Left 4 dead, Fallout 3 and Farcry 2

First things first, let me explain the sort of gamer I am to give you an idea why I review the way I do. I am primarily a FPS player with a short attention span, so for a game to keep my interested for any length of time it has to work hard. I am a big co-op fan and very rarely play online if it isn't (I did my death match days with Doom).

Left 4 Dead :

Valves new 4 player co-op title has just been released as a demo for the people who have pre-ordered it and I had some hands on with it last night. The first thing that surprised me with this game is that I started it, watched the intro movie and was called into the other room by my flatmate. On my return I found my wife playing and asking the usual "never played a FPS in my life" questions.
My jaw hit the floor, this is a women who has said on many occasions that video games don't interest her and when they do its Zoo Tycoon, Mah-jong and Zuma. It is a testament to the games playability that she was able to sit down and instantly get into the action with very little foreknowledge of the FPS dynamics. The zombies did a good job and kept her interested for the entirety of the demo, needless to say I quickly explained that the game is co-op and I should get her a steam account so we can team up, we'll see how that goes :)

So after she finished it was my turn, my first impression was that its the same old steam engine with some updated textures and a bit more polish, i'm not saying that's a bad thing at all, just its a gear change from some of the latest engines we have started to see in the gaming world.

The world is well realised and moody, the film aspect comes through well with the weather effects and atmosphere. The zombies are great, they have the best physical movement models ive seen yet with very fast running that emphasises the urgent uncontrollable need to feed at all costs. They jump over obstacles, climb fences and jump off buildings, usually in great numbers and its literally like being hit with a wall of chewy death.
It will take a little re-adjustment to get used to not shooting your team-mates while franticly dispatching as many zombies as possible before your clip runs out and this brings me to the weapons. The basic weapon is the pistol, usually 2 after you find one lying around and the pistol ammo never runs out. The aiming is pretty loose, and I felt some of the weapons were missing some of the punch associated with the Counter Strike Source weapons that gave a real sense of satisfaction when fired, but once again that disappears into the malaise of dead flesh.

The foot soldier zombies are easy to dispatch as they rely on numbers to overwhelm you, while the next level zombies (Boomer, Hunter and Smoker) all have their special attacks and require a little more effort. The head explodie, arm/leg shooty and general dismemberment is very satisfying, it really does feel like a movie.
The team dynamic from the first aid to the needing to be rescued when you are pinned to the ground is also very refreshing as it makes the co-op play more urgent.

This game has an awesome future and I fully expect to equal, if not surpass Counter Strike as the game to play for LAN party's etc and as we have come to expect from Valve support the day after releasing the demo a patch update has already hit tidying up a few minor hiccups and making the game even more submersive. I really recommend you try the demo on November 11 if you haven't pre-ordered it already.

8/10

Fallout 3 :

I have never played any of the Fallout franchise before and I have read a number of reviews that make direct comparisons and find this game not quite up to its predecessors. So from a completely non-biased stand point here's is my opinion after only 3 hours of game play, I will update as I get further through the game to see if they change :P

Bethesda have used the Gamebryo engine which they used for Oblivion and the first time I saw the outside world it was a hay that's quite pretty, kinda shiny, um sort of flat feeling like all the air has been sucked out and your playing in a vacuum. For some reason when I think back to the Fallout 3 world I get a blue tinged edge which I suppose makes a change to the muddy brown that "HD" games seem to think is the "real" world.

I watched a game play trailer a couple of weeks ago that brought home the game dynamic that Fallout is known for in the moral choices you are able to make in the game. In the first trailer you visit the town of megaton and pal around with the locals before accepting a mission and heading out into the wastelands. Just so happens the mission is to strap a detonator to the unexploded nuclear bomb at the heart of megaton and wipe out all the generally friendly town folk. I was taken aback by this as the idea of wantonly wiping out a town for monetary benefit with no apparent consequences (other then negatively affecting you karma rating, which I don't know what actual impact that has yet. )

After playing for 3 hours tho and taking some of the frankly dumb "go here and nearly deliberately die then come back" missions coupled with some of the townsfolk attitudes, you get the feeling the game is deliberately engineering you to want to take out the dump.

