Monday 16 May 2011

L.A. Noire - work of art, not a video game.


With the release of L.A. Noire imminent all I see on every social media site is the countless hype and praise for the next instalment in Rockstar’s repertoire. I personally, have not fallen in love with the aforementioned--unlike literally everyone else out there. I would like to pose a video-game hypothesis if I may:

"L.A. Noire is a technical masterpiece--a work of art, but not a great video game."

I will of course purchase L.A. Noire, but not because I'm so absorbed by the magic spell that Rockstar seems to have everyone mesmerised with, rather I'm curious to see if my hypothesis will hold true in my own mind first, and then whether people will slowly join my ranks and agree with me.

Let me first go through why I am personally not looking forward to L.A. Noire:

  • The idea of playing the most elaborate point-and-click adventure does not appeal to me. From what we know, it is apparent that L.A. Noire's crime-scene investigating is extensive, thorough, long-winded and boring. The idea of rummaging for a cigarette butt in a side street is not my idea of an exciting video game. 
  • I am not looking forward to the stereotypical GTA-style driving. They say it has been improved since GTAIV--but it's not difficult to improve on absolute god-awful. 
  • I am not in the least bit excited about the GTA-style gunfights. It doesn’t matter how many times they do it, Rockstar’s sandbox games do not ever have enjoyable third-person shooting mechanics. 
  • A game where I quote from the developers "the diary will be your most important tool," does not scream excitement to me. The constant need to refer to a diary and the games apparent pacing problems I know will frustrate me beyond any measure. 

I feel that those of you who have played Heavy Rain will be able to sympathise with me. I really enjoyed HR and argued that it too was a piece of technical brilliance and a work of art. But it was very hard in my mind to call it a video game. My feelings are mirrored here with the release of L.A. Noire I struggle to justify defining it as a video game. There is absolutely no denying that what Rockstar have accomplished is brilliant, the incredible facial-construction, brilliant narrative and absorbing story, all blend together to make a fascinating experience--but that's exactly what it is, an interactive experience, not a video game. I feel the true definition of a video game has been lost with the creation of titles such as L.A. Noire.

I will return to this topic once I run through L.A. Noire but I have a strong feeling that my opinion won't change. 

I'd love to hear from you guys, add me on Twitter @ss4Igor.

Edit//
After doing my usual roam around Twitter and other social media sites, I'm beginning to find some great tweets about LA Noire.

Adrian Chmielarz (Director of Bulletstorm)
 

Friday 13 May 2011

Review - Team Fortress 2 beta: code-name BRINK

Brink runs out of cover, leaps over obstacles and guns down a plethora of generic shooters to claim a place alongside some of the unique and different first-person experiences. While certainly not comparable to Call of Duty or Battlefield--Brink's clever mix of first-person action and freestyle running helps create an enjoyable arcade-like shooter reminiscent of Team Fortress 2--albeit not to the same standard. Minimal content, some unsavoury visual problems and significant lag makes Brink's impact rather anticlimactic, although the time you will spend with Brink is downright entertaining.

A storyline is set in place to help structure what is predominantly an online experience. The last remnants of society fight over a once-utopian city called The Ark, and it is your decision whether you oppress the resistance or fight for freedom. This dramatic choice unfortunately does little to change your time with Brink other than the visual aesthetics of your characters.

The majority of your time will of course be spent on the battlefield--where Brink simultaneously shines and falls short. Brink is a team-based FPS where the goal is to find and complete certain objectives on the map. Teams are required to disarm bombs, hold positions, eliminate enemy defences, and a variety of other tactical objectives in eight available locations. An extensive tutorial system helps bring in gamers of every level, intuitive customisation options keep aesthetics fresh and a three-tier class system helps keep combat versatile.

Brink’s character customisation is certainly worth boasting about--the two different factions allow plenty of variation in costume--with masks, tattoos and armours of every shape and size at your eventual disposal as you progress. Once you spend some time with Brink you will have the opportunity to change your characters body type--choosing from light, medium and heavy. The light characters move with precision and speed across the battlefield, spraying enemies with bullets from all angles, but at a price of minimal health. The heavy tank unit traverses the battlefield at a slow pace, but with powerful weapons and a meaty health bar to match. The neutral medium body type encompasses a little from both counterparts, simply not to the same extent. 

