• 6Jul 09

  Burnout: Not Quite Paradise

  I liked Burnout Revenge, and Burnout 3 is still my favorite racing game. I rented Paradise, not quite sure what to expect. It's significantly different, and while I miss the old style I like the new style as well.

  You free roam around the city and can start a race at any traffic light. After winning a certain number of races your license will upgrade and you will be awarded a new car. It starts as a permit, and after two races it will become a Class D license. It will eventually upgrade up to Class A, then a Burnout License and finally an Elite License with each upgrade requiring an increasing number of wins.

  All races are available from the beginning of the game with one exception. Every car has it's own race called a Burning Route. They are timed races with no opponents. If you get to your destination in a certain amount of time you are awarded an upgraded version of that car. More on this later.

  As with every game I play I found some problems and various things I would like to see changed. So I wrote another almost-review, really-just-pointing-out-all-the-problems blog.

  ---

  This game needs tutorials. Well, it has them, but not really. It tells you how to do things after you've already done them. I had to look up how to start a Showtime challenge on the internet. Apparently you have to hold LB and RB at the same time. So I went back to the game and held the buttons and when I did it told me, "This is how to start Showtime." Really helpful. It would be great if it told me how to do things before I do them.

  Anyone who has played a Burnout game before knows that in any race you can perform 'takedowns' by running your opponent off the road or into another car, causing them to reset and receive a boost penalty. When you do this you can see them crashing in slow motion while your car is controlled by the game. This causes several problems.
  Though it's satisfying to watch their car transform into a pile of scrap metal rolling down the road at 100 mph it breaks up the pace of the game, especially in road rage events where your goal is to take down as many cars as you can in a couple minutes. Sometimes when you take down a car right in front of you, your car won't be able to get around it. To avoid crashing your car will just disappear and reappear nearby. The game may make your car may take a turn that you didn't want to. When the game relinquishes control of your car you may find yourself speeding straight at a wall or car at high speed and unable to avoid it. You may be facing the wrong direction or just at a stop in the middle of the street. Though uncommon occurrences, it is very frustrating when it does happen.
  Instead of hijacking your car while showing the crash I think this would be an appropriate use of picture-in-picture, letting the player continue to control the car during the event. If a car crashes directly in front of you... well... I guess you'll be joining it.

  There is a gametype called 'Marked Man' in which you have to reach your destination with multiple AI controlled Hunter Citizens chasing you down. You can only crash a few times before your car is totaled and you fail. The number of cars hunting you increases as you progress through the game. What is annoying about this gametype is the fact that your pursuers have the uncanny ability to warp the space-time continuum. Think you can outrun them? Think again. I'm driving down the road and they're right behind me. I hit the brakes and they fly past, I pull a u-turn and look in my rear-view and they're right there again. The only time I lost them for more than 5 seconds or so is by taking a shortcut on a railroad bridge, but they showed up there too. If you drive too slow they will rear-end you at 140 mph causing you to accelerate so violently that you also lose the ability to steer and you crash if you touch anything. Not a good combination. How do you win? Take them down before they do the same to you, and know where the repair stations are.

  After winning a certain number of races a new car will appear in free roam. If you see it you can take it down to add it to your junkyard. Makes sense, a wrecked car goes to a junkyard. When you select it from there it will be wrecked. You have to repair it or it will get destroyed in crashes a lot easier you can't change the paint. What doesn't make sense is when I beat a Burning Route and get a car as a reward but it's pre-wrecked when I go to pick it up. My prize for winning a race is a destroyed car?
  While I'm on the subject of upgraded cars, Why do these count as new cars? I think the Burning Routes should just give the original car a stat upgrade and new decal options. That's all the 'upgraded' cars are anyway.
  And while I'm on the subject of decals, each car only has three decal options (a couple have more and a couple have less). And by "three decal options" I mean "one decal with three different color options." Come on, how hard can it be to add some more? Maybe we could even choose from as many colors as we can for the base car color. How about some more free DLC?

  This game is completely free roam. It never blocks off any roads, You can take any route you want to get to your destination. The game will occasionally suggest that you take a turn with a flashing street sign at the top of the screen but sometimes you're going so fast that you won't have enough time to turn. I would like to see highlighted roads on the main map and mini map suggesting which path to take. Even better, show a path on the actual street like the GPS on Red Faction Guerrilla since it can be hard to look at the map while speeding through traffic.

