Archive for July, 2010
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 July 14th, 2010
Another week and another game. I know, it’s mental.
I’ve never really got on with the Battlefield series. I missed the first one, 1942, I didn’t have a PC that could play it. I loved the idea of combining all the elements of combat on foot, tanks and flying all in one large game, but I didn’t get round to playing it.
I played a lot of Call of Duty: United Offensive. Actually a lot is an understatement. I played it pretty well constantly for well over a year. It was great but didn’t provide what I believed Battlefield promised in a fully integrated…..er… Battlefield.
I gave Battlefield 2 a go as soon as it came out. The odd thing about the Battlefield series is that it always insisted on throwing you straight into multiplayer. This was fine because it is, at heart, a multiplayer game. The problem I found is that everyone else in the world seems to be really bloody good at it.
One of my principles in playing games is that if I don’t at least achieve a basic level of skill quickly, I give up. Life’s short and there are a lot of games out there.
I gave up on Battlefield 2 even though it looked like they’d done a really good job of it.
I didn’t really pay attention to Battlefield 2142 and to be honest it’s really only looking on Wikipedia just now that even reminded me that it even came out.
Battlefield: Bad Company came out around the time of COD4 and consequently I didn’t pay much attention to that either.
This is all going somewhere.
I hadn’t really been inclined to play Bad Company 2 as I couldn’t see what it could do that Modern Warfare hadn’t. I was massively wrong about that.
The Bad Company series, apparently has added in the single player campaign in order to, I assume, make it viable on a console. I think this makes a big difference, it teaches you how to play the game before throwing you in.
Although the single player is essentially a tutorial it weighs in at about the same length of Modern Warfare 2 but is much more thought through. The levels are constructed well. There is a story that vaguely makes sense. There are characters that elicit some sort sympathy. You can even blow up most of the buildings.
What isn’t to like?
I loved everything about the single player campaign and could happily play it again.
This is the point where I would usually say “I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet”; having realised this I thought I might actually play it for a bit and see if it is any good.
It’s very good. Also, unusually, for a game that has been out for a while now, there are a good number of people playing and it isn’t impossible to survive for longer than a few seconds.
I’ve found it very easy to get into and a multiplayer experience which I’ve missed recently.
I don’t think it is much of an exaggeration to say this is the game that modern warfare thought it was going to be.
Go and buy it now.
Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (2)
Red Dead Redemption July 7th, 2010
It took four months but I finally got round to finishing another game. It hasn’t taken four months, no, it’s been sunny, I’ve been outside.
Part of the reason for losing interest was the death of my PS3. A motherboard failure meant I lost every game save I’ve ever had and lost all progress with things like Final Fantasy and God of War. This is supposed to be fun so I’m not really motivated to go back and start things again. I probably will, but not at the moment. It did give me an excuse to go and get a new thin PS3. If you’re interested here’s my review. It’s the same as the old one but thinner. There really isn’t much more to say about it.
After a bit of lull in completing things it was good to throw myself into something quite as large as Red Dead Redemption. Although it was always billed as a massive 2010 release it wasn’t something I had my eye on until the last minute. I’ve loved every GTA but something about games set in the “Wild West” doesn’t really interest me.
Having said that, someone did lend me Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood last year. It was very playable and created an inevitable basis for comparison. Red Dead Redemption is much much better. A fantastic open world with some breath taking scenery.
Some elements like riding a horse for miles is tedious but at least they’ve built in a good work around with many different ways to fast travel. I did notice that many reviews mentioned that the diversity of missions is greatly improved from GTA. It isn’t. Just about every mission is based on riding into town and killing everyone. Not really a bad thing.
The story is fairly interesting. It doesn’t pretend to be literature and is compelling in its own way. The developers have tried to mess with the narrative by creating a really final part of the game where you basically do chores. It’s an unusual step and to be honest fairly boring.
I think this will stand out as being technically great but slightly missing something that GTA had.
The multiplayer element does look interesting but I’m not sure how much time I’ll put into it.
So, in summary, it’s fun. You can execute bears.
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