Despite the absence of posts I have been playing a tremendous amount of games since Dec of 2009. Four months into the new year 2010 is shaping up to be a better year than the year before, and I beaten more games in the last few months than I have in the last year. Unfortunately I still have an ever growing list of games I just can't find the time to dig into and finish, and I have found most of the games beaten this year to be 20 hours or less.
This leads to a quandary, do I keep expanding a pile of games I can't finish or do I finally bite the bullet and uninstall those games I haven't looked at in a while? I think it's clear some of the games on the list will never finished, because they don't compel me to finish them.
Those counted on the list of the fallen and soon to be deleted:
-Supreme Commander: While this RTS is silky smooth to play, with tight controls, active A.I. and the vaunted strategic zoom, the story is almost non-existent. With the online multiplayer holding virtually no attraction for me, this game is hitting the recycle bin.
-Far Cry 2: Beautiful and emergent, FC 2 is everything and nothing in that it reflects the intent of the player, rather than directing the player.I could spend days simply wandering the jungle seeing what there is to see without ever completing a mission. Once again, the simplistic and arbitrary story leaves me wanting, though in this case the narrative could in fact be self-created. In the end, I want to continue this journey, but right now, I can't make the time to be self-indulgent enough to lounge about the jungle.
-Fallout 3: A fantastic open world wasteland, that betrays the faith of the player in its final moments, I have kept the game installed partially as a wish to travel the entire wasteland and see what hidden treasures lurk and partially as a benchmark for upgrades.It's time to move on.
-Crysis: Kept this as a benchmark only, can't really myself playing it again despite its graphical prowess. There isn't enough meat on these bones for another go around story-wise (there's that word again)
-VTM:Bloodlines: Buggy and sometimes ugly, this underbaked RPG has lived on through its fanbase and endless patches/updates.I loved playing it despite the performance issues as it combined sex and violence in a truly mature way.I keep it so my wife can play it but she clearly isn't coming around to this anytime soon.
Oldy but Goody
S.T.A.L.K.E.R is staying because the game's moody atmosphere and open world still calls to me, and graphics patches have helped keep the engine from becoming fugly.
Half-Life 2/Ep. 1 & 2 are perennial favorites that are like visits from old friends, and sit contently in my Steam folder, along with The Witcher.
Unlike my console games which rotate in and out of the inventory on a regular basis, PC games grow especially difficult to trade so I simply retire them to their boxes in the closet. I think fondly of them once in a while and hope I see them again, but doubt it, kind of like grandparents.
Showing posts with label Crysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crysis. Show all posts
Monday, May 3, 2010
Monday, February 23, 2009
Retro_active
A brutal holiday season followed by busy work stuff prevented me from having time or energy to write about anything, hopefully that has now changed.
Whatever the distractions life has presented I continue to persevere, playing a stupid amount of game,rotating through my stock, and goozexing what I no longer have need of.
In the interim I have stepped away (mostly) from the most current crop of games to reach into the past and beat those not yet defeated. The exception to this is Crysis Warhead, a dumb blonde of game. Pretty but stupid, the game takes everything that was good about Crysis and tosses it out the window, making this Crysis-lite. Emulating the successful COD 4 format of level design the game is entirely unsuccessful in replicating the intensity of that experience, leaving the player with a mish-mash of half-baked ideas. Focused on the character Psycho's misadventures on the island in the same time frame as the first game, Warhead dumbs down the A.I. and level layout, without ramping up the visuals or story to any significant level. The end result is a game that unlike it's predecessor will likely run on a mid-range system but leave the player unsatisfied. She's pretty but she ain't got much to say.