The decision by Bethesda to not allow the killing of children, while allowing the player to make some truly inhuman choices in the game has not gone over well in the gaming community and I have to agree. If you are going to build a game around constantly testing the characters moral standpoint, why denigrate that experience by having one thing you can not do in the game world due to external pressures.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see a child murder simulator game unleashed on this already fucked up planet. I intend to play this game first as I would approach real life with a sense of moral worth and value of human life.
Then I'm going to play it again as a complete psycho that will only ever exist in this virtual space, which I feel is the point of creating adult entertainment, allowing the well formed adult mind to stray outside its normal bounds and restrictions that are there for very good reason and do so in a safe, controlled way.

So enough about that, unfortunately I really do not enjoy RPG games and especially loath turn based RPG's, which is why I find those elements in this game off putting. Using the pip boy to asset manage is fine but having to use it to switch weapons constantly really throws the flow off for me and the VATS system, while cool to watch slow motion splattery, completely ruins the immersion for me as well. The constant loading blips when moving from outside to inside locations blow it for me to as does the lack of feet or any other body part, other then your hands when in first person mode and the 3rd person mode or over the shoulder camera that sits off to the right of the character just serves to annoy and feels rather unfinished.

So to finish off I think this game is huge with the right group of gamers for a reason, but that is not my group. I would also go out on a limb and say that it's game play is more console friendly then PC.

5/10

FarCry 2 :

This is a game that I think has done the most for pushing the FPS genre to the next level, there have been many reviews that claim it will ruin you for other FPS games and to a degree they are correct. That's not to say the game doesn't have its weak points, which is what i'll start with before I start the love fest.

The world has lots of items kicking around ala half life 2 but unlike that seminal game you cant interact with them unless you need to , like grabbing a bottle of water when you need health etc. This means the goof off factor is lessened i.e no throwing random junk in the air for target practice or building a hut out of car doors, crates and milk bottles in the middle of a road.

The enemy regenerating very rapidly once you move on from an area has also been getting a lot of press and I think they should enable a game setting that allows you to control it to your own liking, this will have very little affect on the game play / story line and make it that much more enjoyable. The missions get a bit samey as well, but that is forgotten as you get into the world as explained later on.

Now onto the good stuff, the game world is awe inspiring, not photo realistic like Crysis but very close. The foliage moves out of the way as you walk through it and I must admit I have spent some time shooting the palm fronds and branches off tree's because I can.

The weather / day night cycle is very well realised and I have actually called my flatmate over to point out the beauty of the HDR sunrise and the way the sunlight streams past you and the shadows created by holding the gun in front of your face. The morning's especially make me conjure up the crispness of the air and feeling of a real new day dawning with lots of explody potential like no other game. The little things like the light causing your in-game retinas to be open when you walk out of a dark hut and getting that temporary flare of sunlight that almost hurts when you walk outside to the occasional rainy night that makes you feel cold as you shelter in a tin shed is brilliant.

The game uses the potential for carnage very well and it becomes one of the main enjoyment factors, from causing a large chain reaction explosion to popping out of the jungle in time to sniper a Jeep that's just driven past, the potential for fun really is something that you start looking out for. The ability to store weapons in crates that are available in the safe houses is a good touch, as is the armoury were you always have a fresh weapon ready, once you have bought them from the gun shop once. This is important as the game has a wear system that renders the weapons inoperable after too much use.

The game world is present in its entirety, so there are no load waits between areas and the constant point of view of the character while moving around in the vehicle and doing first aid on yourself really makes a big difference to the submersion factor.

All in all this is a very complete game world that you can literally just goof around in doing what you want, the coming updates that is adding carnivores and further animals will add another dimension again, big game hunting anyone ?

I have deliberately stayed away from talking about the multi player aspect as I feel they have really let themselves down by not enabling co-op play, it would be game of the year hands down being able to take on an enemy base with a friend and the tacked on usual capture the flag , team deathmatch modes feel exactly that, tacky. In an interview I read the developer rep said that having such a large game world with 2 players was an impossibility, I say restrict the players to a 2 kilometre radius from each other and that will still be an incredibly fun experience.

8/10