Thoughts on 3 New Games
I broke down and bought 3 new games a couple of weeks ago, primarily because I needed some research material, but also because I can now write them off. That and I don't think I had bought a new game in probably well over a year (World of Warcraft being the last one).
So what did I buy and what do I think of these games?
BattleField 2 (PC)
Battlefield 2 is supposed to be the shit of FPS games right now, insanely popular and played a hell of a lot. Essentially the pinnacle of FPS games on the market. Sadly I have to wonder why.
Although the game can be fun to play ,if you have friends that are playing, and encourages a lot of team work, I also found it to be something not much better than what indie developers are producing right now.
My biggest complaints include:
- Slow loading times for missions, as in multiple minutes in length. Then once you are loaded you need to be authenticated each time by the game server (if they are a reporting server). Sadly this was a huge complaint about Lore but I guess its ok in an AAA game because its ultra popular ;P
- Awful UIs. Information overload here and on top of that poor design! The real coup de grace though comes from the fact that the game actually has to load the UIs it needs (which can take up to a minute). Note: You can speed up the UI loading by renaming or moving a videos folder that the game comes with. The game tries to load videos in the background to add some bling. Sadly even after doing this the load times are still very long.
- Average graphics. Sorry but the polygon counts here aren't much better than you see in other games. The interiors/buildings are very crude and simple. There is no such thing as lighting or shadows. The list goes on and on. Yet again I feel a bit miffed here because this was an area that people always critized Lore on and honestly its not much better than what we had.
- Shaders? What Shaders? I can see some water, glow and blur shaders applied but not much else. Explain to me again why this is a game that needs a Geforce FX series (or better) to even load?
Quake 4 (PC)
So essentially this is the game that everyone said was supposed to really show off the Doom 3 engine. Sure it was cool but I found the whole game to be really dissappointing to say the least.
My biggest complaint overall is that the game just drones on and on and on and is just so dammed boring to play. I think the developers were trying to emulate Halo 2 too much but in the end didn't come out with the exact same experiance from it.
Metroid Prime Hunters (DS)
Its Metroid, a FPS and its on the DS and uses that cool touch screen. It also helps that I finally have a game for my DS (only owned it since release date) that finally utilizes the system properly!
Overall the games pretty good, reminds me a lot of the classic days of Quake and Duke Nukem. The only real problem that I have is that the DS isnt very comfortable to hold and as such you cannot really play Hunters for very long :(
