Tag Archives: Games

IDL FEATURE – Day 4: Driving – DIRT 2

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The second category is Driving Games. Driving Games is another category with a plethora of games to choose from, and one that can share games with other categories. For this example however, I wanted games that were strictly driving, and what better companies to look towards but Codemasters, EA, and Turn 10. Even Rockstar has thrown their hat in from time to time with their Midnight Club series. There are the Forza’s, and Need For Speed’s, F1’s and Rally. Driving games, like first person shooters, can make you feel different emotions while playing, but these are mainly just different levels of exhilaration, and sometimes relief. Hitting the tarmac with tires screeching can feel glorious if done well, and fish-tailing around bends while climbing as thin dirt path can be terrifying. Some teams have managed to do it better than others.

For the driving category, for lack of more space, I was only able to choose one game: Codemasters’ Colin McRae DIRT 2.

With the Honorable mention going to Forza Horizons.

Day 4 – Colin McRae: DIRT 2

Developer: Codemasters
Publisher: Codemasters

When Colin McRae Dirt came out, it wasn’t by any stretch, the first of its kind. At its most fundamental, you’ll find a rally driving game. It wasn’t even the first rally game by Codemasters, as they had done Colin McRae Rally games prior. But they had taken a break from the series, and come back to the next generation a little more invigorated.

Dirt 1 was raw and dirty. It was also true to the sport. The cars were beautifully rendered and realized, and sounded real. Almost guttural. When doing the hill climbs, you felt the speed and the desperation of the vehicles as you expertly corner the next bend, dirt scattering everywhere behind the tires.

At the end of each segment or portion of the race, knowing you were leading the pack, felt like an achievement, as the game wasn’t easy. The main difficulty was the damage mechanic. The realism and realization that your car was literally falling apart around you was its selling point. Each rock, poorly landed jump or tree ripped components of your car away and with some of the rally segments – and damage – carrying over to the next day or 3, each car component is vital. A poorly judged corner and subsequent smashed rear brake might make the different between 1st and 10th tomorrow.

Rally wasn’t the only mode either; there were buggies, trucks hill climbs, and rival races.

Now, Dirt 2 took all this, added a festival feel to the campaign, and tacked on Gymkhana modes and tournaments.

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Dirt 2 understandably had to make some sacrifices with the sequel by toning down the damage a bit, but adding a rewind feature and some water physics with matching windshield wipers. OH! They also added the option of hanging your own Xbox Avatar as a rear-view mirror ornament, to my child-like amazement – me, stupidly clapping and laughing dumbly as little iRogan hangs on, upside-down, for his life. A feature that no other game – to my knowledge, has replicated. Not even subsequent DIRT or GRID games sadly…

Dirt 2 was a cleaner, sportier version of Dirt 1, but this made it more fun all the same. It stepped up the visuals by making everything brighter and more colourful, but the rewind function did take away some of the difficulty curve that the first one had no problem reminding us of.

<– Yesterday – RAGE
Tomorrow – Third-Person Category: Spec Ops – The Line –>

-iRogan

IDL FEATURE – Day 3: FPS – RAGE

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For the First Person Shooter category, I’ve chosen 3 games: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1, Halo: Reach, and RAGE.

Honorable mentions to: Far Cry 3, and Homefront.

Day 3 – RAGE

Developer: id Software
Publisher: Bethesda Software

The last game on the list of my favourite First Person Shooters from the last generation is RAGE. From the team that gave us Doom, id Software. You could argue that this game never belonged on the last generation, but it did push the consoles to their stops, and kept pushing.

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RAGE introduced us to a post-apocalyptic world, not unlike any other post-apocalyptic world. The world of RAGE is very barren, and rocky, and sandy, but it has plenty of blue skies. It is a time where most of humanity is now gone, perished. And the few that remained have to fight to survive. It is like the Wild West, outlaws around every corner, many dangers lurking.

Humanity is split into 4 different groups:

The locals – who are fighting just to survive, they grow food, and are just trying to make a life of it. This group sticks to the towns, or live off their own little dwellings and land.

Then, there are the bandits who roam the wasteland and have their own secluded portion of the land. This group picks off anyone who dare venture out of the towns. They’re a pointy, prickly bunch.

Next up, there are the mutants. This group is relegated to the sewers. They occasionally venture to the surface to make sure their presence isn’t forgotten. They come in all sizes, mostly small, but an odd, mountainous giant comes up for fresh air.

And lastly, there is the law. This group has a very large station in the sky and sends militants down to keep the peace, or for their own nefarious purposes. As the protagonist, we have to deal with all groups as we navigate the world and story.