  I prefer Burnout Revenge's crash mode over Showtime. The old way had some strategy to it. You had to cause crashes in the middle of a street so that other cars would crash into them, and pick up score bonuses and multipliers. Now just hitting the A button makes your car jump down the street and into other cars. Mindlessly hitting a button over and over to cause your car to roll down the street isn't a whole lot of fun. I think it should be replaced with the old crash mode and made an actual event that counts toward upgrading your license.

  There is a landmark in all four corners of the map and one in the middle of each side. Every race ends in one of these eight places. There are two reasons I don't like this. First, I just learned the fastest route to each of these places and rarely use any other roads except in free roam. If there were more destinations it would make the races seem less the same. Second, the farthest a race can be is the length of the map. If there were checkpoint races they could be a lot longer. There are checkpoint races for the motorcycles from the free DLC but not for the cars.

  I had several issues regarding sound. 'DJ Atomica' is loud and unbearably annoying and I want a voice volume option. When you select a vehicle in the junkyard it falls from the sky like it's being dropped from a crane (after taking several seconds to load) and makes a crashing sound that is also loud and very annoying. The sound of the road rule timer makes me want to stab myself in the ears. It should not always play the same song on the intro screen. Especially not Paradise City by GnR.

  Here are some other minor things I would like to see. The ability to take down multiple opponents at once was removed for some reason and I want it back. When I ram a car into two others I want to see them all crash. The AI racers should not get boost starts in addition to starting half a second earlier. I want to be able to warp to the junkyard to pick a new car or have the option to switch cars when starting to race. It bothers me that there is no one in the driver's seat of my car, that wouldn't be hard to add. When using a bike the rider disappears the instant I crash. It shouldn't replay the race intro every time I restart. I want to be able to restart a race while I'm crashing, because when I crash is usually when I want to restart. It would only save a few seconds but forcing me to watch myself crash is really annoying. For the collection achievements you can see how many jumps, billboards and gates you have found in each region in the stats screen of the pause menu. Problem is it doesn't show the regions on the map so the only way to figure out where they are is by going there and watching for when the sign on the side of your screen changes.

  Regarding difficulty, the races and Burning Routes were easy, stunt runs were just about right. Road Rage events were easy at the start but got harder later in the game, though still easy if I made it to the freeway. Marked Man events were hard for reasons previously mentioned. Road Time Rules depended almost entirely on traffic.

  ---

  Despite its problems this game was fun. I remember three things that happened that were especially awesome.

  In free roam I chased the Oval Racing Champ all the way across the city trying to take it down. I was crashing and catching up just to crash again. We were getting close to the Country Club when the Champ drove through a major intersection. I was about a hundred yards behind and I went through the intersection - at the same time as the Takedown 4x4. It was driving down the cross street and I hit the side of it and sent it sliding into the wall across the street. It happened with no warning at all. One second I was chasing the Champ and the next I was slamming into the side of a truck, taking it down completely by accident.

  While finishing off the last of the stunt runs I was trying to make it to a series of jumps next to the junkyard on the west side. I hit a car on the southernmost bridge and my car rolled off the jump in the middle. It did three barrel rolls while spinning 360 degrees, then landed perfectly on it's wheels. Apparently if the car survives the crash it gives you credit for any stunts you may have performed while crashing. This crash gave me a nine times score multiplier for a total of about 250,000 points which was enough to win the event.

  I tried to get my Elite License before I had to return the game to the rental store. I had two races to go, both Burning Routes for the two cars I didn't have. I spent about 15 minutes searching for them. Just a couple minutes before I would have given up and returned the game I spotted the Racing WTR and pursued. A few blocks down the road the Hot Rod Coupe joined it. The two cars I needed were driving side by side right in front of me. Whether they were there to taunt me before outrunning me or to have mercy I was determined to get them. The road curved and I pushed the WTR into the wall, taking it down. I lost sight of the Hot Rod but followed down the road it had turned on. Luckily I managed to catch up and run it off the road as well. I didn't have enough time to do the Burning Routes but I'm just happy to have taken those cars down.

