All About The_Dark_Hart

You've all heard it and most of you have probably done it, I know I have. I've ranted on about innovation in MMOs, about how frustrated I am about it, you've heard it all before. But while our attention is focused on the MMO genre, are we letting FPS games get away with stagnant repetitive gameplay mechanics?I could rabble on forever about the little detailed parts of FPSs, but I won't. Yet. Let's start big, let's dive right in to the very core of the FPSs gameplay. It's always about killing. Haven't you ever noticed it? No matter how much they attempt to hide it with objectives, mini-games and what-not it's still just about you killing something. Now the only game recently that has challenged this is Portal, and yes it does have a sort of killing with the turrets, but that isn't the very core of the gameplay. The unfortunate truth is that Portal was original, not innovative. Originality is thinking outside the box, Innovating is making the box bigger.I'm going to give game developers a helping hand here, take a look at sports. They've survived for over a hundred years, some of them. And they have nothing to do with killing another player. Rugby for example, while it has the fun of violence it is purely objective based. Get the ball off the enemy team, score a try. That extremely simple gameplay mechanic has created a game in which millions have become avid fans. Why don't games do this? Some sort of ball game? Or something else entirely?The main reason I want objective based gameplay, is that it not only encourages team work, it requires it. If the core mechanic is simply fragging another player, then you'll always get that one guy who just runs off head shotting everyone and screaming "OWNED!!!" in a squeaky pre-puebescant voice. Whereas if you remove the killing mechanic, then that guy who runs off will suddenly find himself with nothing to do
Also I would love to see a FPS that did something original with play times. At the moment there are only two types; the short quick game like Halo or Call of Duty and the longer slightly more tactical game like Battlefield. The problem I have with these is that they end. What if there was an FPS in which the game never ended? It almost a little MMO. A persitant map, around the size of battlefield, with outposts being captured and lost. And with the outposts being captured, then the team would get better armor and weapons. This would then allow people to play for as long as though want, they could jump in for ten minutes just to have some fun, or play for 5 hours and really see the effect of their actions.Also, what happened to ammo types? In most FPSs the only difference between the guns is their range. I'd love to see the return of different types of ammo, it forces the player to think more and to attempt strategy. Or what if developers really cut down on ammo? At the moment most games have an abundance of ammo, meaning that everyone's trigger happy. What if you only gave a sniper 5 bullets? It would force him to take his shots carefully. Or give a rocket launcher one. Or give a rifle only one mag, then the player would have to loot the ammo of his fallen comrades and enemies. All this stuff appeared in Bioshock, but why hasn't anyone implemented this into multiplayer?
Now this last past is a direct stab at one game, and some of you may think I'm totally crazy. The game is Call of Duty 4. I'm not saying it's a bad game, I'm saying it's un-original. The so called revolutionary upgrades system is simply a cheap knock off of Battlefield 2's upgrade system. The only difference is that Call of Duty 4's system is so easy and quick rank means nothing. Level 55 can be acquired by simply playing for about 15 hours. Whereas in Battlefield 2 the upgrades really meant something, it took a long time to get them, giving you a real sense of accomplishment when you earned one.
Basically I want someone to start doing some real innovation in the FPS genre, and i don't necessarily mean blurring the lines between FPS and MMO. I want game developers to start evolving the genre, and in some cases go back and evaluate the very roots of the genre.

