Continuing to Cry about Crysis

LIKE A BOSS

Just the other day i was looking at Kotaku.com.au and a post came up about a guy who decided to take the highest resolution he could for Crysis 3 and take pretty photos, which was difficult in that he had to change the resolution mid-game to take his photo, because it runs at 2 frames per second while it's at 8k ratio.

And they were stunning photos of the most picturesque scenes, like the Dam.  The Dam is one of the most beautiful levels and it's pretty fun to boot, and the majority of those said photos are from that very level.

But it still makes me cry.  The game still feels a little wasted for opportunity, simply because they have New York in a Dome and they didn't maximise it.  Yes there were big levels, but that's not enough.  Sure you may have been running through th dry banks of Manhattan to support your allies, or driving across desert ruins of suburbs, but that's just not the same.

I remembered a game called Halo: ODST.  It was a spin off from the normal series, much like Halo: Reach, but instead of a Spartan you're an ODST soldier.  The hardcore maniacs of Soldiers.  They die into the fight with piss and vinegar in their veins.

The main story follows the player as he wanders around the open streets and buildings of the city of Mombasaa encountering different events and campaign stories, and fighting groups of enemies while playing a stealth game.

It's fun and while it still has some sections to improve it still executed a good idea.  An idea that Crysis could have executed too if they weren't simply in it for the dough and Multiplayer.

Dear Xbox Avatar

I have been good to you. Made you look any range of dapper, to cool, to just plain nerdy. However I have spent too much money on you. Too much for a pretty little guy who just doesn't do much except represent me in the Xbox-verse, with features that aren't appreciated enough.

Quite frankly, it's a tad disappointing. Knowing that you're wearing a Sonic the Hedgehog hoodie and discovering that Sonic once came in a cartridge almost as big as a DS. Or wearing an Orc mask and a Warcraft Horde shirt while riding a Dire Wolf and throwing a Spear. Or wearing a Nanosuit and shooting across cover with an SMG and pistol. Or wearing your own incorporation of your ex-military corporations uniform, and driving around in a Bandit Truck.

I've spent far too much to have these features, all for no purpose but my own entertainment.The one outfit Im happy to have gotten, and without having to pay, was the Doomguy suit. And I received that by finishing a chapter in Doom II. And it was a Fkn hard chapter too. When faced with a horde (yes, a horde) of Imps you tend to freak out. And then finish shitting your pants when you see the Cyberdemon turn the corner.That's what I call an outfit to be proud of. It means something. You wear it with the pride of a soldier wearing a medal.

Cos frankly, Doom is a game that shows it's age, but nobody gives a Fuck. It's still relevant. I still have a hard time trying to sleep when i hear that patient Imp noise, something akin to a hungry truffle pig.

But having something to wear to show that I overcame those Imps by spamming my BFG, and dodging the Cyberdemon Rockets while making it catch my own?  It gives me a gleam in my heart.

So why don't games do that more? If you complete a game that offers an Xbox Avatar costume for you to purchase in the marketplace, why not reward the player with it?  Finish Xcom: Enemy Unknown on Easy, you get Xcom basic armour and a Pistol, Normal you also get Carapace Armour and a Laser Rifle, Hard you also get Titan Armour and a Heavy Plasma Cannon, and Impossible you get Psi Armour with an Animation of them casting Psionic Rift.  Heck, eliminate Exalt and you receive their operative outfit and weapon.

That's another thing.  I want to use my Avatar in game.  I've seen a handful of games that do use them, such as World for Keflings where you're a Giant and order your diminuitive minions around and build a Medieval Town for them to reside and work in, but could I find something a bit more... standard?  No.  I couldn't join in an MMO of Xbox Avatars to find myself shooting my way through a series of waves of Xbox Exclusive All star bad guys, could I.

No, he just sits there with little potential taken up by third party developers.  Microsoft couldn't just make an MMO using these Avatars, something they automatically subscribe to with their Xbox Live Subscription, could they.  Where a group of friends in contact with each other, with nothing to do on a Saturday night because they're bored with Halo or Borderlands, but still want to put in the effort of playing a game together.  No.  Those poor sods will have to make do with what they've got.