  ---

  I rented the game again and spent some time doing challenges in online freeroam. The challenges require all players to meet up at certain places and work as a team to achieve a goal, like performing 8 barrel rolls or driving 2000 yards down the oncoming lane of a certain street in reverse. If you manage to find competent people who are willing to help it's a lot of fun. I would love to see this feature in more games.

  At first this didn't feel much like a Burnout game mainly due to being free roam. Once I unlocked some faster cars and started boosting up the oncoming lane of a winding mountain road I definitely felt the similarity. While the free roam city still didn't quite feel right, it still feels like Burnout. It's a solid sequel and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with the next game.

  • Posted Jul 6, 2009 3:16 am PT
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• 12Mar 09

  Why Gears of War 2 is broken.

  I loved Gears of War. It had a couple problems, but through them I could see a game that put together many great ideas in a great way. When the sequel was released I was expecting the same great game with great additions and upgrades. Instead what I found was a game plagued by problems that were so frustrating that I could hardly stand to play it. These are the problems I've had and some possible solutions for them.

  (Note: The definition of the term 'broken' is arguable. While the game is still playable, it does not play the way it was intended to due to the following problems, mainly the horrendous lag. Therefore I consider it broken.)

  ---

  Lag

  Seriously... this game has really bad lag. When I see people on my screen I'm actually seeing where they were a fraction of a second ago. If someone is moving across my screen and I shoot directly at him I miss because he's not actually there anymore. I can't explain how irritating it is when I fight someone one-on-one, put five shots from a shotgun directly into his chest and he doesn't go down, then he hits me twice from the same distance and I die. This happens to me almost every round in some matches. Of course the host doesn't have this problem which is a huge advantage. Thus earning the name 'host advantage.'
  There is a way to 'bridge host', making you host all the time. This gives you host advantage all the time. As if that wasn't bad enough the host of a game can use 'standby' to cause everyone else in the game to lag and earn a couple free kills. I don't understand why people cheat. Is winning really still fun if no one else has a chance? Or is your life so pathetic that you have to win at video games to make yourself feel better and you're not even good enough to do it legit?

  The maximum number of players in Gears 2 is 10, but even without a host using standby it lags more than most games with 16. There's no excuse for that. The first Gears had this problem too. Raising the player limit from 8 to 10 certainly didn't help.
  Why did they change it to 10 players per game anyway? I liked 4 vs. 4 better. It had a more tactical feel to it. You had to stick with your team or split into two groups of two. Even with just one more person on each team it seems like it doesn't really matter. There's always a teammate right around the corner to help if you get into trouble.
  Edit: After seeing how much of a difference dedicated servers make on Unreal Tournament 3 I've concluded that Gears needs them. And since UT3 is made by Epic as well, there's really no excuse for not having them.

  Balancing Issues

  A lot of people have a bad habit of leaving the game before its over, especially if they're on the losing team. Sometimes they even leave before the game starts if they lose the vote for map or gametype. And even worse than that, sometimes the game starts with only 8 or 9 people. Of course the missing players always end up on my team. At first I thought people were leaving before I saw they were there but when I bring up the players list in the lobby after the game there are just empty spots.
  In deathmatch games the winning team is determined by the number of kills so if your team has less players that means the other team has less targets. Usually it ends up pretty even. In elimination games (like Gears) the winning team is the one that survives. If your team has less players you are at a disadvantage before the game has even started.
  So why not add bots to replace the people that leave? This would be easy to add and would go a long way to fix a big problem. They would probably be on 'normal' difficulty, but just having the same number of people on each team would go a long way to even the odds.
  Edit: Of course the day after I posted this Epic announced a patch adding this feature.

  I thought Gears was supposed to be a cover based strategic shooter. Yet even after the addition of stopping power, just about every match turns into a shotgun war. The reason for this is that due to the plentiful cover of most maps combined with the ridiculously underpowered rifles, you can kill people faster by simply running straight toward them and unloading your shotgun.