Galactic Civ II Twilight Review

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor isn't just a great expansion, it's also a wonderful culmination of everything good about the series. Developer Stardock has addressed just about all of the possible complaints about both the original game and its Dark Avatar add-on. Plus, they've added impactful tech-tree innovations, a climactic campaign, and a host of other tweaks, for a superb example of what an expansion pack should be.
If you are a Gal Civ addict you'll be excited about the new tech trees provided for each of the game's 12 playable civilizations. Where the Terrans, Drengin, Yor, Thalans, and pals used to share a single tech tree that made all of the civs go about their galactic gallivanting in a similar style, each now has branching-off points that emphasize unique traits. This means that you're now able to play civilizations very differently, as well as make the good guys really good and the bad guys really bad. With the evil Drengin, for example, you're now free to indulge your inner De Sade by spending credits on such horrific goodies as Xeno slavery, slave canyons, and the always entertaining visions of agony philosophy. The murderous Drengin offshoot Korath clan is actually even nastier, with such techs as malicious bargaining, wretched cloning, and dark influence. Terrans, on the other hand, can be happier expansion-minded imperialists with such specialties as majesty, cultural domination, and stellar folding. Extra detail and history have been tossed into each tech as well, giving you insight into each civilization's identity and, in some cases, reinforcing their alien natures.
New visuals have been grafted onto the original game's star and planetary maps to give each civilization a distinct look. Each race now has differently styled ships and planetary buildings, lending further unique character to the civs, as well as boosting replay value. Planetary surfaces look different now depending on who's in charge. Drengin worlds come off like utter hellholes, complete with slave pits in place of factories and slaveling imagination labs in place of research facilities. Terran planets look a lot like Earth with standard factories, farms, and research facilities. Thalan worlds are bizarre and time-focused thanks to the temporal entertainment, as well as the incredibly powerful hyperion matrices. Ships have also been reworked with more polygons and texture detail, resulting in a much more varied range of vessels that appear more realistic. The cosmetic differences between the ships in last year's Dark Avatar and the ships in Twilight of the Arnor border on astounding, with most of the flat, featureless ship surfaces of the old game being replaced by the sort of detailed, industrial hardware that you would expect to find on a galaxy-spanning vessel. Yet even with these vast improvements, system requirements haven't been ramped up; the game runs just as fast and just as smoothly as before.
Other Twilight of the Arnor additions are low-key. The new campaign is an enjoyable wrap to the Dread Lords saga that tells the story of the Terrans finding the last survivor of the ancient Arnor. This ancient super-race put the Dread Lords in their place many thousands of years ago, which means that you're now relying on their tips to do so again, as well as free up the galaxy for unimpeded wars a-plenty between the Drengin and, well, everybody else. A new victory mode called Ascension has been introduced for sandbox play. Here, you can trigger the endgame by discovering five randomly placed crystal anomalies on the map and building star bases around them to retrieve their mystical goodness. If you hold them long enough to ascend to a higher plane of existence, you win the game. There are a couple of significant issues with this victory condition, however. First of all, Ascension crystals are often ignored by rival races, even if they're located right under their noses in key solar systems. So there rarely seems to be much competition for what is ostensibly the most important resource in the entire galaxy. Second, enemy empires don't seem to have an issue with you setting up star bases around crystals until you're about 150 weeks from victory, whereupon they suddenly notice what's going on and declare war on you, one after the other. This seems very artificial--like you're simply triggering a countdown instead of dealing with intelligent rivals. This lengthy delay also gives you lots of time to put together a massive fleet and create defenses powerful enough to fend off almost any sort of assault.
Military action has also been enhanced--at least in theory--with the addition of terror stars, which are rather familiar-looking planet busters that can blow up a world as quick as you can say "Alderaan." They're far too time-consuming and a little too easily destroyed to be a true galaxy-beater, though. Immense galaxies have been added to the list of map choices in sandbox games, providing the option of setting up epic matches that can last for weeks. This option is a bit treacherous for anyone accustomed to previous, saner, galaxy sizes because you have so much space to cover that you can easily overextend yourself early in the game and wind up in major financial difficulty. Editors now allow you to alter every aspect of the game. Numerous interface tweaks make it easier to track technologies, track finance, and even set up automatic ship building whenever new techs are revealed. About the only part of the original game design left untouched is multiplayer, which remains MIA and will probably continue to be absent until Galactic Civilizations III from the looks of things.
Adding this much new life to what should be a very familiar game is an amazing achievement. While no single addition here can be said to make this expansion, the scope of the subtle yet wide-ranging changes greatly improve the Galactic Civilizations II experience. Before Twilight of the Arnor, players could stick to the Terrans and encounter everything that the game had to offer. Now, you deal with something new each and every time you go galaxy conquering with a different alien race, which freshens up a game that was in need of exactly this kind of facelift.