The game tells a very interesting story at that, and introduces us to a lot of unique characters as we progress from town to town, sewer, to wasteland and then towards the stars, and back.

The world is gorgeously rendered, and this is the main proponent of the game, arguing its quality. Character design and vehicles are beautifully brought to life, and animations spot-on. But it’s the world design. Every part of the land, towns, and sewers is painstakingly hand-crafted by the artists. No reused textures and all the lighting and shadows are pre-baked. It’s still hard to still believe that this game was made available last generation.

The large mutant fights are still one of the satisfying highlights of gaming for me, and watching a pyro soldier slowly spin and launch away with his propane tank strapped to his back, one of my most sinister. The game strove to change what a first person shooter was, as id Software has done on many occasion in the past. They make it a point to change the mold, and introduce new mechanics; this time with the boomerang, spider-bot, and different ammunition types for all weapons – changeable on the fly.

The game also features a crafting system. Built by scrap parts, you can create the alternative ammunition for the weapons, handy turrets, or spider bots. These help in all situations, as the firefights can be quite frantic.

The game slowly did lose its path and pacing as it went on, and sadly ended without any real bang, but the journey is still a spectacle.

<– Yesterday – Halo: Reach
Tomorrow – Driving Games: Colin McRae’s Dirt 2 –>

-iRogan

IDL FEATURE – Day 2: – FPS – HALO: Reach

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For the First Person Shooter category, I’ve chosen 3 games: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1, Halo: Reach, and RAGE.

Honorable mentions to: Far Cry 3, and Homefront.

Day 2 – HALO: Reach

Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Around the time that the Call of Duty war game train was starting to pick up speed, another little title, a very different title, called Halo, came out. This was Microsoft’s exclusive baby, designed by a team called Bungie. Originally released on the first Xbox, this game has now sparked, as of this coming October, four sequels and two side story games, along with many other publications, stories, two episodic – for lack of a better word – TV shows, and continuous movie talks. It’s not just a game anymore, but a household name.

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The Halo games are very different from the Call of Duty’s out there. The game is a space fantasy, with humans in battle armour fighting aliens. You’ll be shooting with human guns and alien guns, and driving a plethora of different vehicle types. The game is also co-op from mission one, onwards.

The game is more colourful, the enemies and enemy types more plentiful, and the story much grander in scale. It is a space epic.

After the first trilogy was done, and a side-story out of Halo 3, in ODST, completed, Bungie decided to part ways with Microsoft and venture out into the world and make something new. Before doing this however, they released one final Halo game – Halo: Reach. A prequel, of sorts, as the game took place on the Spartan planet of Reach, the story focusing on a group of Spartans, and not Master Chief.

Reach was Bungie’s swan song. It was their best designed game from the ground up. Their best story-telling, and a venture into newer territory, before leaving the comfortable Halo universe behind, with larger battles, new abilities, and even venturing out into that eerie emptiness with spaceship battles.

The game really just felt like the complete package, and honestly, the best designed game from the Bungie team. From here, the reins would be handed back to Microsoft, and their 343 Studio, to run with a new Master Chief trilogy.

<– Yesterday – Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Tomorrow – RAGE –>

-iRogan

IDL FEATURE – Day 1: FPS – Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

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First category of the next two weeks is the First Person Shooters. The FPS genre is probably the most popular genre, if not the most prolific. Every year we get dozens of new titles, each competing for popularity. The FPS genre is also one of the oldest in gaming history, with Doom, and Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D. At points it’s been funny, with the Duke Nukem’s, or gorgeous, with the Crysis’i. The genre has been used to tell many stories, from war in the World War 1 and 2 days, battles with demons on Mars, cities under water or in the sky, or used to tell no story at all, but simply made to press the technology borders farther, and just have people compete in an arena till their death, like Unreal Tournament.

For the First Person Shooter category, I’ve chosen 3 games: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1, Halo: Reach, and RAGE.

Honorable mentions to: Far Cry 3, and Homefront.

Day 1 – Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision

Looking back now, one of the most well-known franchises, and most popular today, are the Call of Duty games, but it started over a decade ago with their World War 1 and 2 games. Call of Duty popularized the FPS genre on the PC and console by dropping us in a war environment, in the shoes of a soldier and asked us to fight in a war. The game glorified war, but showed the true nature and harsh realities behind it. We lost comrades left right and center as we fought our way through each battle, and it didn’t give us a lot of time to grieve.