  In Gears 2 they added a knockdown effect to the smoke grenades. Whenever one goes off within a certain distance of you it makes you fall down for usually 2 or 3 seconds. I don't mind when it's stuck to a wall. I should have seen and avoided it. The problem is when you're in cover and someone throws a smoke grenade, then rushes you with a shotgun while you're laying on the floor. I think if you were just stunned for about a second it would be a lot more fair. And realistic. Really, I don't think a smoke grenade would knock you down.
  Why do you get two frags? You only get one smoke or ink, but you get two of the most powerful kind? That doesn't make sense to me. Some players rely on wall mines to cover an entrance to the area in which they're camping. That's fine if you have one but I think two is too many.

  Playing annex on Stasis, assuming I manage to make it to the capture point, I always end up being instantly killed by a boomshot or frag. Again, I wouldn't have a problem with frags if you only got one. I might be able to survive a single frag if I'm fast enough but I won't have enough health for the second. If they're planted on the wall I can see them and avoid being blown up as long as I'm not distracted by a constant stream of bullets coming from all directions. The boomshot takes some degree of skill to aim since you have to get a direct hit for a one-hit-kill. Though for some stupid reason you now get three rockets instead of two. When my team is in the cap-point all it takes is a single rocket or grenade to turn the tide of the game. Ink and smoke make it hard enough. Explosives are just unfair.

  Design Flaws

  In matchmaking most games search for players of similar rank, then split them into two teams. This ensures that even if there is a big difference in the ranks they will be split fairly evenly between the two teams. Instead Gears searches for team members, then matches your team with another team with similar ranks. This way the teams have already been selected. If one team ends up with significantly lower ranks than the other they're probably going to lose. I have no idea why they chose to do it like this. It makes no sense.

  The two piece. Melee then finish them off with the shotty while they're stunned and helpless. It's not cheating, just cheap. Can't think of a way to get rid of this other than not getting stunned when you get hit.

  I want to know who decided it was a good idea to make the A button do everything. It sounds convenient. But if you're trying to run and it makes you cover, or you try to grab a downed enemy as a shield in the middle of a battle and instead you just roll past them and get gunned down, you start to realize it doesn't work so well. If somehow they could make run/roll and cover/grab different buttons it would help a lot.

  I've had several problems with hit detection. Even playing horde by myself so I know it's not just lag. I'm bad at sniping in the first place so it's especially irritating when I barely hit someone in the head but it doesn't hurt them.

  Not really a flaw, just an annoying and unnecessary addition. As if it wasn't bad enough that I'm losing due to lag, unbalanced teams, stupid glitches/exploits, design flaws and my own stupidity, I'm insulted at the end of each round for it. The reasons for losing make me mad enough. Then when I hear some jackass tell me that I'm a disgrace for losing an unfair game it makes me want to punch someone in the face.

  ---

  Conclusion

  I want to like this game. But for that to be possible Epic has a lot of work to do first.
  I don't know why this game lags so much more than any other but if they can't fix that they should look into dedicated servers. That would take care of the host advantage as well as hosts using standby. Adding bots to replace quitters seems like a really obvious and reasonably easy fix to me.
  Making the lancer and hammerburst stronger would make the game play more like I think it was intended to. In the interest of fairness I think they should replace the knockdown on the smoke grenades with a short stun, only give you one frag at a time, and remove or at least reduce the amount of explosives in objective gametypes.
  Use standard matchmaking. Lose the two piece. If possible, change the 'action' controls, or give those who want it the option. Improve hit detection, and really, I don't need Hoffman to insult me every time I lose a round.

  If Epic takes care of all or even most of these problems, Gears 2 would live up to its precursor and be a truly amazing game.

  One last thing...
  Ten dollars for three or four maps is bs. I'd probably pay five, but ten? That's ridiculous. I know other people agree but some buy them anyway so they'll keep charging that much. That's really irritating. They could even do what Bungie does and make the maps free after a few months, though I would bet they won't. I think the best we can hope for is a 'sale' and maybe get them at half price several months from now.

  • Posted Mar 12, 2009 2:47 pm PT
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• 15Feb 09

  Fallout 3 vs. Oblivion

  I rarely post in the forums anymore since most topics are 'my xbox broke', 'what game should i get' or a question that has already been answered and often re-answered by someone who didn't bother to read the replies. Usually I only post when someone asks for opinions on a specific game.