Out of the Park Baseball 9 Review

For a game franchise in transition, Out of the Park Baseball 9 is incredibly well polished. The baseball management simulation series from one-man development team Markus Heinsohn may have just gone through a couple of tumultuous years due to being acquired and then dropped by the U.K. soccer-game masterminds at Sports Interactive, but you would never know it by the latest addition to the family. This edition of the game might just be the best yet, thanks to quicker sim times, the addition of major league players, and some small refinements that improve the interface. It remains a little too hardcore and stat-heavy for anyone who doesn't have aspirations to be the next Bill James, although the game is nearly perfect for bleacher creatures who have noggins for numbers.
Statisticphobes shouldn't be scared off, though. While you need an affinity for baseball stats to really appreciate the game, the core of the game is all about indulging your inner Steinbrenner and taking total control over the operations of a big-league baseball franchise. You oversee everything from the top down: signing free agents, trading clubhouse troublemakers out of town, inking stars to contract extensions, setting the daily lineups, organizing the starting pitching rotation/bullpen assignments, promoting/demoting players in the minors, and even deciding on an average ticket price. Seasons progress in a turn-based manner, and you can manually sim each game as the dugout bench boss, auto-sim one day at a time, or go for a big-picture approach by simming through whole weeks and months in big chunks. Leagues are just about unlimited in scope. You can play solo running one team, take over all the teams in Commissioner mode, or get into an online league to take on other Branch Rickey wannabes (the multiplayer support is outstanding). Historical database support and downloadable mods that add the entire major leagues from any point in their history let you start a baseball universe at any time from the formation of the National League in 1871 to present day. You can then continue for unlimited decades, moving through authentic league expansion, team movement, and whatever else baseball has grown through over the years.
Attention to detail is incredible, which results in an authentic major league baseball feel. Although the game is mostly text-based, with little visual pizzazz aside from player photos and the big-league ballpark depicted on the simulation screen, the atmosphere is so lifelike that you can almost hear the hotdog vendors. Dozens of stat categories are tracked for each player. So you better have a good idea what ERA, OPS, and WHIP stand for before making a challenge for the pennant. However, there is also a strong human element. Players are given role-playing-game-like ratings that involve such personality traits as mood, loyalty, leadership, greed, desire to play for a winner, and so on that affect on-field performance, as well as come into play whenever you talk contracts. Negotiations are about more than number-crunching because you often wind up with pouting wannabes demanding trades if they're riding the pine too often, happy superstars taking hometown discounts on contract extensions, and free agents who simply won't listen to your offers because they don't want to play for your organization. All of these preferences are communicated in plain old English, too, which makes it seem like you're dealing with real people--not just names and numbers. It might not seem like a big deal, but having A-Rod comment on your smooth negotiation skills while giving him a $120 million extension makes all the difference between playing virtual accounting with baseball stats and feeling like you're actually running a big-league franchise.
But with all that said, there isn't a whole lot in OOTP9 that is completely new. Although this is a more refined, more complete version of the game than its OOTP 2007 predecessor, it doesn't bring any showstopping new features to the table. Streamlining is really the big focus of the design. Gone is the cumbersome Sports Interactive scouting system with scouts all over the world, replaced by a single head scout who does everything. There's also an animated baseball on the game-sim screen so you can watch plays develop. The biggest improvement is probably the simulation speed, which has been dramatically ramped up across the board without any loss in realism. You can now rip through a full season in under half an hour of straight simming and even zip through a year in no more than a couple of hours as a more hands-on manager simming one week at a time. This is a huge plus when compared to the last two OOTP games and arguably worth the price of the new game all by itself. Only an occasional stutter remains to slow you down, such as the near eternity it takes to load up the player award voting screen at the end of a season.
Built-in major league rosters are the other top selling point because previous OOTP games only came with fictional players. Being able to send real contemporary MLB stars, such as Magglio Ordonez, Roy Halladay, and Derek Jeter, onto the diamond is a much more attractive option than having to deal with a bunch of anonymous Joe Sixpacks. But these rosters do need to be tweaked somewhat. Bizarrely poor performances from some of the best in the game are too common. In a year as the Yankees, for example, A-Rod hit just .243 and counted a measly 30 homers (his lowest since 1997), while 2007 19-game winner Chien-Ming Wang finished 6-10 with a 5.51 ERA. Most players are pretty much dead-on, although this quirkiness is pronounced enough to apparently produce some weird contracts. Bona fide big-money superstars sometimes settle for ridiculously low deals, while average Joes wind up making huge bucks. So the Yankees can cheap out when re-upping Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera for $3 million a year on a three-year pact (although maybe this was just a huge hometown discount for a longtime Yankee who didn't want to leave town), yet a light-hitting infielder like Chone Figgins somehow gets the Anaheim Angels to give him $10 million a season for three years.
Computer GMs will also lay down big money on past-it stars like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. In the first season we simmed, Bonds somehow got a three-year-deal worth $7.7 million a year from the Cincinnati Reds. Priorities seem to be skewed toward these established diamond dogs as well. While teams are making outrageous deals for washed-up old guys in their 40s, they're also dropping five-star prospects in their early 20s for no reason whatsoever. If you keep an eye on the waiver wire, you'll eventually scoop up enough talent to fill out a pitching staff. In our first season, the Yankees managed to put together the best middle relief in baseball due solely to a pair of killer young waiver pick-ups and score a 21-year-old four-and-a-half star starting pitcher who tore up AA ball.
At least the fictional and historical leagues aren't burdened with this sort of baggage. Starting with completely made-up rosters or going back to a past season seems to result in remarkably accurate player performances based on their skills and stats--whether you're playing on your own or in an online league. This is particularly noticeable if you go back to the 19th century--or the dead ball era--or even the offensively challenged years before the DH was introduced and the mound lowered. Now you can really see how different the game was back then, in terms of such key factors as greater pitcher endurance and fewer runs scored.
In a lot of ways, the above criticisms can be set aside as nitpicky. OOTP9 is a superb game--the closest thing we've got to major league baseball in a box. A few wrinkles need to be ironed out and owners of the previous game in the series might be a bit disappointed by the absence of prominent new features, but there is no doubt that this is the best baseball management sim out there for serious followers of the national pastime.

