Random Bits - December

[landonj56]

For me it would be Unreal, better engine than Quake's (resulting in better graphics and settings) but kept the Quake "FEAL". However, Unreal is still sort of vintage for the gaming comunity and thus I moved on to COD: Black-ops (which was NOT a disapointment either )

[x88x]

I've played a lot of good games, but very few that I would consider truly great.

Portal, definitely. The unique concept coupled with the completely unexpected and utterly beautiful story, character development, and environment (and songs ) earned it a special place in my heart.

Morrowind, I think, is the single game that has had the largest impact on me. Partly because it was my first RPG, partly because at the time it was really the only game I had...so that's what I played...almost every day...for a year and a half. Yes, I was and still am a massive TES nerd. The combat left a lot to be desired, but the stories were quite well constructed, and the environment...oh the environment... The thing that best sums it up for me is the central library in Vivec. Four largish rooms, full of bookshelves, and (iirc) every single book is unique (in the room, most are present elsewhere in the game). And it's not like each book was just a couple pages either. I think I may have spent almost as much time sitting in that virtual library, reading the histories and myths of Tamriel, as I spent out in the rest of the gameworld. The amount of time and effort that BethSoft put into just that one aspect for me really represents the level of care that was taken with this game. The transportation systems were another of my favorite things about the game. In Oblivion, you just fast-travel wherever you wanted..not so in Morrowind! There, you would reference your in-game map to see where you were, then reference your real map, find where you wanted to go, then find the nearest Siltstrider, ship, guild teleporter, or whatever, and what route you would have to take to get to your destination. The level of immersion was just...ah, but I'm rambling.

Oblivion, I never got into quite as much as I did Morrowind. This is not to say that I didn't spend much time...quite the contrary, I spent many, many hours wandering the lands of Cyrodiil, but I never quite connected as well with it. The story was still wonderful, the graphics were worlds better, the gameplay was...also worlds better..., and the environment was still beautiful and immersive..just not quite to the level that I had come to expect..no more libraries of hundreds of unique books, no, now I could look at a bookshelf with just five or six books on it and see duplicates... Despite that, however, I still consider it one of the all time best games I have played.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas are, to me, possibly even better than Oblivion. It helps that I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic stuff, but they really nailed the environment with these games. In fact, imo they got all three almost perfect. Environment, story, and gameplay. ..if only they had spent a little of that time on QC maybe they wouldn't be so buggy.

Ascendancy is another one of my all time favorites. It was a small, not very well publicised, galactic domination strategy game released for DOS in 1995. I got it as a gift probably some time in the early '00's, and loved it. The story..well, it's a galactic domination strategy game, they tend to not have much of a story...but it did have a very well done backstory for all of the races and a lot of the technologies. The environment...again, they tend to not have much... The thing that really did it for me though, was the gameplay. It is still, imo, one of the best designed games of its type when it comes to managing expansion, tech trees, and the like.

Sins of a Solar Empire is another galactic conquest strategy game (well, system conquest in this case, but whatever) that, although it was released 13 years later, seems to have borrowed some of the good points from Ascendency that a lot of other similar games missed (similar tech tree and time management, mainly). The story, again, leaves a lot to be desired, but they did make good backstories and cultural identities for the different groups. The thing that really clenched the deal for me with SOAS, though, was the graphics. Combat in SOAS is similar to a lot of other RTSs in that it revolves around lots and lots of small units, a lot less medium sized units, and a few large units. First off, the sense of scale with all of these units is superb. The units are actually appropriately sized for each other and the rest of the environment, something that is missing all too often in RTSs in general and space RTSs in particular. But back to the graphics. The best example of this is battles. You can sit back and watch the whole thing unfold, or you can zoom in as far as you want, even down to the point of the tiny fighter craft, and watch the battle unfold in incredible detail. That was the thing about the graphics that got me, the level of detail on, really, every model..is just amazing.

Most recently, I came across a game that got a lot of mixed reviews, but imo is one of the all time greats. Mirror's Edge. This was the most fun I have had with a non-combat (or even combat, for that matter) game for...I don't even know how long. The story is...ok. It's not that deep, but at least it's well thought out and has more than a few cool twists. The real treasures in this game, though, are the environment and gameplay. It helps that I'm a big fan of parkour (never have been much good at it but I love watching it), but the level of fluidity that is possible with this game is truly remarkable. A lot of people complained about the complicated controls, and I'll admit, they take getting used to, but I for one, find it all the more satisfying to pull off a perfect manouver when I actually had a bit more of a hand in doing it. ..oh, but if FPSs give you motion sickness, you will vomit blood trying to play this game....

Metro 2033. This is a great game on many levels. The Environment is superb. Again it helps that I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic games, but the environment really is stunning. The gameplay, too, is amazing. It is seriously well thought out, and fits into the environment seamlessly, whether it's conserving your good ammo so you can use it to buy a better gun, hunting for that crossbow bolt you know you fired over here somewhere , or hoping and praying that your last gas mask will hold until you reach a merchant...and then getting hit in the face by a mutant, smashing the glass enclosure, dooming you to suffocate even if you can kill it, or just pumping up your little hand-held generator to eek a little more life out of your flashlight, everything just fits perfectly into the environment. The graphics are great too, with just the right level of grittiness, but not so much that it overwhelms. I think the one point where it fails...and you will rarely hear me say this...is that it's too hard. It's not that any of the enemies are hideously difficult to kill, or that any puzzles are too complex, but that some of the solutions are so..strange..., and finicky at times, that I honestly think I never would have figured some of them out without help.

Oh, and one cannot mention a post-apocalyptic FPS without mentioning the Half-Life franchise. This was one of those rare games that just did everything right...and continued to do everything right, through 4 sequels. Let's hope the 5th continues the trend.

The last one I want to mention isn't actually on my list of all time greats, but instead on the stranger and sadder 'got one thing amazing and failed so many others epically'.

F.E.A.R. Yes, this but of many jokes is, imo, one of the best FPSs ever made....kinda. This game really nailed (no pun intended ) the gun mechanics. I played this game several times, suffering through the abysmal story and annoying "horror" elements, just for those guns. The feeling of firing the guns in F.E.A.R., and in fact, F.E.A.R. 2 as well, is just so much better than any other FPS I have ever played.