, lowering his corpse into the darkened foliage. Sullenly, I loped towards his terrified partner; blind in the darkness.

Repeat.

Actually that’s a little harsh. I could have whistled, drawing one in as he remarked to himself, “that’s a nice sound, I wonder who’s making it?” Or thrown a rock into his face, or dashed headlong at them both, slitting throats and dodging the AK fire. You see, in the third outing of the popular multi-platform stealth game, Splinter Cell - the variety of ways to confront your enemies has been expanded.

“Yeah, but come on”, I hear you cry. “We expect that. That comes as standard.” I’d agree with you. Alas, in these times of guarded profits and publisher control, innovation suffers. By way of example; the colourful DVD case sings the addition of a knife to your arsenal. “The ultimate stealth equipment!” It proclaims. Rather anti-climactic to think that not since the medieval Thief games has there been a development in plundering paraphernalia. On the other hand, perhaps in Splinter Cell 4 we’ll get moss arrows.

Actually, Chaos Theory is actually the best game of the franchise so far, updating and refining all the elements that make it the modern stealth trademark that it is. This outing features a respectable 10 – 12 hour single player campaign, a better version of Pandora Tomorrow’s original online mode, and this time adds in, for better or worse, a unique cooperative portion.

Everything about Chaos Theory will feel reassuringly familiar to fans of the first two games. The knife really is one of the few updates to the solo missions, and one that unfortunately, bears little consequence to the way the game plays. Remember how you could grab enemies from behind? Perhaps coercing out of them some helpful clues as to what lies ahead? Now, you can simply knife them in the back. Excellent. It even takes less effort – creep up behind and left click. As if Ubisoft aims to target the viewers of home shopping channels, the game could be advertised with phrases like “killing people has never been easier!” or “Splinter Cell 3: putting the corpses in your hands”.

It’s actually too easy. Difficulties range from ‘normal’ to ‘realistic’, so perhaps the designer thought this placebo effect might fool players; The default – ‘hard’, is nigh effortless. Quick save (now for the first time included in the Xbox version too) quickly eases the pain of the slightest failure, and lone enemies just need to be summoned with a polite whistle from the plentiful shadows for systematic eradication.

To tick a bullet point on the Ubisoft “What will sell us the most units” chart - ‘free roaming’ level design is another addition to the third game. Or, opportunities now arise to either crawl through a vent, or walk through a door. Being the kind of player that got bored of ventilation shafts a fair few hundred games ago, I personally went for the door each time. You may think differently, but never mind, because we’ll both find ourselves confusedly retracing our steps via the alternate route every time. Frustrating level design indeed, particularly when the map interface is almost completely useless – failing to indicate where you are on it, or the names of the rooms you’re looking at. On top of that, the extraction point for each mission is never obvious. Trudging back through the whole map looking for the appropriate area quickly becomes a grind.

Well, it would be a grind, if it wasn’t for the spell binding, all encompassing beauty of this game. It’s not just the high spec shader features – although they help – it’s more the incredible attention to detail in the lighting composition of the game’s environments. Shafts of dramatic moonlight pierce stained glass windows, illuminating enemy faces in deep reds and blues. Rusting, cratered, reflective surfaces of aging oil tankers catch the eye. Huge soft shadows stretch lengths across mellow tiled floors, I could go on. All the way through, painstaking attention has gone in to ensuring what you’re seeing is an image of contrasty, colourful brilliance.

As such, half the fun is positioning the camera for the most cinematic of these compositions. Looming in the darkness ten feet above your enemies, your legs supporting you between narrow walls, before raining heavy booted feet upon their unsuspecting heads is always a good one. You might prefer leaning down from a pipe in the ceiling to strangle your enemies upside down - either look great. Unfortunately, these scenarios carry a sense of strict linearity. The moments for you to use an ‘insanely stylish context sensitive animation tm’, (also featuring the ‘pull-him-over-the-railings-from-beneath’ routine) are pretty few and far between. When they’re there, the opportunity feels forced upon you. The level design screams, “Here is the point where you perform the action. Non-compliance will result in less beautiful camera work, and/or less units of consumer fun - calculated by Ubisoft”.

Consumer being the manically operative word. I am currently chewing Airwaves gum, “The Kick That Helps You Breathe Free”. Advertising in Splinter Cell is shameless and plentiful. FMV sequences you should be enjoying the budget of linger on full-frame shots of the stuff. It appears on blimps in the sky. At first, I thought the packet of my new favourite gum was some essential element to the game’s convoluted plot tedium. Not so, although I thought I heard Lambert, the good ol’ boss/“wise black guy” character chewing as he explained how the world was about to explode if we didn’t get the right key code in some non-essential amount of time.

The multiplayer elements of Chaos Theory bring more to the table. A bit more. Firstly, there’s an updated Pandora Tomorrow four player versus mode. Besides a couple of additional items to each side - guards and spies - there have been some balancing improvements and some new maps added. If you didn’t get the chance to play this tense, innovative stealth online mode in the second game, it really is worth a look. Guards are armed with a first person view, guns, and tools like mines, flashlights, grenades and access to camera networks. The weaker side, spies, as in the story mode, operate in third person and have a host of non-lethal equipment – saving the deadly moves strictly for hand to hand. It works out as a fantastic balance, both sides having severe weaknesses and devastating strong points that, when used effectively, can leave you more proud of yourself than any high scoring match of Counter Strike.

Like when, as a guard, you equip motion sensors to see through a spies smoke grenade - gunning him down as he sprints and rolls towards the shadows. Or as a spy, crouching in a corner while a guard places a mine in a doorway. Equip camouflage, role out and grab him by the throat before he’s finished. You can even whisper victory taunts to his headset from your mike, limited exclusively to this position, before you snap.

Quite unlike the offline game, this one is rock hard. An ‘exam’ feature has been implemented for Chaos Theory, preventing you from joining the (tactical, restrained) fray until you’ve completed a demo map of the Versus features. Perhaps so as to not hold players back, the exam doesn’t quite cover all the subtleties. How well a match goes is usually in large part due to the skill of your only team mate, so being paired up with a newer player can be frustrating. But these aren’t points against the game. Its complexity requires some input, and if you want to play something that’s a pretty far throw from the standard death match and capture the flag rules seen in all games nowadays, it’s thoroughly worth it.


Cooperative play has been introduced too. If ever the shadows felt a bit lonely, a like-minded covert operative can now be invited for either LAN or online play.
In a cutely homo-erotic fashion, you and a friend can now knife and strangle people together, playing as two lesser Sam Fishers called in when the crisis gets desperate. Cooperation really is essential; scale each other as ladders to reach higher places, abseil each other to lower ones, throw each other at enemies even. In their interactively limited way these set-pieces are great like the single player’s are. But again, the ‘insanely stylish context sensitive animation tm’ routine gets tired. While there’s the novelty of animating with someone, the co op specific flaws soon reveal themselves. Like radar, or the lack of. Losing each other, particularly during an online game where speech is often limited to typing, can curb both party’s enthusiasm. The maps are built for the mode, but they feel mostly rushed. Layout isn’t as tight, often with wide open, useless spaces, contributing to a sense that you’re doing something pretty secondary to The Man himself, prancing about on his own in the single player, and who is occasionally referenced. “He gets all the fun”, you think, looking at your black-clad partner, who’s looking back at you.

