Company of Heroes

Company of Heroes is a RTS based in WW2. Taking control of Able company, you are able to command squads of soliders during major battles in WW2. From D-Day on Normandy to the end of the war, this title manages to do what many RTS games have tried and failed. I view this game as a worthy re-visioning of Close Combat, one of the best WW2 themed RTS games ever made.

Graphics:

This game is fucking beautiful, if your rig can manage it. I run a GeForce 7600 with 1gig of ram and I get hic-ups in the frame rate every few minutes for about 5-10 seconds. This happens during in-game video and during game play, though it may be something else going on in my system. With all the up-dates, the slow downs have decreased in length and severity. Point is, the game kicks ass. With the newest patch in effect, the game is able to take advantage of DX 10, which I can not use but the screens look beautiful. Hands down, this is one of the best lookin RTS games on the market. Explosions, soliders, buildings, tanks and water are kick ass.

Gameplay:

The games missions give you a variety of starting conditions. From having a base of operations and the ability to expand your base, to limited amounts of soliders at your control. Despite the various starting conditions, the missions are fairly cut-and-paste. Defeat the germans, secure resource locations and dont lose all your men. While there are various secondary missions that can be done during the game, you are awarded metals for finishing these side missions but they are not core to the game, nor do they seem to unlock anything extra.

You do get a variety of troops during the missions though. Riflemen are your basic grunts, Airborn are slightly better armed and trained and Army Rangers are the cream of the crop. You also get a decent choice of tanks and other vehicles that are able to be produced and they are devestating against infantry. they are not, though, invulnerable. While the German AI does not seem to try all that hard to take out your armor, your troops are easily able to blow up enemy armor with sticky bombs, recoiless rifles, bazookas and other AT weapons.

Your troops will all start fairly basicly, but during missions you are able to secure weapons that the Germans either drop or leave laying around. A Airborn company can sacrifice three soliders to become a MG crew or mortar crew. You are also able to pick up light MGs, bazookas and Panzerwhatsits to give your troops an edge in taking down armor and buildings.

One REALLY cool aspect of the game is that everything is destructable. While your troops may be hiding behind a wall have great cover, a decent sized explosion, or a vehicle, can destroy the cover and leave your men with thier asses in the air. Cars, boxs, rubble, buildings. It can all be destroyed.

As you play out the mission, you are given command points as you gain experience, which is gained by killing enemy troops, taking resource points, building defensive structures and other things. With these command points, you are able to call in air strikes, mortar fire, artillery, ship-based bombardment, special troops, equipment and other things. These "power ups" can be very helpful, though the best ones take alot of command points and take some time to earn them.

I really cant say enough positive things about the game play. Its all REALLY fun. Your squads gain exp for killing enemy units and will become tougher, have higher morale and become more accurate as the mission progresses. You are able to build a building that will have some previous veteran squads avaiable should you want to spend the extra points to pull them up.

Storyline:

Well, its WW2. Its been done to death. I dont know what happens if you lose a mission yet, but I would imagine that you start the mission over. Its standard WW2 fair though, but it doesnt SEEM old.


Controls:

Well the game is almost all mouse based. Its fairly easy to keep track of your troops when things are not going hectic but in the bigger missions, things can become tough to keep track of. A pause feature would be MOST welcome in the game but that would also make it seem way to easy.

Replay:

I havent beaten the game yet but most games do not hold very high replay value to me. There is online play but I have not tried it yet either. I would imagine the on-line aspect of the game is solid after being out for awhile but you never know. I generally dont play any games online unless they are MMOs, so my exp is limited.

Over all:

Game is awesome. Buy it.

9.5/10

NCAA Football 2008

Remember NCAA 07 on the X-Box or PS2 last year? Total control over your team in legend mode, the ability to see who was coming at you from the sides and a game speed that gave you the chance to bust out huge plays fairly easy?

All that is gone. Taking from Madden 07 last year on the 360, EA has made it so you are able to only control your player. Need to make a huge stop in the 4th quarter but you are the quarter back? To bad, its up to the AI. All you can do is what your position can do, the rest is out of your hands. Through the SuperSim mode, you can jump right back to playing your guy again but watching some un-ranked team score 42 points against Texas, you start to wonder if it is balanced at all. While this does lend itself to the feel of playing on a college football team, it gets really old really fast. The total lack of control outside of your position gets very frustrating.

Though this is the largest sticking point for me, the game is probably awesome for nearly everyone else. The controls are solid, the hits look hard, the speed is set well and with a little luck and some skill, you can make huge plays. So far I have only gotten into college mode with a running back and a quarter back but you can test the waters of what ever position you want in legend mode during the high school state play offs. 4 games to get a feel of your position, how the plays work, the supersim works and is a good training period.

Frustating, though, is the lack of a college feel to the game. Gone is the dorm room from previous versions, which I felt lent some to the college experiance in 06 and 07. There are no shots of fans in the stands, no more crowd meter, no shots of the mascot cheering on the side lines and no cheer leaders. The actual "college" aspect of NCAA 08 is non-existant. It plays very similar to Madden 07 on the 360, atleast in terms of giving the feel of being a star.

Where the feel of the game is lacking, the actual game play is decent enough. As a RB, you will run into opposing players you never see coming thanks to the limited third person view. The camera does a decent job of staying with you but on plays where you go in motion, the camera gets lost and you can not see your player for a few seconds. Running the ball is well done with a host of options of getting around players, but I found, at least playing at Texas (ranked 5th in the polls for this game with a A ranked offence), your offensive line doesnt make holes very easy and your TEs and WR dont hold blocks for jack shit. I'd guess that about 35% of the time, you will be taken down in the back field before you can get going. As a QB, there is an option for calling audible at the line but the plays are limited. The coach called plays are mostly stock and dont vary much and plays will be called that dont make sense for the situation, atleast how I would call them atleast. You will see the same play called through out the game and it will fail every single time.