One day though.  One day.  Xbox All-Stars MMO, using your very own Avatar.  Recreate extreme demo scenes in games like Gears of War or Fable or whatever racing game they have an exclusive on.  Things like that.  Maybe not those specifically, but you get the idea.
It's an idea though, and that may be all it'll ever be.  But damnit, I want to see my Orc mask get some face time in a game, not just when I flick between screens on the dashboard.

Deus Ex Halo 3 vs Predator

Crysis 3 came out yesterday, and I've already completed it.  Not to say that's a bad thing, it's to say that I haven't got much of a life.

I had the Xbox loaded up out in the loungeroom to enjoy the beautiful Vista's of the game.  That was a bad idea, because I'm a little jaded since those few times I went to the Imax to watch awesome movies from the third row on the idea that "if your vision is not filled to more than 120 degrees, you're not experiencing the full movie."

So watching the 48" LCD TV from about 2-3 metres away doesn't give that effect.  My 21" LCD monitor however from about 2 feet away makes all the difference.  If only I could get it through the DVI with Sound, then I'd be cooking with Lard.

But I threw myself into the game, and for a little indulgence I started with the Tutorial and my first thought was "I'm in the new Tron."  That wasn't really the case, but it was a pretty cool simulation run, showing all the basics of what you can and can't do.

Then the game really began, showing the cinematic of a small group of insurgents sneaking onto a dock and releasing Prophet, the main character and your role in Crysis 3.  You begin running between containers, sneaking and waiting for someone to come around a corner and start shooting at you, but they've well prepared you for that with your old buddy, Psycho, who leads you to your first bit of retraining, where you sneak around and practice how far you can spin someone's head around.

Around this time, particularly after walking through a couple of vents, my thought was "I'm playing Deus Ex."  I had a pistol with a Laser Sight and a Silencer, I'm sneaking around behind people and either Stealth Killing them or popping them in the head.  It felt a LOT like Deus Ex. The only difference is that hugging walls isn't the same and you don't get a small cinematic as you execute them.  And there's definitely no non-lethal option.

Moving on, you move on to you next part of training: Archery.

The Predator Bow is specifically designed for your Steath Hunters, because you get limited ammo including specialised ammo such as the Electro Arrow, the Super-Thermite Arrow, and the Airburst Fragmentation Arrow, all on top of your standard Carbon Impact Arrow.  They're all limited, 3 each of the specialised and 9 of the Impact arrows, but you can reclaim your Impact arrows from dead corpses and walls you've hit.

Sidenote: I was playing for a bit the other day, and I was using as many of the Specialised Arrows as possible.  Got a really good spot with five or six guys gathered together.  Got one guy in the arm with a Super Thermite arrow, and while it was counting down all you could hear was "OHGODGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITO-" Boom.  Had to pause the game to laugh.

Then you get three choices of Draw Weights, the Light Draw which is quick but won't guarantee a kill (Though I never had a problem with it against Cell goons), your mid range, and your Heavy Draw, which can pin people to walls.  You can even get an Achievement for retrieving your arrow 10 times from a pinned goon.

Eventually after going through a few waves of enemies, and a helicoptor, you reach inside the Dome of New York 2.0, the mainstay location of many various end of the world scenarios.  In this edition, the entire city of New York has turned into a Biodome, where the ruins of homes and businesses are overgrown and rusted away from time.  Water flows, creatures prace, and Cell maintains a strong guard around their main complexes.

And these levels are fucking GORGEOUS.  And when I was running through the fields of high grass, it gave me a throwback to when I was a kid wandering through empty overgrown lots and fields, all abandoned and unkempt.  It was great.

Then I was thrown back into the situation where I had to avoid the Line of Sight of a defence tower that had the gall to point me out and make sure I had my dose of High Velocity Rockets for the day.  That or having to deal with Ceph Stalkers, who LOVE the tall grass and love running around before coming up to you and giving you a loving hug from a fan of Edward Scissorhands.

Eventually Psycho and Prophet caught up with the Rebel HQ, only to start layering on the subject of being Inhuman due to Technology, because Prophet has gone from being dead due to shooting himself in the head in the previous game, to being the proud protagonist of this current game.  But the subject begins to layer on like a vegemite enthusiest, and keeps going throughout the game.

Then we lead into the Demonstration level of the game.  Probably the prettiest and most comprehensive level of the whole game.  It's a Dam, set right in the middle of the city, and it's powering the complex down the road that is providing a large section of the world with Power, and giving Cell their dominance against the world, because they first provided it for Free, eliminating competition, and then start jacking up the prices to con people into becoming their slaves by making it too expensive for them.