  Someone made a topic in the 360 forum titled 'Fallout 3 vs. Oblivion' with a poll. When I voted I was surprised to find that I had just broken a 75-75 tie. I have a very strong opinion about some games, Oblivion being one of them. I replied with what ended up being my longest forum post to date. I've added parts to it due to the fact that it was around 4 or 5 in the morning when I posted it and couldn't think of everything I wanted to say. So here's the new and improved version.

  ---

  Im a hardcore gamer. Ive probably spent a total of over 500 hours on Oblivion alone. I love big games. It seems like you never run out of stuff to do. Well, you do after 500 hours. Anyway, after spending that much time on the game there are a few fairly large problems that become painfully obvious.

  First of all, if you make a game with hundreds of NPCs you need to hire a lot of voice actors. Things like that usually don't bother me but it did on this game. They had like 8 voices for each race. If you count 'humans' as a race. And Khajiit and Argonians sounded exactly the same for some reason (I suspect laziness). As if the voices alone weren't bad enough the game had horrible (and horribly repetitive) dialogue.
  "I saw a mudcrab the other day."
  "Disgusting creatures."
  "Goodbye."
  There's no ****ing point to that conversation! And yet I've heard it well over a hundred times. In Morrowind there were no voices. Conversations were all in text but at least people actually said things that were worth saying instead of repeating the same pointless garbage over and over.

  The leveling system. You have the choice of never leveling up, power leveling or using a broken character. Your attribute bonuses depend on what skills you level up during that level. This system forces you to put a lot of effort into controlling what skills you level up and when in order to get good bonuses and not get so many that you end up wasting some. If you play normally you'll get bad bonuses and, thanks to the level system, you may actually get weaker as you level. Also if you complete a quest the reward is leveled. Suppose you get a sword that does 5 shock damage. At level 3 that's pretty good. Once you get up around 20 its worthless and you wish you waited to do the quest until were a higher level so you got a better reward.

  Actions/consequences. You can join any guild regardless of what other guilds you're in. Hell, you can be the leader of all the guilds since none of them conflict with each other. I don't feel like there are any real consequences. Guilds with conflicting ideals should have conflicting missions so you're forced to choose a side.

  As far as exploring there really isn't much to see. All the caves and mines look the same. They all have bandits or goblins and a few boxes of junk. Rarely will you find anything of interest. Ayleid ruins are more detailed but still there isn't much to find.

  I miss Morrowind. The best armor and weapons were almost impossible to find. I think there were like 3 suits of Daedric armor in the entire game. It was a lot more rewarding than getting 3 full suits from 3 bandits in the first cave you walk into. Another thing I liked is you could run into some random cave in the middle of nowhere and find a legendary weapon.

  ---

  In fallout 3 the NPCs are done much better. I feel like I 'know' some of them because they have different personalities (and voices). Some aspects of the environment aren't quite as good. A lot of it looks more or less the same. Sand and rocks as far as you can see. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of places to explore. There are a few small towns and a few dozen pre-war buildings scattered across the Wasteland, along with the actual city of D.C.. All of these are much more interesting than a cave full of goblins. Like in Morrowind, you may also find a powerful unique weapon or suit of armor buried deep in the ruins of a military outpost.

  There aren't as many quests but I definitely enjoy doing them more. There's a lot more variety than Oblivion. It's not just 'go here, find this, kill that.' Leveling system is good, as is the karma system. People actually treat you differently depending on what you do.

  One thing that should be changed in the next game is the way people treat you depending on what armor and weapons you have equipped. If you're wearing a full suit of armor with a helmet people wouldn't recognize you. If you're wearing Enclave or Tesla armor the BoS would attack you. And if I was a raider I wouldn't mess with a guy in full power armor especially if he had a gatling laser.

  My biggest complaint about this game is the towns. There are only a few decent sized towns and they feel too empty. Half the people in them don't even have names. I like Megaton, built from scrap by its citizens for shelter from the wastes. All the other towns are fortified pre-war buildings that somehow survived when everything around them was laid to waste. I wish there was a huge city like Vivec or the Imperial City in The Elder Scrolls, maybe a huge vault.

  ---

  I love both games but I have to say Fallout is better. I just wish the story was longer, and a few more side quests couldn't hurt. Of course we'll get new missions as download content and be charged an obscene amount of money for them.

  • Posted Feb 15, 2009 4:39 am PT
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