The graphics are good, the frame rate never suffers and the stadiums look fantastic.

All in all, though, NCAA 08 doesnt FEEL like a college football game. It feels more like a football game that is set in college but the college aspect if left alone. You dont get any thing cool during pre-game, such as seeing the impact players warming up from previous versions and the commentary is pretty much the same as it was in previous versions. EA did not add a lot of depth to the game what so ever. While I know that it is a video game and not supposed to feel like the real deal, I have felt that previous incarnations of the game did more justice to college football this this one.

EA still has a lot to learn, it seems, to putting out a solid football game on the next-gen systems. When I would rather go back and play 06 or 07 on a xbox or PS2, that is not a good sign.

Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Feel of a college football game: 2/10

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I posted this review on some forums I visit a while back. Actually, it was July of last year. Anyway, I re-read it and my review still sticks. EA sports has not been able to make a really solid football game for the 360 yet. People buy Madden because its Madden and because there is nothing else out there to choose from. I, though, have been playing NCAA Football for a long time, much like I have Madden and EAs NHL series.

What I have seen since their, failed in my opinion, attempts to bring a next gen football game to the 360 is a disturbing move away from what worked so well for the games in the past. I don't know about most people who play but I play for the "feel" of being a college or pro athlete. While some of the things in the NCAA series, such as studying and what not, seem a little over board, I enjoyed them. Having a dorm room, events to pick, crowds cheering on game day and so forth. I miss those aspects of previous versions and I wonder if they will be brought back.

I did, though, really enjoy the addition of 4 high school play off games to test your position and get a feel for the game. That was cool. Also, being able to take screen shots from your big plays and have a slide show of them at the main menu was kick ass. I hate hate hate hate the close up third person view EA has started using. Having no fucking clue who or what is on either side of you is frustrating.

Blargh! Ideas!

One of the main reasons I created this blog was to get ideas for games out of damn head and onto...e-paper. Obviously, I love games. I've loved games a long long time and I don't see that changing; but I am running into problems with the games that are being released now. One of the biggest problems I see is the release date on games that are going to be huge. Such as the GTA series and so forth. Game companies release their big seller during two times of the year. Either before summer hits or right before Christmas. Now, I know they do this because they want to make money and so on but really. Having bland and boring months of no decent games being released really drives me nuts. Its also a problem with our "Next-gen" series of game consoles. The PS3 really doesn't have any games on it that make me want to pick one up. The Wii has SOME but the control scheme just pisses me off.I fucking LOVED Nintendo when I was younger. The SNES is, hands down, the best console ever. After that, well. Nintendo seems to have taken a back seat. I may get into that in another post. Probably not. The 360, seemingly, is the dominate console on the market now. The most games, the best games and its graphics can't really be out shown by the PS3 at this point. Is the PS3 better? Maybe later but not now.

Anyway. My point here is simple. I have a fuck ton of ideas for games that, for some reason, have not been made or have failed at being what they could have been. I know the technology is there to make these games happen. Like a zombie survival type game that doesn't have an ending unless you want it to and a on-line portion of the game that runs like an MMO. Zombies are fucking awesome, look at the RE series or Dead Rising just as examples. People would buy that shit, people would PAY to play that. It would RULE!

Or what about a Star Wars MMO that is like KOTOR? HOW THE FUCK HAS THIS NOT BEEN MADE YET?!?! Star Wars Galaxies? Are you fucking shitting me? Screw that non-sense! Get me a MMO like KOTOR and I'm there. Fuck, get me my third KOTOR and I am there.

It just baffles me that these big name studios either won't make these games or haven't thought to do it yet. I mean really. A KOTOR MMO? The servers would be so fucked on the first day, its not funny. What about a Shadow Run MMO? I was fucking PUMPED when I heard they were making a SR game and then to find out it was pure shit? Oh fuck man. That pissed me off.

So game studios! Listen up! I am on my way but until then, you shit fuckers better get your acts together and make games people WANT to play. Making an Oblivion clone? Fuck off. Stop it. Trying to make a GTA clone? Eat a dick. Get with the program, listen to the people that pay you for your product and make some games people want to fucking play.

Browser based gaming

About 5 years ago, I signed up for this browser based game called "Adventure Quest" or is it "Dragon Quest"? I can't remember. Anyway, it was a fun little distraction to play while at work. Kind of like those flash/java based games but more in-depth and it didn't really have an ending. As with most simple games, I got bored with it and moved on and forgot all about it.

Now, I love me some web comics. PvP, CTL-ALT-DEL and so forth. Like all other web sites, they need money to operate, pay their costs and so forth. This, obviously, comes from ads. Ads for new games, other sites and so forth. One thing I have noticed over the past few years is the growing number of browser based online games. There seem to be a million of them and more coming each month. All free to play with you getting cooler shit if you pay them a minimal fee. I have zero problem with them, just that there seems to be more and more being made every month and I have to start to wonder about the market base for so many of these games. Like every business model, you have to consider the market base you are appealing to. Is there a limited demographic? Will you max out how many people you can get to pay to play? Does the cost of adding new equipment (servers etc) out weigh what you make?

I can't see how these browser based games can continue to be made and be profitable for the companies that create and run them. Its just amazing to me.