And this level is probably the most gorgeous level in the game.  It's large, it makes you think about where you're going and what you're doing.  It almost seems a shame to see it get destroyed.  Because that's what protagonists do, they destroy shit.

The rest of the game has it's highs and it's lows.  While it's fun to be like Predator, what with going invisible and turning on Nanovision (very similar to thermal imaging) and trying my best to kill them without anybody picking up on it, it does get a tad tedious.  Especially when the levels begin to lose a bit of imagination which I found in the last few levels.  Sure, it may be considered a well designed level, what with well placed cover for both you and your opponents, but if I wanted to go through a paintball arena, I can go to Skirmish out at Samford.

On top of that, the story was so obvious that the directions it was going could be spotted by a teenager.  I could hear the plot twists straining against the potential of something actually awesome.  Instead, the game felt like it lost traction, dropping the scenic vista's that it began with to focus on scenarios that weren't difficult and were designed to layer on more of this morality of digitizing the human condition, then leading on to an inevitable boss fight that lacked threat, let alone imagination.

But that's what you get when you walk into a new game expecting something different.  Instead I got Deus Ex crossed with Halo, set in abandoned and unkempt train stations.  Cos, lets face it, I'll probably play those levels again.  I've already finished it twice now just to make sure.  And my statement still stands.

Expanding Horizons

I spent just last Saturday playing Talisman with Scott and Dick. Normally it would have been a session of D&D, the last for the story arc until Aaron figured out what he wants to go with the main Arc, however Aaron didn't even turn up.

But sitting down for Talisman also included some excitment, as we had one of the expansions available, "The Highlands" which adds an additional corner piece to the game. Scott and I will be getting more and more expansions as we go, because the game builds that way, with regular fresh new experiences.

Today I looked up Crysis 3, a game coming out in the future, probably next year, and something Occurred to me: They wasted an opportunity with Crysis 2.

I liked Crysis 2, it was a fun game that only faulted when you got quick Energy Regeneration and Extended Stealth. The combat was exciting and can swing in either way, though I do admit it was quite fun sneaking around everyone and occasionally dropping mines onto the backs of Ceph Devastators.

Aside from the single player, there is the Multiplayer which offers a good set of features for someone who is into that sort of thing, along with DLC's to support it, providing extra features and new maps.

Sadly, there aren't any DLC's for the Single Player, and I find that to be a waste.

Crysis 2 has a lot going for it. It has a good story, it's graphically wonderful (Even on the PS3 version, plug that sucker into 3D Telly and it gets pretty fkn awesome), and it plays really well. But there isn't just one story to follow. Even in Crysis 1 there were two stories, following Nomad and everyones favourite englishman, Psycho.

The story of Crysis 2 follows Alcatraz who takes over Prophet's mission, to a successful point too. Now while that story may be wrapped up rather well, surely there is more to the entire thing? Who is left of the Squad? What of Nomad and Psycho? Had they fought similar battles in different places? What about the lead up to Prophet today? What was he doing and how did he get a Nanosuit 2?

Now as someone who isn't a developer I can only imagine how much it would be worth putting in effort into making and providing expansions, but shouldn't it be one of those things thought of in advance? I hope they have with Crysis 3.

That and 4 Player Cooperative. That'd make it an Xbox sale for me.

Cheapening the Re-experience

So when playing games, you want to keep it entertaining. And entertainment comes in difficulty, challenges, awkward positions. When given options to play slightly, or significantly, differently, you don't want to be able to run around like a God, practically invulnerable to any challenges that lay ahead. That's what the Easy Difficulty is for.

While playing Crysis 2, I found things a little... too easy.

With your Nanosuit, you can activate modules which change or improve upon your style of play. There's features for all three modes, Armour, Infiltration and Power, and your Nano Visor. And you buy them as you collect nano-catalyst from killing aliens called Ceph (Short for Cephalopod – AKA: Squids).

The Modules are varied and the best ones are really expensive, and require a couple of runs through to collect enough catalyst, but the question is: Can an expensive item be worth more than you pay for it?

One of the expensive modules is Enhanced Stealth, which lowers energy consumption rate.