Viking:Battle for Asgard is a reasonably fun yet repetitive title, filled with gore and an unintelligible story that assumes moderate knowledge of Norse myth. A checkered past plagues your character as a cursed leader who needs to prove himself as he frees his people with the aid of dragons and some really big armies. Lather-rinse-repeat is the crux of the gameplay as you conquer areas, freeing your warriors and completing tasks that will allow you to lay siege on the enemy positions. The combos are reasonably satisfying and brutally graphic (spines make lots of appearances as you cleave bad guys in two). The most rewarding aspect of the game is the massive sieges, where hundreds upon hundreds of NPC's battle around the main character. The game engine chugs during these moments but it does not take away from the intensity of being in the middle of a massive hand-to-hand engagement. Dragons are limited air support, called in via dragon-gems and of little real use as they can only be activate once or twice during a siege. The repetetive nature of the game diminishes it greatly, however the singularly beautiful art direction and engaging combat make it tolerable.
Whatever the distractions life has presented I continue to persevere, playing a stupid amount of game,rotating through my stock, and goozexing what I no longer have need of.
In the interim I have stepped away (mostly) from the most current crop of games to reach into the past and beat those not yet defeated. The exception to this is Crysis Warhead, a dumb blonde of game. Pretty but stupid, the game takes everything that was good about Crysis and tosses it out the window, making this Crysis-lite. Emulating the successful COD 4 format of level design the game is entirely unsuccessful in replicating the intensity of that experience, leaving the player with a mish-mash of half-baked ideas. Focused on the character Psycho's misadventures on the island in the same time frame as the first game, Warhead dumbs down the A.I. and level layout, without ramping up the visuals or story to any significant level. The end result is a game that unlike it's predecessor will likely run on a mid-range system but leave the player unsatisfied. She's pretty but she ain't got much to say.
Viking:Battle for Asgard is a reasonably fun yet repetitive title, filled with gore and an unintelligible story that assumes moderate knowledge of Norse myth. A checkered past plagues your character as a cursed leader who needs to prove himself as he frees his people with the aid of dragons and some really big armies. Lather-rinse-repeat is the crux of the gameplay as you conquer areas, freeing your warriors and completing tasks that will allow you to lay siege on the enemy positions. The combos are reasonably satisfying and brutally graphic (spines make lots of appearances as you cleave bad guys in two). The most rewarding aspect of the game is the massive sieges, where hundreds upon hundreds of NPC's battle around the main character. The game engine chugs during these moments but it does not take away from the intensity of being in the middle of a massive hand-to-hand engagement. Dragons are limited air support, called in via dragon-gems and of little real use as they can only be activate once or twice during a siege. The repetetive nature of the game diminishes it greatly, however the singularly beautiful art direction and engaging combat make it tolerable.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The PC Piracy Crysis-(or why Crytek are whiners)
Crytek president Cevat Yerli announced recently that piracy is driving Crytek away from PC exclusives and towards the consoles. Though Crysis sold an estimated 1.5 million copies world-wide, Crytek, based on bittorrent tracker stats, feel their game has underperformed. Read that again: based on tracker stats their game under-performed. Noting that there were approx 15-20 pirate copies for each copy sold, and acknowledging that this does not equate 1 to 1 sales, Yerli still states “sales would be double without piracy”.
I am pretty sure the music industry ran this argument about 10 years ago and it is no more valid now than then. Pirated copies do not equate lost sales. Here are some thoughts about why Crysis “underperformed”.
1) Hype
Hype is an intangible fluid thing that can teeter in an instant from “just right” to “too much” depending on the sensibilites and tastes of the desired audience. A game announced early in development can drop off the radar unless it has a killer concept that “sells itself” (Brutal Legend and Dead Space come to mind). A game relentlessly promoted can become old news before it is released (ie.Black) and have to win back flagging interest.
The hype around Crysis encapsulates many of the reasons it “underperformed”, creating a whole much less than the sum of its parts.