Bionic Commando Update: Multiplayer Hands-On

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a pack of bionically enhanced supersoldiers were thrown into an arena packed with weapons? If so, Capcom is offering one potential answer with the multiplayer mode in Bionic Commando. While we've covered the single-player game extensively since its announcement last year, we haven't had the chance to try its multiplayer mode just yet. This changed recently on a recent visit to Capcom where we had the chance to swing and shoot in the multiplayer demo that's going to be shown at Leipzig this week. Although the demo was a little on the thin side, with one level and one game mode, it gave us an idea of what to expect from the game.
The demo, clearly meant for a Euro audience with its German text, provided a small portion of a ruined city that met our deathmatch needs. Although the final game will support online play, the demo was set to a local LAN game. The matches we tried varied in number of players, although the final game will support a maximum of 10. While Capcom isn't releasing any new info on the additional multiplayer, reps told us to expect a greatest hits of multiplayer action that should include such fare as King of the Hill.
The action was what you'd expect from a deathmatch game in the BC universe: running, shooting, and swinging, with some bionically enhanced punching thrown in for good measure. To help out with the killing, there were several different pickups strewn throughout the level. Green pickups restored health in varying amounts. Armor pickups granted some added durability and let you take some more gunfire before dying. However, the more important pickups are weapons. In the demo, we were able to grab a shotgun, grenade launcher, sniper rifle, and machine gun. Each weapon comes with limited ammo so efficiency is key, especially in the case of the grenade launcher, which is a one-hit kill if aimed properly.
Of course, a multiplayer game wouldn't be much without control, and BC offers a solid system. You'll move with the left analog stick, although hitting the D pad will let you turn in 90-degree increments, which can be key during a close-quarters fight. You'll aim and change your camera view with the right stick. Clicking the right stick tightens up your view for fine aiming. When you've got a sniper rifle equipped, clicking the right stick zooms in your view. You'll jump and pull your arm's line in with the A button. The B and Y buttons are for melee attacks when you want to get up close and personal. The left trigger will shoot your arm's cable out, while the right trigger fires your equipped weapon. The right bumper will open up a radial weapon menu so you can use it to pick your available weapon of choice or quickly equip the next weapon in line when tapped.
While the weapon business was pretty typical, we really liked how the arm was worked into the mix. In addition to the standard melee punches, you can use your arm to pull off special attack combos. One, called a punch-up, lets you juggle an opponent in the air then jump up and smack him down. Another, a zip-kick, uses your arm's cable to latch onto a foe and slam into him at high speeds. Better still, you can use your arm's cable to keep hold of an enemy and slow him down--allowing you to better aim.
One thing to note on the demo we played is that, while the action was playable and fun, there was actually quite a bit not in yet. On the weapon front, the tarantula rocket launcher, which lets you lock on to and fire at multiple targets, as well as proximity grenades, will be included in the final game. More importantly, there is the adrenaline system, which will let you charge up a meter that will let you perform various powerful special moves with the arm.
The demo we played ran well, although it had the expected array of rough edges here and there. The environment had a good amount of detail and featured plenty of places to use your bionic arm's cable for swinging. The character models were a bit on the plain side, but we reckon there will be some measure of customization in the final game, along with more variety in models. The special effects for the weapons were coming together, although they were still a bit understated for our tastes. Still, incomplete status notwithstanding, we were pleased to see the game run so smoothly.
Based on what we played, Bionic Commando's multiplayer will offer a solid dose of face shooting and bionic-arm-enhanced mayhem. The deathmatches seemed fine, although the size of the level we played in begged for a full 10-player match. The control is good and tight, especially the things you can do with the arm, while the pickup selection is modest but effective. From what we can tell, Bionic Commando's multiplayer is shaping up to be a nice complement to the single-player game. Bionic Commando is slated to ship later this year for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Look for more on the game in the coming months.