In the sound department, Ubisoft threw their money at music with effective accuracy. Drum and bass genius Amon Tobin composed the entire score, and it’s some of the best game music ever written. Not quite as good as his ‘Supermodified’ or ‘Bricolage’, but when you’re winching down a rope into a high security bank, with the lasers criss-crossing at the floor level beneath you and the drums kick in… Or you’re carrying the corpse of a guard out of another’s path as he edges blindly forwards, calling for his recently deceased friend, it’s then that the jazzy loops truly consummate your stylish-ness.

So we’ve got to the third game, and it’s more of the same. More style, more multiplayer, more graphics, more, well, knives. On it’s own, it’s the best stealth game on the PC by a good distance, Thief 3’s lack of features trailing some way behind. But as a sequel, it’s painfully under-developed. In a fictional games industry where publishers were as insignificant and ineffectual as the additions to new Splinter Cell games, the content here could have been the sum of free updates for the previous game. Oh God, what have I- “FREE? FREE CONTENT? UBI-BOT FAILS TO SEE MAXIMIMUM PROFIT POTENTIAL! UBI-BOT WILL NOW CRUSH YOU!”

Devil May Cry 3

For Thunderbolt Games

In an attempt to mimic the style of the game in this review, I'm skipping the introduction. Because that's what Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening would do. Capcom’s PS2 action sequel would abandon any of that babyish "learning curve" nonsense and throw you right in there to whimper at the strength of your inadequacy as you were systematically torn to pieces by large, hooded, scythe wielding creatures. This review would need to be traditional too, to follow the game’s example; featuring rustic action conventions and nostalgic puzzle-solving elements. All things considered, like the game, it would also have to be great. Ok, enough of the imitation.

You are the loud mouthed, white haired young half-demon, Dante, and you’re just about ready to open up a new shop. What the establishment deals in is not clear, but that’s ok, because evil monsters with glowing eyes will soon be pouring out of the woodwork - leaving you little time to consider your characters trade details. Players of the previous games will have no problems picking up the new game, but for the rest of us it’s an unforgiving learning process. You target enemies to direct your attacks towards them whatever direction you’re moving in, but a lot of your moves are dependant on Dante’s left, right, up and down. Because of the fixed position cameras, and the often crowded combat situations occasionally making it hard to pinpoint who exactly you are targeting, you can end up doing the wrong move – getting you killed. But while it may take a few hours to grasp, you wouldn’t want it any other way once you’ve got there.

What makes learning the controls so hard at first is the off-hand ease with which enemies will destroy you for your mistakes. The game really is phenomenally difficult. The time it takes you to recover is long enough to prevent you escaping easily, particularly when there’re multiple enemies around you. Sometimes you’ll get hit once, and the rest of foes will pile in afterwards, reducing your health by a third in a bat of an eye. Thankfully the ‘easy’ difficulty setting is unlocked having died three times, (which you will in a small number of seconds). This gift of pity relieves a level of frustration that would have stopped me playing not far in. Make no mistake though; easy mode on Devil May Cry 3 is still harder than most other action games on normal.

And, unusually, it gets easier. As you learn to understand the standard button presses, you can start to look more closely at the combat system. It’s a intuitive, deep and complex model, utilising both melee and ranged weapons in gloriously over-the-top combinations. For example, how about sweeping your enemy into the air with a massive upward slash of your broadsword, back flipping 10ft up to join them and hammering duel pistol fire into their writhing figure, keeping you both in the air with the force of it, before changing weapon and landing in an attack of swirling fire that destroys not only the falling enemy, but also the others on the floor around you.
Points are earned for elaborate combinations of attacks, and the more you mix them up for deadly ends, the higher the reward coughed up by an enemy on their passing. Points are called ‘Orbs’ in the game, and can also be gained by completing a mission efficiently as possible (on a sliding scale) or found around levels. With these you can buy the usual selection of items, as well as ranged weapon upgrades and new moves for melee.

It’s as you progress through the game; becoming more fluid in combat and gaining weapons and abilities, that the action’s complexity really becomes apparent. How easy a mission will be might depend on using appropriate weapons, but if you’re not used to those, maybe you’d fare better using your most practiced choices. Of the six melee pieces, every one of them plays differently, and must all have moves bought separately - often costing all you can afford.
At the same time that you’re considering your weapons, various ‘styles’ are also available; four to begin with, and two unlockable ones later on. The default, ‘trickster’ allows you to perform quick dashes, run up walls, and effect your movement in the air. Another, ‘sword master’, offers more moves for each of your weapons. Every style is levelled up with use, and the number of moves each of them allows you to perform increases until the final, third level.
The depth to Devil May Cry’s combat model makes you feel like you’re always learning something new, right throughout the whole game. Only by the very last sections might you have all your favourite equipment and style choices confirmed and max-ed out. It’s a great, pseudo-RPG implementation that ensures the plentiful combat is never boring, compensating for a slight lack of diversity in enemies.

To break up the combat are the game’s puzzle sections. There’s nothing unique or intelligent here. Take the weights off the lift to make it raise, push the statue into place, find the green crystal, these door unlocking and crank pulling portions serve to push you between areas on fetching tasks, often with rooms of respawning enemies. The game can sometimes feel like a homage, a retro throwback to console action games of yore. This is why. Conventions the culture was starting to grow out of, now rears ugly heads to provide the game’s level structure. Does it serve to compliment an arcady ethos? Or does it provide a retrogressive excuse for map repetition and bad level design? It could be argued either way, but I’d lean towards the latter.

Of course, it’s hard to argue that backtracking through the same environments when they look this good. Retaining only a gothic theme across all the locations, the maps are diverse and artistically accomplished. Whether its inside the stomach of a giant flying serpent or across a particularly stunning demon world, every high detail setting contributes to the stylish melodrama of the game. A fixed camera emphasises this, with some really striking angles, worthy of any Hollywood storyboard.

Speaking of Hollywood, DMC3’s in-game cinematic sequences rival any box office title you could hope to mention. Directors must wish they could do action scenes like these. Short, frequent, beautifully animated scenes move the story along, and put some human contact into the mix, where the playable sections lack it. Just try not to listen to what they say. A good storyline would have been the icing on the cake for Devil May Cry 3, so it’s a shame that it lacks one. However, the game is so accomplished in everything it aims to do that you shouldn’t find yourself cringing too inwardly at lines like “You will never defeat me!” and “I am your father!”

What Capcom have here is a flagship of a genre. Devil May Cry 3 is a showcase title, typical of the twilight years of an aging console. The game’s only downsides - painful difficulty and uninspired level structure - contribute to the old school theme, so whether it’s a post-modern reference or an ultimately shallow backtrack comes down to personal preference. Otherwise, its a detailed, consistent, artful slice of action adventure, bursting at the seams with the quality of the action and visuals, optimised admirably by a developer who has learned the PS2 through and through – you wouldn’t want to miss out on that, would you?

Sam Goldwater

Bio

My name is Sam Goldwater. I'm currently a student in London, counting down the days until I can go to Teesside university and study game design. Eventually I want to lead my own projects, telling people how bad their ragdolls are and generally contributing to this fascinating, limitless artform however I can.

To fill the gap I've been watching and making films, playing and teaching drums, and religiously studying games.

Email me here.