For almost a year prior to the release of Crysis every gaming magazine and website whored screenshots and gushed preview “news” as the tiniest detail was revealed by the developers. The message behind it all: “This game will rape your last-gen or current gen top of the line hardware.” For hardware pigs with more money than brains, this is enticing as they are the ultra hardcore, the ultra-core, and they are a niche market. Knowing that a) the game is an FPS b) is coming soon and c) will require you to upgrade your PC that was great two years ago at considerable expense is not attractive to the mainstream. Add the generic “super-soldiers vs. aliens” plot, the details of which, when revealed, failed to excite, and you have a game that is over-exposed, to say the least. It’s as if the marketing team at EA had no clue how to sell the game, other than “Hey the guys who made Far Cry are making it”. To achieve mainstream penetration hype has to amount to more than specs and a thing plot, it has to be enticing to everybody. Thus far, games that have that level of marketability are accessible in terms of gameplay, hardware and content. Crysis is none of these things.
2) Hardware Specifications
Crysis was promoted from the get-go as the next step of PC gaming, in terms of the graphics. It was promised to punish current gen hardware and was designed, like Far Cry (to a lesser extent) to be “future proof” in that not-yet-released hardware would be required to run the game at its highest capabilities. While pushing tech is a hallmark of PC gaming, Crytek overshot this mark to the extent of alienating its audience. Buying a game knowing it will run on your machine but look like crap and knowing you can’t run it all are two different things. This is a failure on the developer’s part, simply because they either overestimated the install base of hardware that could (barely) run the game acceptably or their audience’s willingness to upgrade, or both. Taking a page from Valve’s playbook would have served this game well, given that the Source engine seems to be infinitely scalable and looks great, something Crysis, and its predecessor Far Cry fail at. As point of reference, I bought Far Cry to run on an over-clocked 1.8 gig Sempron, 2 gigs DDR and an ATI 512 meg 1650 video card. This same setup carried me through Quake 4, Half Life 2 Ep 1, and F.E.A.R., though in fairness, I had bought Far Cry prior to any of these games but never finished it (it would ultimately last me through 3 different PCs). While able to play the game, it was only until I upgraded my entire system to an overclocked 2.8 gig Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs DDR (dual channel) and a PCI-E overclocked XFX 6800 (256 megs) that I would be able to play it at 30+ FPS will all the bells and whistles turned on, at my monitor’s native res of 1440 x 900. This new hand-picked and built system cost a miserly (in Pc terms) $600.
This same system would wheeze through Crysis at 960 X 600 and manage at worst 11 FPS and at best 35 FPS with all settings on low. By comparison, I finished Half-Life 2 Ep 2 on the prior machine, with only the final strider battle giving unacceptable framerates and low visual quality. With the new system, I tore through the same sequence with everything maxed out and never dipped below 30 FPS. I also beat F.E.A.R on the Sempron box, but again can now run the game at native rez with settings maxed out.
The unpalatable and frankly intimidating aspect of Crysis is that not only will the game require a $5000 dollar machine to play it max, but just to look at it you need to be running a $1000 machine built in the last 2 years. What percentage of the hundreds of millions of PC’s in North America meet the minimum specs alone? 10%? Maybe 2% meet the max and that would be a generous estimate. The absolute maximum attainable sales this game could have at and around launch would have been 2-3 million units because no one else would be able to play it even if the wanted to. Yerli feels that the exclusivity of being a PC only release should have driven more sales, while ignoring the concept that Crysis was not only PC exclusive, but exclusive to a very few PC’s.
The end result is that Crytek effectively developed their way out of the market with this game, leaving behind 75% of the install base in their wake. This is especially glaring given the Sims franchise has just reached the 100 million sales mark. While they are two different genres and two different audiences, it is a clear reminder that accessibility will trump specs any day.
3) Quality
Crysis, if you can run it, is a spectacular looking game. The enemy AI is reasonably good, the environments are detailed and beautiful and the effects used in the game are excellent. However, while it is a massive step up from Far Cry in terms of story, pacing, character animation and voice-acting, it is still a fairly run-of-the-mill by the numbers FPS.