The body configuration is not the only thing that serves to change your characters’ in-match abilities. Reminiscent of Team Fortress 2, unique class types, ranging from medics, engineers, standard grunt infantry and others--all have their own special skills to add to the war-effort. This alongside Brink’s unique freestyle running makes combat for the most part, an enjoyable experience. Movement is an essential tactic in Brink--picture Mirror’s Edge but with guns as you run and leap across obstacles while gunning down enemies from every direction. This sense of speed has been accomplished before and frankly, to a better degree in Mirror’s Edge. There are moments in Brink when the fluidity breaks down and you find yourself stuck behind obstacles that you should be able to traverse with no issue, but when it does go right it is a satisfying game mechanic.

It is safe to say that Brink is at its best when flooded with human players. The in-game objective wheel helps to keep every player in the loop of the current objective, who is doing what and where the action is taking place. With only eight maps available, you have to wonder how long it will take before players will get bored of playing on them. The majority of the maps are quite well thought out, with most having multiple entry points to key areas, helping to keep combat exciting and varied. The absolute last thing you want however, is to play with Brink’s AI. The horribly inconsistent robots literally kill the experience, but with relatively consistent lag problems online, it begs the question of what is the greater evil, lag or AI?

When things go well for Brink, they really do go well. Unfortunately, Brink takes so many opportunities to fall flat on its face, that it is very hard to recommend it to a gamer looking for a consistent experience. Brink’s well thought out upgrade and class systems could keep you coming back, if you can handle some occasional lag issues, inconsistent in-game physics and only eight playable maps alongside four challenge modes. This is a prime example of developers simply not polishing out the edges of a game that could have been something special. For the mean time I recommend dusting off a copy of Team Fortress 2--a game Brink should have paid much closer attention to.

7.0 Gameplay – Has some excellent moments, filled with frustrating inconsistencies.
7.0 Graphics – A very cool artistic design especially in cut-scenes, but in-game suffers from awkward and bland colouring.
5.0 Replay – You’d think there would be lots of replay value, but fully maxing out a character is quite easy, the game becomes repetitive and a short supply of maps makes this easy to forget.
5.0 Tech – Lag issues online, inconsistent in-game physics but controls and audio are both good.

Overall – 6.0

Sunday 8 May 2011

Portal Kombat = best dual-month release of all time?

Last month saw the release of Mortal Kombat and Portal 2--both highly anticipated titles for two very distinct and different fan bases. The Mortal Kombat series certainly needed a fresh start after the massive let-down that was Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Portal 2 on the other hand, was under a lot of pressure from a cult-like fan-base who eagerly awaited an experience that would hopefully best the gem that was the original.

Both games delivered in abundance--setting new standards for both franchises and for the most part, keeping everyone happy (except some of you Portal fans, stop being so critical!). Owning both games on PS3 (damn you Playstation Network), even though I'm yet to get the online content out of them, I can already see that these two titles are fantastic and made April a great month for gaming.

It got me thinking however, what other AAA titles came out paired together and were these pairs better than Portal Kombat? Purchasing games certainly isn't cheap, so to splash out on two games in one month would require some very impressive titles to hit the shelves. So I decided to look back a few years and check out if there were any paired releases in the same month that can top the extreme gaming plethora that is Portal Kombat.

Casting our eyes back to 2008, April was the release month for Grand Theft Auto IV. Acknowledged now as one of the biggest video game let-downs, it still didn't stop Rockstar selling over 20 million copes as of March 2011. GTAIV however, came out in the same month as another massive hit--as rivals Nintendo released Mario Kart Wii, which is the fourth biggest selling game on the console, amassing an impressive 27 million copies as of 2011.

June was another massive month in 2008--the release of what became almost every critics game of the year, Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots hit stores worldwide. It only took the game 1 year to sell over 5 million copies, an impressive feat. If killing people in cold-blooded murder was a little bit more your style, then June also saw the release of the highly anticipated sequel to Ninja Gaiden. Receiving an average score of 80% and acknowledgment of being one of the most bloody-satisfying slashers of this generation, Ninja Gaiden 2 was a great release for Xbox 360 to try and tone down MGS4's sales.

2008 certainly ended with a bang as November saw the release of both Gears of War 2 and Valve's Left 4 Dead. Honorable mention goes to a third game here--Resistance 2, but I just can't help but feel that the former two were wanted so much more than Sony's exclusive first-person alien shooter. Gears of War 2 sold over 2 million copies in its first weekend on sale, while Left 4 Dead had one of the biggest pre-order lists of any Steam game ever.