PCG work exp

(For the PCG newsletter, May 2003)

I’m a geek. Craig just told me so. In placing games above films in my top three media, music coming third, I have been branded as the kind of guy who should be in his position, a staff writer on a PC gaming magazine. Not such a bad thing then.
Deep within Future Publishing’s cavernous Bath offices floors lie a stretch of floor space devoted to our diverse 3D world. This month has been hectic for the PCG team as they type frantically on their Alienware keyboards, working flat out to finish the redesign planned for the June issue.
This last week has been… eye opening. Gamer isn’t a 30x10 meter square of concentrated fun. Its an office, that happens to be games related. The primary concern from 9:30 until 6 is getting articles finished, securing lay out, and sweet talking PR people. At lunch, or when the light outside begins to fade, and the cleaning ladies push their vacuum cleaners discreetly by, only then might you catch Mark in CoD, or Tim laughing quietly to himself at another physics game.
Tom FM, the disc editor’s Winamp finest, has been the soundtrack this week. To the tune of Ladytron, we’ve ‘ooh’ed and ‘aah’ed at E3’s produce and laughed at the inventiveness of the internet community. You’ll see what I mean next issue. Until then picture Al, glued to City of Heroes since it arrived. Or the sound of Bath lorries passing by periodically, making the blinds rattle.

Sam Goldwater

i20 LAN

In the relative quiet of the second floor, someone relates a clan match anecdote. “I was shouting to him, I was shouting! Then I turned around and…” Two others listen, laughing. They wear matching T-shirts, brandishing their green and black Counter Strike emblem with militaristic vigour. “We’re out of hash browns dear,” admits one of the dinner staff from the other end of the hall. The group of five lined up to collect their breakfast look crestfallen, settling instead for a top up of Red Bull, before heading back into the fray.

You may know what this kind of ‘party’ entails. For those who don’t, places are available for up to 600 people to bring their PCs to a cavernous warehouse at Newbury Racecourse. Once set up, they will load up their favourite games and sample the delights of lagless servers and the opportunity to taunt their adversaries face to face. It’s even more fun than it sounds, no wonder there were only a handful of free stations by the end of the sign-in day.

The carnage spans a weekend. Most people arrive some time on Friday, and stay until Sunday night. Everyone agrees it’s long enough. Even before the first night of competition play, (Saturday), greasy pizza boxes and empty caffinated water bottles begin to pile up around keyboards. You can have either of these actually delivered to your chair, but people we spoke to complained it took hours for the delivery girls to find them.

In such an ideal gaming environment, rest comes second. Besides those sleeping on the space bar, crumpled beneath the UT scoreboard on their monitor, there are a couple of other options for when you start hallucinating. A tent is best, but the venue’s a racecourse, so the adjacent betting hall becomes shelter for other players. We’d advise against this however, being woken violently at three AM by a clan member’s drunken entrance isn’t fun. Neither is the rock hard flooring, so if you’re doing it that way, a blow-up mattress is essential.

It’s a LAN event, so of course, there are people who take it seriously. There are ladders for the major games – Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament 2004, Call of Duty – but for most of Multiplay’s attendees, the attraction isn’t in the competition. Why non-professional players would want to stand up £70 to do essentially what they could do at home becomes obvious as we spectate a game of co-op Battlefield Vietnam, against bots.

The game starts badly; on hard mode the NVA have serious aim, and the players’ notice their tickets starting to drop as the odds slide in favour of the AI. Players out for maximum kill counts find themselves at the bottom of the scoreboard, and everyone starts to realise empty transports aren’t moving the troops across the map effectively. When things get really bad, and the humans are reduced to a single spawn point though, everything changes. Someone yells, ‘I’ve got an empty Huie over here!’ and people respond. Soon enough, exchanges across the tables are every five seconds as the team (without knowledge of even each other’s names) are cheering in unison as point after point is re-established. It ends an emotional ‘minor victory’, with everyone thoroughly pleased with themselves.

You could argue that this could be achieved with voice coms from your bedroom, but the truth is that it’s really not the same. You can’t offer a slice of pepperoni to the man who wins the round with a knife, or exchange cooling methods with the over-clocking nut behind you. And that’s really what its all about. The tense ‘mini tourney’ of Alien Swarm, a top down Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, showed many a COD fan the joys of less mainstream multiplayer. The resident CS God, ‘Jools’ offered a 31v1 CS bout that was to be projected on the large screen upstairs. It didn’t happen in the end - Steam was in Multiplay’s words, ‘Fuxx0rd’. Still, it was amusing watching other players squeal in terror at the thought of competing.

Yes, by Sunday, people have had enough. RSI sets in, players yearn for some salad, and the lack of sleep makes speech a nightmare, (no pun intended). Like the morning after the night before, everyone swears they’ll never do it again, until next time. i21 is only weeks away, time to fire up that neon again.

Sam Goldwater

Call Of Duty

Gaming these days is all about updates. Nazis can now have their own shadows, and if they're lucky, flickering ambient lighting on their terrified faces as they scream in agony. One day perhaps, we shall see the reflections of the carnage in their very eyes, their pupils cloud over and their expression relax into a resigned blankness as they die ...Until then, there's Call of Duty. The much anticipated second world war shooter boasting jaw dropping set pieces, stunning atmosphere and larger emphasis of squad based combat than Medal of Honour has FPS fans hoping for a new standard in a single player experience.

Although the name's changed, the team behind Medal of Honour - 2015, now Infinity Ward - is essentially the same, so CoD is more or less MoHAA 2. This is obvious from start to finish, which is good almost as much as it is bad. Visually, it has moved on. Gun models have improved significantly since MOHAA, and the timed bombs explode with breathtaking colour, shaking the camera and lighting up your Thompson. Character detail is richer, but not hugely; and while textures are sharper, the scar marks from the dissection of the quake 3 engine do show sometimes in the indoor portions. No shadows, absolutely static chairs and tables, and Nazi wall hangings we've seen before quickly conjure nostalgia for its predecessor. Having said that, it does step up the immersion despite the limitations of the technology with nozzle fire that looks great, and enemies that respond with all the melodramaticism you might expect from a clown. They clutch at throats, shout in pain, and generally keep the firing entertaining for the games entire life span.

This isn't very long however, about eight hours overall, spanning three campaigns from the perspective of British, American, and Russian troops. The latter far superior, purely for the spectacle of the Stalingrad beach landing we've all been waiting for, and the taking of Red Square soon afterwards.
The legendary Omaha invasion was a classic. Every FPS fan remembers with a shaking hand, the day they burst out of a motor launch and scrambled up the sand with the whistling of MG fire past their helmet buckles. This has been recreated with an Enemy at the Gates style assault on Stalingrad, complete with flag bearing grunts and the court marshalling of deserters on site. However, because we've seen it before, it somehow lacks lustre. It's obvious what's going to happen so not as exciting as the original. This is the case with most of the game in fact. Nazi mansions, French countryside and Siberian facilities all retain a sense of comfortable reliance on a successful formula.

As promised, CoD boasts heavier emphasis on squad-based combat. Almost every mission sees you with several teammates, lining up along cover to pick off Germans across the map or blowing the door off a secret cellar. There's something not quite right here though. Your teammates will occasionally kill an enemy, but almost all the time they'll say "See if you can clear out that room!" or "Take down that sniper!" then wait for you. When you're done, they'll suddenly leap into action again. If they die, often another soldier will appear discreetly from behind some bushes to take his place. It seems their only real purpose is for the aesthetic quality of having lots of people on screen and because most of the missions take this structure, you're constantly reminded of how irrelevant they actually are.