Game quality seems to have three distinct subsets: graphics, story, and gameplay. A great game excels at all three, while a good game has two. No game can be successful resting on the laurels of only one of these subsets as Doom III and Quake 4 can attest. While the gameplay in Crysis did achieve some moments of tension and excitement, it failed to reach the heights set by games like F.E.A.R. Despite the latter’s repetitive environments and so-so story, the intense and unrelentingly gameplay, aided by superior A.I. and beautiful visuals drove sales. Crysis raises the bar in visual fidelity while being average in gameplay and story. If your game requires a significant hardware upgrade then it better be really good at least two of the above, and Crysis is not.
Comparisons to Crytek’s previous effort may well have hindered sales also. Far Cry is a beautifully rendered game, with open non-linear exploration of its environment. It has reasonably tight gameplay and A.I., however the story is just plain awful with some of the worst voice acting on record. Gamers non-plused by Far Cry may well have skipped Crysis if only because they expected more of the same. In a market where your reputation precedes you, you are only as good as your last release.
In the end, Crytek were their own worst enemies in this case and unfortunately it appears to be a lesson unlearned.
I am pretty sure the music industry ran this argument about 10 years ago and it is no more valid now than then. Pirated copies do not equate lost sales. Here are some thoughts about why Crysis “underperformed”.
1) Hype
Hype is an intangible fluid thing that can teeter in an instant from “just right” to “too much” depending on the sensibilites and tastes of the desired audience. A game announced early in development can drop off the radar unless it has a killer concept that “sells itself” (Brutal Legend and Dead Space come to mind). A game relentlessly promoted can become old news before it is released (ie.Black) and have to win back flagging interest.
The hype around Crysis encapsulates many of the reasons it “underperformed”, creating a whole much less than the sum of its parts.
For almost a year prior to the release of Crysis every gaming magazine and website whored screenshots and gushed preview “news” as the tiniest detail was revealed by the developers. The message behind it all: “This game will rape your last-gen or current gen top of the line hardware.” For hardware pigs with more money than brains, this is enticing as they are the ultra hardcore, the ultra-core, and they are a niche market. Knowing that a) the game is an FPS b) is coming soon and c) will require you to upgrade your PC that was great two years ago at considerable expense is not attractive to the mainstream. Add the generic “super-soldiers vs. aliens” plot, the details of which, when revealed, failed to excite, and you have a game that is over-exposed, to say the least. It’s as if the marketing team at EA had no clue how to sell the game, other than “Hey the guys who made Far Cry are making it”. To achieve mainstream penetration hype has to amount to more than specs and a thing plot, it has to be enticing to everybody. Thus far, games that have that level of marketability are accessible in terms of gameplay, hardware and content. Crysis is none of these things.
2) Hardware Specifications
Crysis was promoted from the get-go as the next step of PC gaming, in terms of the graphics. It was promised to punish current gen hardware and was designed, like Far Cry (to a lesser extent) to be “future proof” in that not-yet-released hardware would be required to run the game at its highest capabilities. While pushing tech is a hallmark of PC gaming, Crytek overshot this mark to the extent of alienating its audience. Buying a game knowing it will run on your machine but look like crap and knowing you can’t run it all are two different things. This is a failure on the developer’s part, simply because they either overestimated the install base of hardware that could (barely) run the game acceptably or their audience’s willingness to upgrade, or both. Taking a page from Valve’s playbook would have served this game well, given that the Source engine seems to be infinitely scalable and looks great, something Crysis, and its predecessor Far Cry fail at. As point of reference, I bought Far Cry to run on an over-clocked 1.8 gig Sempron, 2 gigs DDR and an ATI 512 meg 1650 video card. This same setup carried me through Quake 4, Half Life 2 Ep 1, and F.E.A.R., though in fairness, I had bought Far Cry prior to any of these games but never finished it (it would ultimately last me through 3 different PCs). While able to play the game, it was only until I upgraded my entire system to an overclocked 2.8 gig Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs DDR (dual channel) and a PCI-E overclocked XFX 6800 (256 megs) that I would be able to play it at 30+ FPS will all the bells and whistles turned on, at my monitor’s native res of 1440 x 900. This new hand-picked and built system cost a miserly (in Pc terms) $600.