Call of Duty became most well-known for its single player campaign, story-telling and scripted events. Head long into each firefight, every instance of the game was a little over the top, and urged the player to press forward, be it your comrades who sit beside you until you advance, or the enemies up ahead flushing you out with well-placed grenades. You never stop moving.

Year after year of the World War 1 and 2 games, the Call of Duty franchise made a sudden, if not relieving, jump to the modern era, with the introduction of COD 4: Modern Warfare. This is also the game that jumped into the new generation of consoles, with a spiffy new engine.

This game changed the landscape of FPS, and is still revered as one of the most popular Call of Duty games to date, and sparking the ignition to what is now the most popular annual franchise.

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The game told a great story, following multiple leads, each connected, as they trotted the globe fighting terrorism. The story was kept compact though, a small group making big changes, and dragging the player through it at a ferocious pace.

The game starts as we try to escape a huge freighter ship that is sinking in the ocean, slows everything down and puts us in the shoes and gullies suit of a sniper in Chernobyl, and then ramps it back up without apologizing.

The mechanics of the game were its best attributes. The shooting mechanic was so precise and so fulfilling. The shots felt like they had real impact, the guns so realistically designed. And getting shot also felt punishing, the screen getting covered with blood. The enemies’ deaths felt natural as well. A mainstay of the franchise, the deaths were animated, and not delegated to a physics engine, making the bodies perform unrealistic ragdoll tumbling maneuvers.

The game also reinvigorated the online FPS world, and this is now the most popular feature of the annual versions. People don’t even play the single player campaign. These are terrible people though. The way the online mode was designed encouraged continuous play. You earned unlocks and new guns the more you played, through XP, and you didn’t even need to do well. The game rewarded time and dedication. And then if/when you reached the cap level, you could prestige to Rank 2, and do it all over again, sacrificing all your unlocks and starting from scratch. Why, to show dedication and time, of course.

Modern Warfare, and the Infinity Ward team behind it designed every facet of the game to perfection, and it can be argued that the eight Call of Duty games that have since followed, and the sheer popularity of the annualized franchise, is thanks to the success of this title.

Tomorrow – HALO: Reach –>

-iRogan

IDL FEATURE – Top Ten Favourite Xbox 360 Games – Day Zero

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For the next two weeks I’ll be posting an article about my top ten favourite Xbox 360 titles from the last generation. I’ve thought about all the many, many, titles I’ve played over those 7 years, and even still play today. A lot I still think back on now, remembering the good time. And most exciting is the Backwards Compatibility feature that will be added to the Xbox One this holiday season, the ability to easily jump back into the favourites on the current hardware, and relive those experiences.

The original list I came up with while mining through the 250+ games, and keeping in mind that the list was supposed to be ten, was actually 26. And then I had to start culling the herd. This was torturous.

Throughout the tenure of the 360, I primarily played a lot of racing games, first-person shooters, and larger, open-world games. The genre I’ve probably spent the most time in would be sports games – namely EA’s NHL – but because that’s only one sport, one developer, I’ve omitted the category. Besides, it’s an annual title.

The games I typically shy away from are primarily online games, or roleplaying games. These games required hours of time pumped in, and I have been known to have a short attention span when it comes to games – jumping on to the next before the last is even done. My game shelf and harddrive is quantity over quality.

When combing through the list, I wanted the titles to be diverse – not just ten Assassin’s Creed titles – so I’ve split them up into 5 categories, by genre. For those that didn’t really fit the mold or would be described as cross-genre, I slotted them to the spot that best defined them, or what I’d found in them most appealing. I’ve also, decidedly settled on full Triple A titles. Not that there aren’t great indie or smaller games out there, just none from last generation came to mind, striking me as top 10. Sorry.

Each game and category won’t get the full Review treatment, but I’ll touch on what the game is, why it made the list, and what aspects of the game worked best.

The list ahead are games I played on the 360, launched new on the 360 (regardless of the fact that they may have also been available on other platforms). I did, however, avoid games that had come out first on another platform, and then ported to the 360 – like PC titles – or any re-released / re-mastered games. We might’ve had 10 Half-Life 2’s in that case.

And finally, there will be games on this list that you might not agree with, that you might not put on your list. And this is fine. This is my list, my favourites – not the best games ever list. The games I’ll be discussing here are ordered by genre, and not by preference or most-to-least favourite.

Day 1 – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Day 2 – Halo: Reach
Day 3 – RAGE
Day 4 – Colin McRae’s Dirt 2
Day 5 – Spec Ops – The Line
Day 6 – Dead Space
Day 7 – Gears of WarDay 8 – Enslaved – Odyssey to the West
Day 9 – Grand Theft Auto V
Day 10 – Portal 2