The multiplayer is a refined version of MOH. Maps are taken from the SP missions, and modes are the usual TDM, DM, and objective based missions. TDM has been subtly arranged so that you spawn at key locations that the opposing team has to push you back from and vice versa. If your team is good, you'll keep pushing them back, round and round the map. It works well, because you'll generally be fighting across defined tactical positions, like a burnt out building or a machine gun nest. Guns have simplistic statistics like weight, accuracy and recoil making it easy to make your weapon choice and, a la Halo, you can pick up secondary rifles as you stumble across them. Bunny hopping players were an issue, but patches have already cured balancing issues like these and the mod community also seems active. CTF modes, new maps, and realism mods are already up, to name but a few.

Call of Duty is an update. No more, no less. Almost inevitably, it takes the crown of best WW2 shooter over Medal of Honour, but its the last of a dying breed. Completely orchestrated, totally predictable but fun while it lasts, it doesn't push any boundries, but instead totally refines existing ones. The short single player is made up for by a decent multiplayer and together, they make a solid FPS that many gamers will surely buy. Sadly though, Infinity Ward could have risen the bar so much higher.

Sam Goldwater

Mark Healey Interview (Ragdoll Kung Fu)

Innovation - or the lack of - is a topic sparking heated debate in forums across the net. Next-gen titles like Doom 3 and Far Cry are released, and the flames of the argument rage to the point of explosion. There’s nothing new, many argue. Amongst the bundles of potential kindling developers present us with though, there’s a moss-covered pillar of inflammability.

Rag Doll Kung Fu, and the strange, colourful, boneless figures within it, were shown in a video released back in March. The mouse orientated beat ‘em up, where “to walk forwards, you literally have to put one foot in front of the other” immediately caught our attention back then, but since, we’ve heard nothing of the game or its creator. Now, as the game nears completion, we decided it was time to seek out Lionhead Studios artist Mark Healey for a brief introduction.

Mark, you’re an artist at Lionhead. What’ve you been involved with?

I've been here since the start, so obviously, I worked on Black and White. I did some creatures, the advisors, and some other stuff. I also worked on Fable.

3D modelling? Concept art? Or has it been different work per project?

Well, I like to get involved in it all really. In Black and White, I did some concept, some modelling, and animation.

Design contributions too?

Yes, I helped design Black and White. I've worked with Peter [Molyneux] for a long time, we did Dungeon Keeper together.

What games do you play currently? And your all time favourites?

Currently, I'm playing my own game, that’s about all I have time for. As for all time favourites, let me think… Wizball, Mario 64, Dropzone, Virtua Tennis, off the top of my head. And Ico. To be honest, I don't actually spend that much time playing games.

Have any of those influenced RDKF?

Well, I love the way Nintendo present their stuff, and make it easy to get into. I suppose RDKF is slightly influenced by an old game called Thrust, because it had this kind of verlet physics in it.

Verlet physics?

It's quite a simple method for creating links, a bit like using lots of springs; it's how the characters work in RDKF.

What’s it been like making your own game? Did you find yourself having to learn a host of new skills?

Well I’ve definitely learnt a lot but this isn't the first game I've made on my own. I learnt C++ (to an extent) and Direct X, (to a lesser extent!) There’s also been a lot of help from people. Thing is, once you know how to structure a game, you can adapt to any language quite easily.

About the controls: was the analogue concept the first idea? Or the physics? Or just to make a kung fu beat ‘em up?

Well, I wanted to make a beat em up that was different, using a mouse. That was about it. The physics came later really. When I started it was more like Street Fighter, using animated sprites. It had a kind of similar control, but there was limited attacks - high punch, mid punch, low punch etc. It was kind of cool, but a bit tricky for other people.

It’s changed quite a lot then?

It changed loads, it's been a very organic process. I totally believe in designing that way; i.e. just start it, and see where it goes. None of this 'design it all on paper first’. It’s getting harder to do that though. At Lionhead for example, and Bullfrog, the design was always very organic, but because of team size, things are getting designed on paper a lot more. I always prefer to work in a small team. A few enthusiastic people can be 100 times more productive than 100 confused people.

Take a look at my mate Scawen, him and two others made/are still making an amazing on line racing game, - LIVE FOR SPEED – and it gives other huge commercial products a run for their money. That’s one coder, one artist, and one musician. Not a producer in sight.

Surely though, you're limited in what you can make with three people.

Yes, of course, but not as limited as you might think. You can always get help towards the end. Sometimes a simple fun game mechanic can be much more entertaining than 10 million hi res meshes. I think some games forget that.


Coming back to animation: What do you think the future is for movement in games? Are canned animations on their way out?

I think it will be a combination of canned anims, with physics. So, a bit like a rag doll, the canned animation simply adds forces to the doll, but can also be controlled by other things. Such as being hit etc.

Is that far off?

No, not at all. It's what my game does really, but in a simple 2d way. My characters don't have constraints, because I like how daft it looks. But they could be added, to make more realistic looking humans.

What analogue movements mean for RDKF is allowance for the player to move how they want to, effectively being able to invent their own style of play, how has that come out?

Well, I’m pleased with it. I've looked at the beta testers videos, and they definitely have different technique to me - less elegant. :D The great thing is, I get surprised by my own game. Sometimes I'm playing it, and I actually laugh out loud. That's the beauty of using physics, it kind of instantly adds an element of creativity for the user.

I made my mum play it. Bear in mind that it took me about ten minutes to make her understand that she had to leave the mouse on the table; she kind of made the character wobble about really madly, then she pissed herself laughing. That's good enough for me.

The video marked dancing as a feature. Tell us about that.

Well, I haven't explored that side of it yet much, it's just something you can do, whenever you want.

So there's the network code left to do? And?

I made the decision to release the online multiplayer as a free patch after the initial release, it’s going to be much more work than I thought. But the multiplayer on a single machine works. The main things I have left to do are pulling it all together really. Quite a bit of graphics work, a few features to add, then polishing. It’s well worth a tenner, even if I do say so myself.

Demo? Release date?

I'm really trying to finish it all before the end of the summer. The demo will be out about the same time.

We can’t wait, thanks Mark.

Cheers.


Sam Goldwater

Gorky Zero

Have you ever heard of Gorky Zero: Beyond Honour? There wasn't a thundering hype build up for Jowood's latest title, so don't panic.
You could panic however, that games like this are making it to actual production.
Let us glance briefly over this "STEALTH ACTION CLASSIC" in the hope of identifying exactly what it was the developer was thinking. If anything.

You are the poorly animated Special Forces drone, agent Cole Sullivan. To start with, your archetypal superior officer explains the generic secret crisis through an in-game cinematic. "These are zombies,” he says, glancing mechanically at the projection on the wall. Between lengthy drags on his cigar, the obligatory reason for the game is spat out, and it begins.