This same system would wheeze through Crysis at 960 X 600 and manage at worst 11 FPS and at best 35 FPS with all settings on low. By comparison, I finished Half-Life 2 Ep 2 on the prior machine, with only the final strider battle giving unacceptable framerates and low visual quality. With the new system, I tore through the same sequence with everything maxed out and never dipped below 30 FPS. I also beat F.E.A.R on the Sempron box, but again can now run the game at native rez with settings maxed out.
The unpalatable and frankly intimidating aspect of Crysis is that not only will the game require a $5000 dollar machine to play it max, but just to look at it you need to be running a $1000 machine built in the last 2 years. What percentage of the hundreds of millions of PC’s in North America meet the minimum specs alone? 10%? Maybe 2% meet the max and that would be a generous estimate. The absolute maximum attainable sales this game could have at and around launch would have been 2-3 million units because no one else would be able to play it even if the wanted to. Yerli feels that the exclusivity of being a PC only release should have driven more sales, while ignoring the concept that Crysis was not only PC exclusive, but exclusive to a very few PC’s.
The end result is that Crytek effectively developed their way out of the market with this game, leaving behind 75% of the install base in their wake. This is especially glaring given the Sims franchise has just reached the 100 million sales mark. While they are two different genres and two different audiences, it is a clear reminder that accessibility will trump specs any day.
3) Quality
Crysis, if you can run it, is a spectacular looking game. The enemy AI is reasonably good, the environments are detailed and beautiful and the effects used in the game are excellent. However, while it is a massive step up from Far Cry in terms of story, pacing, character animation and voice-acting, it is still a fairly run-of-the-mill by the numbers FPS.
Game quality seems to have three distinct subsets: graphics, story, and gameplay. A great game excels at all three, while a good game has two. No game can be successful resting on the laurels of only one of these subsets as Doom III and Quake 4 can attest. While the gameplay in Crysis did achieve some moments of tension and excitement, it failed to reach the heights set by games like F.E.A.R. Despite the latter’s repetitive environments and so-so story, the intense and unrelentingly gameplay, aided by superior A.I. and beautiful visuals drove sales. Crysis raises the bar in visual fidelity while being average in gameplay and story. If your game requires a significant hardware upgrade then it better be really good at least two of the above, and Crysis is not.
Comparisons to Crytek’s previous effort may well have hindered sales also. Far Cry is a beautifully rendered game, with open non-linear exploration of its environment. It has reasonably tight gameplay and A.I., however the story is just plain awful with some of the worst voice acting on record. Gamers non-plused by Far Cry may well have skipped Crysis if only because they expected more of the same. In a market where your reputation precedes you, you are only as good as your last release.
In the end, Crytek were their own worst enemies in this case and unfortunately it appears to be a lesson unlearned.
Friday, February 15, 2008
To all the games I have demo'd before...
I am a big believer in game demos-When well executed they give a snapshot of the fundamentals of the game, including narrative, gameplay, graphics and sound design. When poorly executed or worse just bad examples of worse games its like being slapped in the face with a wet salmon.
Recent demos done right (ie. make me want to play the game) included Conan (360), Timeshift (360), Crysis (PC) PG4 (360) Forza 2 (360). Demos that done daddy wrong include Vampire Rain (360) (I mean, Splinter Cell VS Vampires how do you screw that up?) and strangely enough Burnout Paradise (360).
