Great game. And great longevity, too - I’m still going through the single player (although I have been distracted with other stuff, lately).

Hit the image for the full write up.

If I had to make a list of things in Prototype to whinge about, the ridiculous title styling would make the top five. Because it’s not Prototype - it’s [PROTOTYPE]. Square brackets are back in vogue, baby.

Other than that, I experienced a complete about-face on this game. My first impressions after the linear “tutorial” level and the first few minutes of “parkour” (which…isn’t, as I’ll explain later) were that this game was half-finished. The graphics were disappointingly sub-par; the AI was awkward; and the controls were initially cumbersome. The so-called street running kicks in whenever you hold down the right trigger, which sends your character sprinting up the sides of buildings, tumbling over obstacles, hopping on cars and flying around corners. It’s not the same kind of parkour as you’d see in, say, Assassin’s Creed, Mirror’s Edge or Prince of Persia. Alex Mercer is simply too powerful and too wild compared to the graceful elegance of Altair.

Instead, Mercer looks like he’d be better placed in Crackdown. He can jump several stories, propel himself through the air, and glide between buildings. And if he’s equipped armour, he simply barges through obstacles instead of jumping over them.

But once I got over the initial expectation that he was supposed to be this precise acrobat, I quickly warmed to the idea that he was an untamed animal, summoning weapons at will and dismembering both innocent and guilty alike. I relished in the free falls from skyscrapers that ended in meaty impacts, sending cars flying (although I would have loved to get the same impression of falling as in Mirror’s Edge).

The gritty graphics simply allowed for excessive amounts of chaos to fill the screen. Strike Teams of attack choppers filled the sky unloading payloads into the street, supporting tanks that focused their fire on Hive Buildings. Jarheads rush onto the field of battle, firing at infected civilians that have choked the streets. Hunters emerge from Hives, rushing towards the soldiers as they cut blindly at the air in front of them. Explosions surround you, barely stifling the screams and the radio chatter. And you’re in the middle of it all, with the game hardly skipping a beat.

There is a surprising amount of variety in the side missions to keep you distracted, and there are plenty of upgrades that unlock some vicious attacks. Mercer’s takedowns are brutal and violent, and the game doesn’t let up on action, pace or sweet sweet blood.

The story was standard “Gubmint-conspiracy” fare, bogged down by the bizarre emotional delivery of Mercer’s lines, but it’s good for some mindless enjoyment.

And that’s the aim of the game, here. Other than the upgrades, there is nothing to truly aspire to in this title. There is no high learning curve, nor reward for time invested. (Those “stealth” missions would be a dead giveaway.) It’s to fulfil your dreams of being both ridiculously agile and near omnipotent. It’s the reason why media producers make things with big explosions and bad-ass characters - to appeal to the baser emotions in us.

Playing [PROTOTYPE] (sigh) is like eating copious amounts of average quality chocolate. It’s not good for you, and it’s not even the best stuff out there…but it tastes damn good. Not bad for a sandbox title.

In my eyes, it’s one thing to be a gamer and another to be a LANner.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that broadband would have all but trampled the LAN scene into dust. Better gaming services and big, fat trunks have helped gamers all over the hood/country/world to connect to others and blow giblets out of each other in the comfort of their lounge rooms. There hardly seemed to be any incentive to pack up one’s rig and peripherals, lug it over to the local community hall and connect with other pale, sweaty nerds in order to share Linux ISOs and overrun bases with Zerglings.

But the scene was still there. It became this culture where gamers could convene and admire other people’s hardware, meet online personalities face to face and build new friendships. Sure, broadband might have taken away the need to leech files off other LANners, but that was never the point of LANning. It was, and always will be, about the games - the sick, perverse joy you can only get from knifing the last terrorist on the map and hearing a cry of anguish from the other side of the room.

Just recently, a prominent LAN in the Sydney metro area was up for sale. Its admins had been retrenched. After being around for 10+ years, it became clear that it was no longer operating as a profitable venture to the media company that owned it.

The noise surrounding its departure was fairly muted, with some of the old guard reminiscing about the “good ol’ days”. I noticed that hardly any current gamers made any comment, and I had a feeling it was because the current attendees had turned a gaming LAN into a leeching ground. Given that sponsors were advertising games at the very events where they were being illegally distributed, it was bound to end badly.