Mission structure is more or less identical to that of Metal Gear Solid, or Splinter Cell. There's the "infiltrate the base" mission, and the "escape having lost your gear" mission, it all feels reasurelingly familiar.
The first irritation though, soon becomes apparent. The camera; rigidly third person, but from a detached high angle perspective severely limits your view distance. The only way to look directly forwards is to go into crouch mode, which settles the camera over your shoulder. Hilariously, this means you can only shoot with the mouse by creeping. To run and fire, you have to return to the almost birds eye view for a loose, auto targeting affair. Neither work.
That's ok though, because under no circumstances would it be a good idea to use guns anyway. At normal difficulty, enemies take the best part of a whole pistol clip before an awkward death animation takes over, and your own health won't last you for more than a couple of encounters. AI run blindly towards you while shooting, and while you're painfully inaccurate outside of "mouse aim" mode, you can never be sure your bullets are having an effect anyway due to the unreliable clipping.

On the more subtle approaches, a "Stealth Kill" can be initiated by shooting someone in the head when unalerted. Whether this works is completely hit or miss, often a guard's only reaction to a bullet will be some Russian expletive before their lightening reflexes kick in. The minimap displays your sound radius, inside of which the subtly different material of your boots must make all the difference to the guards. Outdoors, at ten feet, in the pouring rain, enemies will robotically pin point your location if you so much as take a single step in walk mode. Running is usually out of the question, projecting your sound area of certain death to every corner of the miscellaneous facility/bunker. That leaves most sections reducing you to the noiseless, but maddeningly slow crouch mode. In another instance of over-whelming realism, an ear splitting gun battle in the central hallway of the research centre wouldn’t disturb the scientists in the next room, such was their concentration.

Learn the necessary patrol patterns, then cross open areas towards the next block of cover. It’s a quicksave/quickload routine not only that we've seen before, but that shows a severe lack of play testing. Obvious paths through guarded areas aren’t spaced properly, for example. Its like Jowood watched someone playing MGS for five minutes and decided, "lets make a stealth computer game!"

No part of the design can redeem the core elements. Explosive barrels are placed next to stationary guards, climbing through vents will greet you with "SECRET AREA FOUND" and anything remotely computer related will "UNLOCK THE LOCKED DOOR". A CCTV vision cone, when disturbed, sets off an alarm that made me wonder if my sound card drivers needed reinstalling. None of the four guns are even remotely satisfying, sleeping troops are hardly any less alert than the waking ones and the amateur level design forces you to retrace your steps frequently. I mean, really, you have to question a game’s integrity when headshots count for more from behind than head on.

Perhaps in a witty sarcastic joke, the music is actually very good. From the fade-in logos to the combat score, it all gives the deception that Beyond Honour is a playable game. The disguise doesn't hold though. The simple fact is that there's nothing new here, anything that is here, is done badly.

This month, Gorky will be head to head with Thief 3. Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow was out a few weeks ago. There's just no comparison. All said, the only amusement Gorky Zero provides is in the script/voice acting, which is laugh out loud ridiculous all the way through. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Sam Goldwater

Air Buccaneers

Ahoy there! Got your telescope? Then leap aboard! This is Air Buccaneers; a highly original entry for the UT2004 Make Something Unreal contest, and quite possibly the best game to come out of Finland, ever.
Hop on to a rickety hot air balloon with your fellow pirates and gain some height, this is some of the most innovative multiplayer we’ve seen in years. Load the cannon, aim the cannon, light the cannon; all these actions have to be done separately. Not to mention steering the ship and fending off enemies. The complexity incites team play like no other, and provided your shipmates know what they’re doing, it works remarkably well. You could create minefields for your foes, or simply jump ship for a spot of hijacking. Whatever your tactic, battles are epic and game play is hilarious. Swing on ropes. Smell the gun powder. Make pirate jokes. Y’arr.

Sam Goldwater

F.E.A.R. preview

Ma mamma always said, “E3’s like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get”. That was a lie, she didn’t really. And if she had, it would’ve been wrong too. Most of E3 is about as predictable as a wooden stool. New technology is suitably astounding, queues for demos are always long, and the Duke Nukem Forever booth never quite materializes.

F.E.A.R. at first seems similarly predictable. Monolith’s latest FPS - shown for the first time at this year’s event - follows all the conventions. The demonstration we saw starts you off in the standard chopper-about-to-land-at-LZ scenario. For a minute or two you listen to the usual banter between team mates, then you’re dropped onto the roof of a towering office block, and the action starts.

FOG OF WAR
Ducking behind some barrels to avoid fire, you notice the flashes of the crimson emergency lighting across the metal. It looks good, but this isn’t anything yet. Seconds later the player leaps out, shotgun in hand to fall upon the defence. Very quickly what makes F.E.A.R. interesting becomes apparent. Shotgun blasts conjure deliciously thick clouds of smoke that ripple and disappear upwards from the barrel. Bullets glance off walls, spray sparks and dislodges plaster in a similar fashion. Wow, we’re liking this now.

“You can’t get through the main door, find another way in!” barks a commander to your ear. Like we haven’t heard that before.

Heavily armoured guards meet you on the way in through – guess what - the maintenance door. Enemies take a number of hits, as do you. This is because you’re both kitted out with the coolest combat gear we’ve seen since Gordon’s hazard suit. Head to toe outfits of something like futuristic Raven Shield get-ups make you feel good about yourself and your adversaries.

MELODRAMA
The combat feels refreshingly brutal. Sounds are meaty, rag dolls are dramatic and there’s a generous amount of detailed blood that coats the walls as the dust settles. Grenades blast a decimating shockwave effect across their explosive radius that looks really forceful, especially in glorious bullet-time. Yes, it’s implemented without a seam. Glass shards drop like snowflakes from shattering windows and enemies flip backwards gracefully as headshots connect. Topping it all off though has to be the melee combat. The highlight of the video would undoubtedly be the moment where you vault over an office coffee table (in aforementioned bullet time, naturally) to dropkick a masked grunt backwards over a handrail to the floor beneath. Max Payne would have grimaced more than usual.

F.E.A.R. isn’t just an acronym, mind. First Encounter Assault and Recon (they must’ve really struggled for that one) actually makes sense. You blast your way through a floor or two, but before long, you’re reminded that the team that came here before you never reported back. A light flickers. One particularly gripping set piece sees you creeping through a room with a photocopier left on, repeating its bright beam towards the ceiling periodically. As you cross the floor, a dark shape seems to be loping in your direction from the blackness at the other end. The light stops, and when it starts again a second later, the shape has gone.

L.I.N.E.A.R.I.T.Y.
“What d’you think Halliday?” asks your supervisor over the intercom, as you meet a fellow operative lower in the building. “I think some nasty sh*t happened here” he mutters back. You look around. Every wall is darkly smeared in every shade of red. The team you were sent to find are, well, everywhere. A set of elevator doors close and open repeatedly on the corpse of one former soldier, another lies face down in the lobby fountain.

The somewhat lavish violence is a product of Monolith opting for an adult certification, and while it is further evident in the colourful dialogue, we got the sense this isn’t being made as a selling point. It comes across as fitting, and definitely adds a realistic tone to the (surprisingly well acted) voices of your companions.

From what we’ve seen so far, the game’s a well-judged blend of Half-Life, Doom 3 and Max Payne. In our books, it counts against a title when it’s lacking in originality, but in F.E.A.R’s case, it doesn’t matter. It seems like a lovingly perfected combination of those games served with style and polish from one of the most highly respected developers in the industry.