Having played the full versions of Conan and Timeshift I enjoyed the heck out of Conan. All the visceral action and gore that one could expect neatly wrapped in a God of War type gameplay. I have yet to finish the game but having played 3/4 through its loaded with gratuity of all kinds and tons of mindless fun. Timeshift? Not so much. The demo I played was 2nd demo created after the game underwent some fairly radical design changes upgrading it from the Xbox to the 360. The visual polish is there, but the relentlessly unimaginative and linear gameplay really undercuts the goodwill generated in the demo. The time powers are essentially point and click affairs for scripted moments, never allowing the player to really harness this power at will to any meaningful effect. I was only able to play 3 stages of Timeshift before giving up, which is a shame, because the game is very polished but simply never lives up to its potential.
Vampire Rain is the gaming equivalent of an Uwe Boll film, competent in that it has all the elements assembled to call it a game but really just a slice of your life you will never get back. Its almost criminal because the concept of the game is brilliant and exceptionally poorly executed.
Burnout Paradise was bittersweet as I will come out as the lone voice in the crowd and saw I hate the direction this once beloved series has taken. It has reduced itself to a clone of Need For Speed, barely redeemed but its unmatched intensity and sensation of raw speed. I even rented to full game just to see if my initial reactions were misguided but to no avail. Me no likey. Burnout Revenge can be my only succor.
Lately Crysis has been the only demo I have played that compelled me to buy the game, (after upgrading my system of course). Even with new(ish) hardware I was only able to play the game on one of the lowest resolutions with the visual setting facilitating between low and medium depending on what the game was throwing at me. I even, and I am ashamed to admit it, dug out a free upgrade install of Vista to dual boot so I could experience Direct 10 on this game. Of course, after watching a slideshow, I immediately bumped it back down to DX9 so it was playable. It was pretty for a short time at least.
I have skipped the demo idea for Devil May Cry 4 and rented the full game, so we shall see, Zur, we shall see......
Recent demos done right (ie. make me want to play the game) included Conan (360), Timeshift (360), Crysis (PC) PG4 (360) Forza 2 (360). Demos that done daddy wrong include Vampire Rain (360) (I mean, Splinter Cell VS Vampires how do you screw that up?) and strangely enough Burnout Paradise (360).
Having played the full versions of Conan and Timeshift I enjoyed the heck out of Conan. All the visceral action and gore that one could expect neatly wrapped in a God of War type gameplay. I have yet to finish the game but having played 3/4 through its loaded with gratuity of all kinds and tons of mindless fun. Timeshift? Not so much. The demo I played was 2nd demo created after the game underwent some fairly radical design changes upgrading it from the Xbox to the 360. The visual polish is there, but the relentlessly unimaginative and linear gameplay really undercuts the goodwill generated in the demo. The time powers are essentially point and click affairs for scripted moments, never allowing the player to really harness this power at will to any meaningful effect. I was only able to play 3 stages of Timeshift before giving up, which is a shame, because the game is very polished but simply never lives up to its potential.
Vampire Rain is the gaming equivalent of an Uwe Boll film, competent in that it has all the elements assembled to call it a game but really just a slice of your life you will never get back. Its almost criminal because the concept of the game is brilliant and exceptionally poorly executed.
Burnout Paradise was bittersweet as I will come out as the lone voice in the crowd and saw I hate the direction this once beloved series has taken. It has reduced itself to a clone of Need For Speed, barely redeemed but its unmatched intensity and sensation of raw speed. I even rented to full game just to see if my initial reactions were misguided but to no avail. Me no likey. Burnout Revenge can be my only succor.
Lately Crysis has been the only demo I have played that compelled me to buy the game, (after upgrading my system of course). Even with new(ish) hardware I was only able to play the game on one of the lowest resolutions with the visual setting facilitating between low and medium depending on what the game was throwing at me. I even, and I am ashamed to admit it, dug out a free upgrade install of Vista to dual boot so I could experience Direct 10 on this game. Of course, after watching a slideshow, I immediately bumped it back down to DX9 so it was playable. It was pretty for a short time at least.
I have skipped the demo idea for Devil May Cry 4 and rented the full game, so we shall see, Zur, we shall see......
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