2009 wasn't a bad year for games by any stretch of the imagination. Capcom's refurbished Street Fighter IV series hit the shelves in February and to this day has had numerous revisions, including the upcoming Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition. Sony also started 2009 strong with the highly anticipated release of Killzone 2--setting new standards for first-person shooters both graphically and in the gameplay department, Killzone 2 solidified its position as one of Sony's most profitable exclusive franchises by becoming the fourth fastest selling Sony published title, ever.

We all know that November is the month for video games--well 2009 had a mass of games flood onto the market including Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, New Super Mario Bros, Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassins Creed 2. All four games set individual milestones and most importantly, were roaring favourites across all available platforms.

In 2010 no one would have guessed that the Wild-West would be a perfect destination for one of the best open-ended adventure games we'd ever have the pleasure of playing. Red Dead Redemption was one of 2010's biggest surprises, winning numerous awards with games journalists and achieving an average review of 95% from both Metacritic and GameRankings, making it one of the higest rated video games of all time on the 360 and PS3. What game could have possibly had the sheer audacity to come out in the same month? Our Italian plumber for on his Yoshi and came out guns-blazing with Super Mario Galaxy 2. The aforementioned topped Red Dead Redemption and actually received an average score of 97% from Metacritic and GameRankings--Rockstar must have been so angry. Nevertheless, both games went on to sell millions worldwide and are yet to be really shrugged off the top spots on both platforms.

So April 2011 brought us Portal Kombat, two games that together have brought hours of gaming to millions of gamers out there. But as a duo can they compete against some of the incredible releases of recent memory?

It would be great to hear from you guys, hit me up on twitter @ss4Igor

Friday 6 May 2011

GameSpot UK Internship Recap

Hello everyone! In a world where everyone wants to be heard it's certainly tough to raise your voice above the rest--fortunately I bellow so loud you'll probably hear me all the way from your PC monitor.

My name is Igor Kharin, 21 years old, about to graduate from the University of Cardiff with a degree in BA English Language & Communication. I've been writing since I can remember for various sites about various topics--video games, sports and music included. A vast array of my work can be found here at http://uk.webuy.com/blog/. Computer Exchange has been a great resource for allowing me to review video game content over the years and I hope to continue working for them in the forseeable future.

Anyway, moving on to the main topic of the blog--I was fortunate enough to earn an internship at CBS Interactive, more specifically for GameSpot UK and my first blog will be a recap of everything I learned and accomplished with the team. At this point I'd like to extend my gratitude to everyone at CBS and GameSpot UK once again for welcoming me to the team and helping me progress throughout my time there.

The internship lasted 4 weeks, but due to the ridiculous amount of bank holidays and the royal wedding, it was only 15 working days. Regardless, those days were incredibly productive, mutually of course.

The most important thing I learned was the importance of media journalism--gone are the days of the paper and pad journo and enter the world of voice-overs, videos and lots of other digitally inspired media. This is an incredibly exciting prospect, in a world where talk, talk and more talk runs the show, I feel like I can thrive. I learned that I'm certainly no tech-wizard, but I'd love to give it a go one day. Nevertheless, the contemporary media journalism world is where I belong.

Here is a list of the work published by myself during my time there;


Transformers was by far my most successful piece at GameSpot so it gets first mention. The article saw front page status on the US (30 million unique monthly users), AU (1.3 million) and UK (4.6 million) sites, paving the way for lots of user discussion. I was shocked at how the article took off but very proud that I was part of something so big.


This article gave me the opportunity to interview TIGA CEO Dr. Richard Wilson on his views about the Government's policies towards Game Tax Relief--incredibly interesting stuff.


A news editor role has always been very appealing to me, so working on pieces such as this will hopefully give me experience with the style of writing required to bring news to an audience.


With the expo itself coming at the end of the month, the buzz can certainly be felt by many in the video game community. As a result, this also saw front page status on the UK page.


This preview gave me the opportunity to work with audio kit and record a voice over from the script I wrote. An excellent introduction into contemporary media journalism.

The internship was the best 4-week experience of my life. It solidified my intention of working in the media journalism industry--and if I am fortunate enough to choose, the video game industry specifically.

However, now that this is history, it is time to move on. After my exams finish in 2 weeks time I will put significant time into the industry as I search for work. Stay tuned in to my blog where you will find regular opinions about the current climate of the video game industry, reviews and news. I like to think that everyone has something they can contribute to the plethora of opinions out there, but you will find enthusiastic, elaborate and I hope, interesting views here.

Thanks for reading and speak to you soon. Follow me on twitter @ss4Igor