But that couldn’t have been the only reason. My theory is that the gamers, the truly hardcore gamers…they are a dying breed. Where I said in my earlier post that the entry barrier to gaming was greatly lowered, the quality of opponent has dwindled. Masters of the trade became complacent. They grew up, they took jobs, they found wives, they had kids. The number of people that actually want to play games fell, and the number of people that attended simply to P2P took their place. LANs turned into places were DC++ gets more bandwidth than the latest FPS.

What can be done? Bring the focus back to gaming. It’d be folly to try and eliminate file-sharing entirely; rather, give the gamers a reason to keep forking over money per visit. Hold worthwhile competitions; get decent prizes in; hardware tech demos; game beta sessions…gamers can play with other players from their living rooms. They need incentive to get them out of the house and into the scene.

LANners are those that take their gaming seriously. It’s evident that LAN events need to follow suit and give them a reason to keep coming back, as well as encouraging their friends to join in.

The people at my work don’t look like they play games. They always talk about skiing trips, hiking treks and salsa classes. Some of them look like they’d barely know their way about an analog stick.

Yet it always surprises me when our lunch time talk turns to games; from debates over hardware and consoles to the latest and greatest titles, as well as reminiscing over old ones. (I guess it’s hard not to expect this coming from an IT environment, but I figure that we have a lower proportion of hardcore nerds compared to other companies out there.)

The push from companies to promote gaming in the mainstream is impressive. Games that I never thought would’ve taken off are overnight celebrities - Guitar Hero, Brain Training, The Sims. Game previews have moved on from the full page spreads in gaming magazines to rubbing shoulders with movie previews in the cinema. My local game stores are packed full during sale season to the point where I find it hard to move around, and the larger retailers now have whole sections dedicated to games instead of the piddly aisle or two.

And, to be perfectly honest, I would have never thought that the Wii would have taken off like it did. But it was so accessible. The learning curve was as difficult as you were proficient with handling a remote control. The interface had decreased from the 360’s imposing 10 button + two analog stick finger trap to a wand with a thumb button and a trigger.

What many adults had cast off as a bit of childhood fun has now suddenly become “socially accepted”. (Well, tell that my workmate’s newly wed wife who doesn’t want him to spend his days going “pew pew pew”.) Let’s ride the wave while we can.

It’s not so much a review as it is a recount of my early experiences with the game, but I thought I’d share it anyway. For a guy that doesn’t normally play fighters, it’s great fun

Facilitator: Well, gentlemen, thank you all very much for deciding to present at our seminar. I’m sure you all have your, uh, own unique experiences to share with our clients in regards to the melee weapons you use. Perhaps if we go around the room and introduce ourselves, so we can get a feel of what we do and how we can present our material? Gordon, let’s start with you.
(more…)

There are certain games that make me feel a bit queasy. It’s not due to huge amounts of blood and gore. It’s not because of sickeningly cute protagonists in J-RPGs. It’s not even the result of awful movie tie-ins.

It’s the games that glorify the military.

Case in point - Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2, the 360 version. Okay, so it’s a title based on the ideas of Tom “Every-day-is-Defcon-1″ Clancy, but even so I don’t recall the original Ghost Recon being this…patriotic.

It felt like I was playing a recruitment ad: “We have the most advanced-est technologies so we can totally PWN TEH FREEDOM’S ENEMIES! You, too, can be a bad-ass Captain that gets to shoot at stuff and blow shit up! Merely four of you salty motherfuckers can take on battalions of the enemy! You can undertake secret missions to fuck shit up in the name of ‘pre-emptive action’, and when we get made you can just get rid of the evidence by blowing that up too! OOORAH”

Then there’s the not-so-leather-lunged General who barks orders at you in the way one of those tiny dogs you see in handbags would bark at you. “JUST GET IT DONE MITCHEL, DO IT FOR YOUR COUNTRY.”

And the kicker for me? When you get shot and “incapacitated”, you never die on the spot in some foreign land; instead you have the President on your cross-com telling you to hang on because a Medivac will come and whisk you away.

It’s a bit much for me to stomach, having the whole experience of war glorified. Who knows, maybe I’m just reading too much into it.

(Stay tuned for my next post on how Red Faction: Guerrilla is actually an “alternative-warfare” training program. )