An unforgiving ‘2005’ is all we have to go on right now. Expect updates as more info becomes available in coming months.

Sam Goldwater

Beyond Divinity

We all love role playing games. The thought of settling down to a cosy, lengthy, traditional epic, authentic to the very spelling of "Elkar" is enough to make any of us at VGL want to toggle a quest screen. This month allowed such an opportunity, with Larian Studio's latest production, Beyond Divinity.

The usual RPG dynamic of the character-less lone stranger/random adventurer has evolved ever so slightly for the Divine Divinity's sequel. Now your miscellaneous do-gooder is coupled with an angry Death Knight, quick to remind you he "lives for pure chaos". In a turning-of-the-pages style plot update, you learn that the anti hero was bound to your respective soul as a punishment for trying to kill Samuel, the evil Arch Daemon he served under. With that slightly forced fantasy commentary, you're thrusted into the masochist's dungeon. Somewhat sparse tool-tips guide you awkwardly through your first steps, but anyone who's played an RPG before should settle in pretty quickly without them.

Your initial task is to escape. Handily, you cell door is wide open, so you're free to experiment with the rats gnawing at the corpses that litter the already filthy hallways of your captor's rustic property. Across maps literally dripping with period detail, you're given the chance to test your newly built duo, both of whom's stats are entirely at your disposal during character creation. Warrior, survivor, or wizard are the general categories. Although you can freely assign skill points to the usual attributes - strength, agility and so on, you do have to conform to one of the three classes for your preliminary skill tree. Its best to build your players as different as possible. A mage could heal a fighter, whilst disabling enemies with slowing spells, for example. None of this is obvious though. In fact, a lot of essential information is provided in the loading/saving screen tips you'll end up spending quite significant amounts of time glaring at.

Yes, glaring. One such tip advises "Save often, you never know who (or what) awaits you 'round the next corner". What is failed to mention here is what's usually "awaiting" you are rather anti-climactic instant-death traps. Avoidable, but most often completely unexpected during the corridors of Samuel's establishment, they force you either to save often or risk repeating long stretches of play. This is particularly irritating, because Beyond Divinity isn't the kind of game you'd want to repeat sections of, due to its progression orientated game play.

Combat is mostly reminiscent of Diablo, if not quite as smooth. It's fast, sometimes bewilderingly fast, so its a good thing space pauses the action. There's a default key for auto-attacking the closest enemy, so easier grunts aren't a problem but if you're unfortunate enough to stumble across higher level monsters before you're ready for them, one of your characters could be dead in a couple of hits. In the usual fashion, potions instantly replenish health so often fighting major enemies revolve around the correct timing of consumption of your health vials. Its addictive, nonetheless; level ups are often hugely rewarding, allowing you to add to an unusually detailed skill tree, and the acquisition of a phenomenal range of new equipment incite a sense of achievement through long, sometimes tedious battling.

While locked doors hinder exploration where necessary, environments are moderately open, allowing you to clear out sections of the underground locales as you please. Most often progress is straight forward - with the aid of "battlefield merchants" who allow you to recuperate your gear and replenish item stocks - but there were occasions we found ourselves trawling through miles of already plundered terrain having missed important items. "You'll never find the key!" chided a note, written in blood on a nearby wall. We weren't amused.

In an effort to keep a flow to the action during pauses like this, instant portals to The Battlefields are available, seeing you suddenly transported to a whole other world. The usual staple of druids, and weapon smiths constitute a camp you spawn in, and a single path leads to sets of dungeon entrances that get progressively harder as you keep going. Immersion, it seems, is not a concept Larian are familiar with. Such shameless level-upping areas, exchanged only in texture sets across each act provide a retreat for when the going gets tough in the "real" game. Effectively, its lazy level design implemented badly, with about as much imagination as road kill.

Areas are generally dark, with so many repeated debris sprites that its often easier on the eyes to focus on the minimap despite the authentic high res textures. The 3D models on isometric backdrops don't quite fit either; characters look stretched, and tighter corridor battles will find you struggling to focus on enemies outlines behind solid walls.

Where games like Sacred or Balders Gate promote exploration with countless sub quests and varied maps complimented by some competent dialogue, Beyond Divinity provides a very rigid path with an alternative, even more rigid path. This would be fine if the combat was enough to keep this style of play interesting, but the truth is, it doesn't quite cut it in an already refined genre without something significant to set it apart. With a needlessly complicated trade screen, no multiplayer, and voice acting that's quite frankly insulting, Beyond Divinity surfaces as an incredibly generic RPG. Often playable, but sometimes frustrating and never original through its 100 hours plus playing time, in a PC games market that thrives on innovation, Larian Games seem to have missed something fundamental. For fans of the original, and hack 'n' slash players at best.

Sam Goldwater

Painkiller

The FPS Genre is getting increasingly complex. Role playing elements, multiple paths, plots, characters...While these innovations strive for a more immersive or cinematic experience, what is often dismissed is the staple ingredient of the most popular game category - shooting bad guys. For this reason, Polish industry new-comer People Can Fly have brought us Doom-esque Painkiller, a back to basics revision of the style of game that resulted in, well, everything.

After an almost sarcastically long introductory FMV, you're deposited into a cemetery for your first impressions. Fair enough. You quickly salvage a shotgun floating cyclicly in the mist and get to blasting the hordes of skeletal soldiers that creep up from the graves around you. In seconds, Painkiller will bring a smile to your face. Cannon fodder enemies blast 15 feet backwards with a single close range shell, garnishing the walls they slide down with detailed animated blood textures. You realise that those first seconds are what the whole game is, and with a smug grin realise you don't even have to reload.

A repetitive core element needs variety in other areas to compensate. People Can Fly certainly haven't failed us there. Military bases, undead villages, warehouses, streets, theatres, asylums and cathedral maps, are each full of unique textures and static meshes. The structure these locales adopt - corridor blasting until large room, only exit closes on your heels - does the job well enough. Later on you'll start to wonder whether the door thing was really necessary, but Painkiller doesn't give you much time to consider these details. Red checkpoints mark partitions through each area that make it unlikely you'll see the same part twice on the game's standard difficulty, so it's rarely frustrating.

Secret areas litter the landscape, and pick-ups promote re-playability. Most notably is gold, that allows you to buy special abilities unlocked by completing challenges on each stage. Finishing levels with only one kind of gun, avoiding all health pick-ups or finding all secret areas reward you with abilities like half damage for 10 seconds or slow motion for use in your next missions. The power ups aren't quite worth the effort though, so luckily this whole aspect can be left ignored.

After the first couple of stages you won't raise an eyebrow at seeing a new staple enemy. The non-existent AI limits diversity only to new skins. Some of them demonstrate some very twisted artistic talent though. The single player demo featured peg-legged zombies that between shufflings, reached into their rotting digestive system to find bits of themselves to throw at you. It gets nastier. Crab-like humanoids with metal theatrical masks? Seven foot tall, electric-helmet-wearing asylum inmates with tentacles for arms? Loping cloaked hags with long grey hair that upon jiblification disapperate into flights of crows that flap away into the night? Check.