I ran through the game using stealth as much as possible. I mastered the art of shifting between cover under the guise of stealth without being noticed. I was slowly becoming Stealth Kill incarnate. I could shoot any target with a sniper rifle without leaving a trace of my presence. Infiltration is for the weak.

And then I collected enough nano-catalyst to buy the Enhanced Stealth module. Now while it doesn't give abilities like silent footfalls or revealing your enemies path, it simply extends the period of time you're in Infiltration mode. So instead of jumping between cover, I can move across the map if I don't have to jump or fall, before I have to consider hiding.

Fair enough, I can choose not use the module and just stick with what I have been using, but should this option be in the game? So much time spent getting exhilarated at the chance of getting spotted getting tossed away just because you “worked hard for it”.

It feels a bit of a rip having too an calming experience going through the same game again.

New York, New York

Over the course of about 6 days of sporadic play I finished Crysis 2. It seemed to go on forever, which I was somewhat excited about but aggravated too, because it would come to a point where your character would finally get evacuated out of New York City, but you'd have to stay and finish a job since you're the only one who has got the Utilities to do the job, because of your nanosuit.

Your Nanosuit is a utilitarian masterpiece with only one drawback of a low power source, which is regenerative when nothing is draining it. Otherwise, you can plan out your tactics before you run through an enemy camp, including tagging your enemies so that you know if someone is going to sneak up on you, or track where they are if you want to sneak up on them, or even get the pounce on them when you're armoured up and holding a Heavy Machine Gun which you've torn off its mount.

Personally, the majority of the game was spent Stealthed between various forms of cover, and attempting stealth kills on the majority of enemies, exceptions being the Ceph Heavies and areas I simply couldn't pass without having to kill someone. To which I used a Silenced Sniper Rifle and cracked a few headshots for mostly good results.

But this made the game tedious. While I wanted to just waltz into the fray with a light machine gun, or an assault rifle, or even the Microwave Gun you can pick up, I was tempted to lean towards sneaking up behind people and snapping their necks. There were moments where I had to run about in armour mode, but that was pretty much refined to taking out the Ceph heavies and shooting them with a Light or Heavy machine gun until they exploded.

Or the microwave gun, where they popped inside their armour. Jeez it's funny watching them do that, because the easiest way to describe the Ceph are that they're semi-transparent balloons with tentacles filled with alien bits and bobs, and armour pieces stuck over the top. It's pretty gross, but popping those suckers was just like the feeling of popping pimples in my teenhood.

Now the story has a lot of revolutions around a character called Prophet, who was pretty much a sceptical character in the first Crysis, and for good reason which is explained more and more in Crysis 2. Though in Crysis 2 you don't get to see any of the previous characters except for Prophet. Nomad and Psycho make no significant appearance which is disappointing since they were two of the main characters of C1. I hope an expansion will tell tale of their adventures, but since this is a new game I'll just wait a few months for that to happen.

In the mean time, I'll go through on a harder difficulty and see how much difference it makes to the gameplay.

"I see you've got some painting to do"

I got a gaming fix!
Last week, The Richard purchased a game to help his own gaming fix, so at a discounted price he purchased Crysis and Crysis Warhead.
He didn't like them. So he passed them on to me.
I gave them a crack and BAM! Straight into it.
So over the past week, I've played through both games.
They're good. Crysis has a problem.
At one stage, the games enemies change to Aliens. Unfortunately, they're fairly easy. Circle strafing with a Gauss rifle easily dispatches them all.
Mind you, Crysis Warhead fixes the AI for them by giving better accuracy and maybe a little more maneuvesability.
But they're more difficult.
Crysis Warhead was probably my more prefered version. Not because it was more difficult, but because of the main character: Psycho, a british soldier. And he makes a very big point about his nationality by declaring all North Koreans that he interacts with a Muppet. For those who don't know, it means Idiot.
But these games are completed now. And, as habit, I have little desire to play them again. But it was a good hit.
Yesterday, I had a good time with a couple of mates, Kel and Greg. We were getting in some practice for the Warmachine/Hordes tournament coming in september.
Why practice?
There's a time limit on our games. Seven minutes to decide tactics, move figures and roll dice.
Its surprisingly difficult.
The only prerequisite is that your army is supposed to be fully painted.
I haven't painted a thing.
I have 8 weeks to do them in.
I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Edit: Also, I have to put half of them together still.