Upcoming Twitch Releases

There are two games vying for the title of Twitch Game of 2010 at the moment. Call of Duty: Black Ops is a Cold War era title by Treyarch which looks to take the systems of Modern Warfare 2 and expand upon it greatly. Medal of Honor is a reboot of an old series and is set to be a romp through Afghanistan. The Multiplayer is being done by DICE who are the old hands behind the Battlefield franchise.

I've pretty torn as to which one I'll purchase because I don't have the time, nor the money to play both.

Looking at Black Ops first;
The strong points of Modern Warfare 2 were the customisability you could employ in making your classes. I had a heap of fun unlocking weapons and skins and completing challenges. Added a real action-RPG feel to some of the underlying gameplay. Black Ops seems to evolve this system slightly by not putting you on a step ladder of unlocks, but allowing you to choose what you unlock by putting an XP value on most (if not all) unlocks. Seems like a really great idea.

The terrible IWNet system from MW2 has seemingly been partially scrapped in favour of controlled dedicated servers hopefully addressing a lot of the issues I had with MW2. The addition of zombie mode should be great as well.

But here are the things that don't sit easy with me.
The gameplay of MW2 lent itself to running and gunning, jump proning all over the place wielding dual shotguns. It didn't sit right in my belly and ultimately, fighting through the lag and such didn't seem worth it because I wasn't really enjoying it after a couple of months.

I do not have high expectations for the single player either as it is being done by Treyarch and none of the games Treyarch have made, I've not really enjoyed as much as those done by Infinity Ward.

Now onto Medal of Honor;
Putting aside Civilization 5 in quick order has left me some time to try out the new Medal of Honor Beta. I've put in 5 hours now and to be honest I'm surprised by the level of diatribe being slung its way by the online community.

The graphics are good, but then they are probably on par with Bad Company 2. The sounds are great, nice deep rolling sounds, great effects. There is a real visceral feel to the environments and the combat. Choppers fly over head, radio chatter adds a nice atmosphere and it feels great overall.

My problems lie with weapon balance and accuracy. Many a time has a carbine out aimed a sniper across a large distance. I've been both on the giving and receiving end of this and I think weapon spread needs to be dramatically increased at both hip firing and long burst firing while only tweaked slightly for short bursts of the main class weapons.

I hope that the options for each class and for the customisation of your character is increased. Dramatically.
Server lag and stability has not really been an issue for me, and assumingly that was the point of the Beta, to test system and network functionality.

All in all I'm enjoying the Beta, can see that it needs improvements but trusts in DICE to deliver them.

The single player videos are interesting and seem to carry the visceral feel that is captured well in the multiplayer Beta.

So to decide;
Black Ops multi seems like an upgrade of the current MW2 system. For me, I don't think better server support and more customising options are going to make up for the fact that this will be a run and gun spam-fest. For some people that's ok, and power to them. I think that it seems to be more style over substance than anything. And I think that a single player campaign may have taken a back seat to improving multi.

Medal of Honor on the other hand, seems different enough than Bad Company or Modern Warfare. It is quicker paced than Bad Company 2 but none of the games I've been a part of have turned into uber spam fests.

So ultimately....I still don't know for sure but I'm leaning toward Medal of Honor. The factor that might push me over the line is that Black Ops is the bastard spawn of Activision whom I have no love for. EA aren't a heap better but I know DICE are so bullshit brand loyalty might come through on this one.

Barbarians at the Gates; The Fall of Civilization?

The past week has been a fevered one, where my mood has followed an astronomical parabola. All because of Civilization V (5) being released and played until my computer, and mind become a withered husk.
I haven't played Civ 4 for a while. I put hundreds of hours into it, but I'm not a hardcore 'Civver' and eventually something shinier distracted me. But for me Civ has always been a well polished game with maybe a few tweaks needed. Yet always a plethora of options are available to succeed and there has been a flexibility within it's systems that allows you to shift your paradigm without too much hassle.

I dove into a session of Civ 5. Absorbed and delighted in the changes made to the foundation game. Hexes, great. One unit per tile. Awesome. Animations and graphics. Superb. But after a few hours I felt unsatiated, that the feast in front of me was made of paper, or clay, or some other item of undeliciousness. It was a strange feeling. It was like being invited to a heaven where I'd have 100 virgins, but all of them had herpes.

So I tried again. And again. Aaaand again (about 30 hours worth of again). Each time it has felt somewhat hollow and overall, unpolished. I even made a list of the things that really irked me but I'll focus on what I see as most important here;

Multiplayer implementation is terrible. For a series famous for 'tacking on' multiplayer, this iteration seems to be held together by old chewing gum and older prayers. No saving in game, lag to the hilt and animations turned off by default and unable to be tweaked. Not to mention lack of matchmaking or hotseat options. Needs severe reworking

Information and choices were meant to have been streamlined but seem to have been omitted in some cases and severely pared back in others. Why does another Civ not like me? No way to know. Why does this tile cost 70gp to buy and the one right next to it 250? No way to know.

Limitataion of choice. I like the idea behind the civics tree but it ends up being an immutable upgrade tree. The beauty of past games was being able to switch your focus onto a certain field where you may be lacking. Want to wage war? Tailor your civics to suit that period of the game. The options available are great but not allowing people to change them (hell make it cost culture!) removes a lot of the depth that the system could bring.

Overall focus on military aspects. I feel that every game I get into I'm being shoehorned into becoming a military superpower, it feels less like a Civilization Sim game and more like a Turn based Wargame. The mechanics of combat are great, but the AI is way too stupid to use the more tactical combat over previous iterations where it could stack 10-15 units and take you on because tactics were minimal, stack and rush isn't hard for the AI.

Diplomacy is terrible, once again bad AI shines through. There is no transparency to the relationships between Civilizations. I want to know if Montezuma hates Nobunaga so I can get them to go to war. As it stands I've got to go to every other civ and just ask them, might make them angry at me if I do but hell I wouldn't even know if it does because of the lack of information. Also, being unable to access key information (such as relative military strengths, technologies etc.) when someone asks to declare war or go into a defensive pact is annoying as hell.

Finally, the lack of options and information at start up. Things like allowing the razing of City States and Capitals would be a welcome option. Knowing just how changing the age of the earth in relation to map generation and so on.

Overall I feel this game was not sufficiently tested. It feels like a lot of good ideas and a few bad ones patched together without thinking how the game as a whole would work. I'm pretty disappointed overall with this game and it requires a heap of patching to get it up to speed.

If there has ever been a case of style over substance this is it. 6/10