Level sets of six are broken up with boss battles mostly of incredible spectacle. Towering necro-giants and beast ogres stomp across large open maps while you drain your ammo into working out their weak points and fending off their underlings in the typical boss fashion. In no other game though, could bosses brake up monumental church ruins into hundreds of the bricks its made up of with his huge strides. Massive squares of stone smash across the arena floor and the lightning bursts through the nicely textured sky box, eclipsing his outline as he stomps nearer - it's quite a sight.

Surprisingly, there are only five weapons. For 24 levels of blasting this is a bit limited, but the inventiveness and functionality of each goes a long way towards making up for this. The Stake gun mechanically plunges giant rounded planks through the hearts (or any other body part you care to mention) of your foes, pinning them limply to their surroundings. The secondary function of the shotgun freezes enemies for deeply therapeutic shattering and even the default melee weapon - named after the game itself - on top of slicing with its spinning blades launches a returnable ball that can be used to damage whole streams of enemies with a yellow beam that emanates back to you from the wall you shoot it at. Shurikens and projectile lightning are the ammunition for the penultimate armament and a chain gun/rocket launcher you obtain later allows for hours of physics orientated fun. In fact...

Yes, physics. People Can Fly commented in an interview on how the middleware of the moment, Havok 2, was introduced at quite a late stage in development. It couldn't show less. The game is the best example of its implementation there is to date. Apart from enemies dying in amusing ways almost every single time due to the detailed rag dolls, the environments are stuffed with interactive objects. Explosive barrels are well, everywhere. Often cleverly stacked two or three high, they promote chain reactions that perforate hordes of minions with a single well timed stake. Fragments of metal and wooden splinters fly everywhere as do the blood particles, limbs and weapons of your hapless foes. Huge ornamental marble pillars in one section, from the persuasion of your rockets, can come loose and smash to the floor around them, blocking some baddies and killing others. In another, sacks of fireworks can be knocked over as you scramble past. Shooting the bag as enemies chase you sends the high velocity projectiles whining into their ranks, spinning unpredictably across the floor or detonating in the atmosphere.

Adding to the experience are the breathtaking visuals. Texture sets are almost completely individual to the maps, so each has a very different feel. They're also incredibly high res, really emphasising the grime of the warehouse and the missing tiles of the train station floor. The monsters you face have had similar attention; looking sharp, rounded, and enormously varied through out. Lighting is good too, with ambient sources affecting your weapons beautifully, and explosions eluminating your adversaries as they're catapulted through the air.

What's great is that all this can happen on a pretty epic scale due to the fantastic in-house built Pain engine. On VGL's 3ghz processor, 1.5 GB of DDR Ram and 9800 Pro video card system the game ran at max detail with 4x AA and 2x AF with consistent buttery frame rates of above 60, even with more than 30 high polygon enemies on screen. Amazingly, it also ran with high detail with our medium system; 1.4 ghz, 512 SD Ram and 9600 Pro rig at 30 without AA or AF, only briefly challenged in the face of volumetric fogging at close range.

Multiplayer is limited to merely seven maps. But they're solid, and provide a good addition to the SP, especially for LAN or smaller online sessions because the arenas feel a bit cramped with more than eight people. Another title that ships without cooperative play, another pixie dies. Painkiller's only contemporary rival, Serious Sam, featured the elusive MP game type and it went down a treat with it's players. It's a shame, because going by the quality of the rest of the production, co op would be right there beneath death match in the Painkiller menu. Other modes go some way in compensation; tight rocket launcher matches in which you can only damage the other player once you've blasted them into the air, or a mode in which everyone has the same weapon that changes periodically, forcing everyone to change playing style provide some amusing matches.

It was around half way through that we noticed something as we played Painkiller. It wasn't hunger, the pizza was good thanks. A niggling emptiness edged in, towards the later sections. The reason, we diagnosed later, was that Painkiller is empty. As the structure becomes familiar, (which it soon does) and the lack of AI starts to drag, you start to realise why games have moved on since Quake. Story-feeding cut scenes are literally minutes of dry, tedious screenplay between the dead, frown wearing protagonist and an Archangel wearing too much foundation. They become boring, in fact, to the point that we found ourselves actually skipping the FMV sequences for the first time in game history.

So. Painkiller, despite that negative note, features as exemplary level of polish. Breathtaking attention to detail served with great graphics that'll run on anyone's system. The game provides a lot of intensely focused carnage for as long as you only want that. For us though, that wasn't enough to keep it entertaining to the end.

Sam Goldwater

The Sims 2

It's here again. We say again, not for the second time, but the eighth. Seven shoddy, cash-in expansions scuttled up the top 20 charts in the slipstream of The Sims like so many love starved cockroaches pursuing a… Sorry, that's a bit negative. Unjustly negative in fact, because although not one of those many follow ups won our hearts, the sequel truly does, and it's finally here.

As the follow-up to the only game even girls played, presentation is everything. The box, the music, even the install program leaks happiness from every childish toothy gap. There's actually a colourful memory game and Sims-based quiz to click at during the four disc feeding. Once installed, you select one of three neighbourhoods to start in, create a family and begin your manically average digital existence against a backdrop of an oppressively happy fantasy world.

Meet the Sims

But who's there across the street at number 27? It's John Pertch! An overweight, balding, glasses wearing father: he wants money, good grades for his daughter, and a comfortable chair to laze in after work. Young Hilary Pertch has other ideas. She's a hopeless romantic, and spends most of her free time painting in her room amongst posters of her favourite death metal bands. Behind the façade of an outgoing young woman, she's actually scared of rejection from her father, from boys, and the house catching fire. All of this is conveyed through soft edged sub menus and straightforward icons with sensible intuition.

You see, the fundamental innovation in The Sims 2 is the 'aspirations' element. Before, you'd strive to raise character's stats for no other reason than riches, achievable only through success at work. This effectively made your sims rather similar in the long term. Now addressed, the sequel has four selectable character aspirations: family, wealth, romance and knowledge, each of which dictate specific short-term wants and fears. Funnily enough, on paper it's more or less the only major technical difference the game offers over its predecessor.

Keeping up appearances

That is, aside from what Maxis have done graphically. What was great about The Sims was the closeness to real life, how human your creations looked. In its natural progression, everything now looks wonderful. Animation is faultless, and a joy to behold; from subtle greetings as family members brush shoulders on the stairs, to theatrical eroticisms and pool-bound swallow dives. What's even better is the character customisation that's operated entirely by sliders. No more embarrassing situations with neighbours who share your head – the individuality is a hundred times what it was, and it all contributes to the feeling that it truly is your doll's house.

Objects too, are lovingly crafted, complete with witty explanations and multiple texture sets, allowing you to scheme rooms or houses to a specific colour. This may just be a cover up, however as in some categories there are actually less items than in the original. Even so, there's enough variety to see you through obvious financial stages. Flimsy marble-effect foldout tables as the kitchen centre piece for the first few days after the move, until Dad gets his first pay check. May want to lay down some carpet for Hilary's bedroom too. And so on.

Sands of time

Perhaps the only other important new feature is the handling of time. With horror, we realised that teenage Hilary was due to become an adult in six hours. At first we tried to hold on, scared of the future, wondering where the time went... Brian Pertch would be soon approaching his autumn years; it was time to think about finding someone to grow old with. It wouldn't be too long before Hilary needed to get married, think about children even. In a further effort to coax players into a more focused experience, The Sims 2 makes your digital children's lives rather prompt. You're forced to consider tactically your chances with a potential boyfriend who may be better, over a current, less interesting one. Essentially, it's another layer of realism that ends up woven into the countless anecdotes you'll be relating to your friends for weeks after playing. Like the time your nine-year-old daughter brings home a friend from school who happens to be your first son, taken away by social services weeks before.

Much as The Sims was four years ago, Maxis' life simulator is quite dangerously addictive. We almost found ourselves unable to detach for the first 48 hours of play. But strangely, unable to pick it up again after that time. What was it that made the game so short lived?

Mortal Coil

As situations repeat themselves, you see all the animations, use all the items and send your Sims to the shower for the billionth time, the tedium of real life that The Sims 2 does capture a sense of, inevitably, begins to wear. While the realism is partly the beauty of it, perhaps it's the lack of realism in other areas that drag it down. Why can't I have a family without a parent figure? Why can't teenagers fall in love with adults? While characters are more complex, for a game that's based around social interaction they're still quite limited. There's no element of embarrassment, or protection, or even possession, for example. It takes some imagination to justify why a creaking OAP retires to his grand daughter's pink drenched bedroom over his own, just because it’s nearer to the stairs.

Perhaps also, it’s the lack of freedom. Although the original's expansions opened up a wealth of locations to take your pride and joys, there're perhaps only two or three in the entire sequel.

That said, the true beauty of The Sims only becomes apparent after playing. Turn your pc off, and venture downstairs to where your wife is hosting an extended family gathering. It all feels reassuringly familiar: someone tries to initiate a 'conversation' with you. If your impression of them improves, they may try a 'joke'. Someone's 'ordered a pizza'; it's there on the table. You watch in deep understanding as a great aunt performs a 'pick up' animation and retrieves a slice. Maxis have simplified western civilisation's middle class existence right to its haughty bones. Your worst nightmares, seemingly gargantuan terrors of life and death – merely today's coloured 'fear' icon. For a game to illustrate something so human with such simplicity and cinematic grace has to be something new. 'Finish review', 'make a snack'.

Sam Goldwater

Second Life

“A little to the left…Yeah, no wait, tilt it a bit more…that’s it”. Standing with her hands on her hips, Sabby Fauna eyed our handiwork critically. We were assembling the new house. Three hundred dollars went into this white, two-bed room detached, it should’ve been worth the time to get the door on straight. It still hung crazily, but she pulled it to and went downstairs to get changed. In ten minutes we’d be off to Costa Del SL for a night on the tiles. What to wear wasn’t an easy question.

Incredibly, this isn’t a random acquaintance’s Live Journal. This is Second Life: Linden Lab’s starkly original MMO. Repetitive levelling, paper based skills, and turn based combat you’ve seen a thousand times before are all strangely absent here. In fact, SL plays like the developers had never set eyes on Eve or Linage. Could that be a good thing?

In a prime example of the MMORPG genre, player freedom might extend to fighting, trading and manufacture. SL’s career choices may encompass anything from interior design to sky diving, being a supermodel, or perhaps a choreographer. You could build motorbikes, or just sell them. You could even be the next Ann Summers. Joining the server for the first time, the infinite possibilities of professions and hobbies can seem almost daunting.

Only almost though. Because not only is the interface the smoothest in any MMO (more on that later), but the inhabitants of SL are lovely. Seminars for new players are held almost nightly, so there is help readily available, and the communal event allows you to meet others at the same time. Perhaps you’ll hit things off with the one in the red dress and arrange to meet at a bar later. It could happen.

It’s not just seminars either. Check the events list, and you’ll usually find something worth attending. A new store’s opening sale, or a hip party maybe. Bingo perhaps, if you felt lucky, or failing that, a spot of Gladiator style hamster-ball duelling might take your fancy. We found ourselves dropping in on the tail end of the August Miss SL competition, at a picturesque waterfront venue. The winner was a very sexy robot.

Alright, now we’ve covered, (scratched the surface), of the freedom SL holds, so you’re now wondering how it could possibly work. Well, the key is the net code’s ability to stream in-world content to everyone, instantly. A player can import from their machine any sound, animation or texture they can conjure up. Everyone will then be able to hear the sound you play, or look at the jacket you yourself textured as it loads in front of them.

Modelling is handled in-game, and while it’s not 3D Studio Max, it’s quite adequate for the standard primitive shapes you manipulate to create meshes. Pop along to the open build area, and you might find some player’s towering pearl unicorn under construction, as we did. Or weirder.

Scripting too; the C++ variation Second Life is built on is editable entirely in-game. That hamster ball game was coded by a player, it wasn’t an activity devised by Linden. Lots of scripts are free – ones to link audio tracks, govern elevators, record answer machine messages or provide automated sales clerks for your shop, but other more complicated functions might be sold.

In theory, you could open a gallery to display some of your abstract photography, then sell larger prints from a vending machine. In fact, line up a play list of some ambient techno for your clientele to enjoy as they look round. People do this, and it’s fascinating.

To top off the almost heady number of possibilities you’re provided with, even gravity bows at the player’s feet. The tutorial reads ‘Fly by pressing the button on the HUD, or the hotkey (default – F)’. You do so, and may well find yourself laughing out loud with the genius of it. Why not? Why wouldn’t you want to be able to fly? The experience is elating, and adds further to the wonderful take on gaming Linden has so acutely observed.

Here is where it seems like Linden Labs had never played an MMO before. Your inventory is arranged - as creatable folders -, into animations, objects, sounds, and so on. There are no false pretences here. There’s nothing in every player’s feet that allows them to fly, or any player advancing statistic. When you type, your avatar mimes typing, and if you feel like changing your sex, or anything else down to the thickness of your eyebrows, it can be done on the spot.

What this suggests may sound strange. You might say that you want to be in role, that you like the make believe worlds of high fantasy RPGs. It’s true, what we’re describing sounds like a developer’s sandbox of experimentation. The thing is, SL provides another kind of immersion. The open philosophy and the hugely creative community have built something that’s far more believable than any recent Ultima clone you could name. Another player experience anecdote needed? Surely not.

On a quiet minor note, it looks and runs a bit slowly sometimes. Avatar model detail is very high, but the same can’t be said for the rest of the world. The reason being that more or less the whole thing is loaded as you arrive to the location. It can be a bit disenchanting when you ram head on into some unseen wall as you fly past, then having to wait for the building to load before you can find your way around it. In the face of lots of other players, frame rates can also slow to a crawl, even on the highest spec systems. Fortunately, these irritations don’t affect play that badly, or all that often. We’d recommend 512kb/s connections and above though – ISDN users can struggle with lag.

The ability to show others your own work makes the game the unendingly original, organic environment that it is. But all said, Second Life is what you make of it. If you don’t know how to model or script, there are seminars held on every aspect of creation. If you don’t want to learn any of the skills needed to make things, it’ll still be a lot of fun - there are a hundred other things to do. But perhaps your focus may wane before someone who’s teaching themselves animation (as we found ourselves doing) to try and win the dance competitions.

Ultimately, your enjoyment of the game will come down to a single question. One that we eventually had to consider, how much do you want a second life? Because this is the closest experience to one you could hope to find. You may ask ‘why would I want to dance and a virtual disco?’. If you wouldn’t want to do that, you’re not for SL, but if you did…Check out Venus bar, the well dressed break dancer on the platform…

Sam Goldwater