Gaming For Geezers

Starcraft II – Buy this game.  It does not suck.

Summary  – Ten years is a long time between the original and sequel for anything, but as with all things in the prequel/sequel/remake world, if the product is good, the time interval does not matter once you have the new item in front of you.  Starcraft II is just like the original, but on steroids.  Lots of steroids.  We’re talking testicle shriveling, soon to die from toxic shock syndrome steroids.  The game is so well put together in all aspects that the sheer joy of playing a well thought out and designed product blurs our vision to any shortcomings.  Sure, you may not like real time strategy games, but if you are one of those gamers who likes to stick with the familiar first person shooter and do not like to experiment with different PC game experiences, try this one out. It is a keeper.  And it will have legs.  Serious legs.

Storyline

 In a prior review, we made fun of a real time strategy game that ripped off the space elves/human/zerg theme from Starcraft.  Well we cannot do that here because this is where they reside.  However, the Starcraft people ripped of Tolkien, but who hasn’t.  Which leads me to a thought that has been bothering me for years.  Why is it that the foundation for 95% of all fantasy story themes and as a result, related game themes been that the human race can push out hyper intelligent and magical creatures such as the elves/protoss?  I mean, the elves are bi pedal, magic, and immortal.  In the real world, such a species would be dominant, but in the Tolkien/Fantasy/PC Game world, short lived, selfish, emotional humans seem to dominate.  It could be that we reproduce more and thus act like a virus (hat tip to agent Smith in the Matrix), but it doesn’t make sense.  I mean Elrond should have instituted a mandatory breeding program and this whole orc problem would have gone away because the elves would have sufficient numbers to simply eradicate them along with the forces of Mordor.

Same problem here.  For some reason the humans in this game are the dominant species and save the day.  But that is about the only irritating thing, and I have to remind myself that the target audience is human.  Not too many games marketed towards the Protoss/Space Elf market where I live.

OK.  Back to the task at hand.  In Starcraft you are James Raynor.  Apparently you were some type of stud in the last major war between the Zerg/Protoss/Humans (orc/elf/humans) and have retired to be a sheriff in a remote planet where you seem to run into many hives of scum or villainy.  You spend your time in a strangely spaghetti western bar drinking, and you listen to your music off a jukebox straight out of the 20th century earth.  For some reason you cannot get the copy of Freebird recorded by Lynryd Skynrd, but instead a remake by some band whose name I recognized but never listen to.  Your old buddy shows up in space armor after being released from prison, but he cannot take it off as a condition of some parole.  You pine away for your long lost girlfriend who is now a space spider in control of the Zerg.   I am not making this up.  An evil dictator is oppressing the masses, and like all good Arthurian tales, you the protagonist are going to lead a rag tag bunch of Starbucks and Apollo to collect the ancient artifacts necessary to destroy the zerg and save the day before they overwhelm the known galaxy.  You do.  You save your girlfriend, and the campaign ends. 

Astute readers will note the multiple pop culture references above, and that is by design.  The storyline drops little things here too.  The Starcraft team didn’t irritate us with meaningless storylines, the cut scenes are brief and to the point and the longer cut scenes are actually entertaining.  The game generates just enough emotional connection to engage you by balancing the need to tell a story with brevity.  All of these storylines and the game play are punctuated with snippets of our popular culture all true nerds will have a conscious awareness.  Many of the snippets remind you of something that nags at you but you don’t connect to another reference for a while.  For example, the space spider girlfriend is a dead ringer for the borg chick in Star Trek First Contact.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the voice actress was the same person.  The similarities continue in that she obviously had a romantic past with the protagonist just as the borg queen did with Jean Luc Picard.  Aliens (the movie)pops in to the game play when you build a first aid ship who reports on their movement as “in the pipe, five by five.”  The space spider/girlfriend in flashbacks is a dead ringer for the Final Fantasy movie girl as well.  James Raynor’s sidekick reminds me of the cowboy opera Silverado with Kevin Kline in that he wants to put the old criminal gang back together, but our hero resists.  Finally, there is a long cut scene where the Protoss hero is a facsimile of a jedi knight. 

I am sure there are more pop culture references here and there, but the point is that the authors of this storyline deliberately drew from the pantheon of references that us nerds who play PC games will recognize, and it enriches the experience.

Game play – The Campaign.

I prefer the model of RTS gaming used in Starcraft.  Your campaign begins with short tutorial missions with limited resources and limited options.  You learn how to play the game and slowly earn new unit types and structures.  Like many space campaign games you progress on a semi-linear fashion through the universe picking from a few missions presented to you.  The fun thing about Starcraft is that the actual tactical game play is resource driven.  If you don’t harvest resources you lose.  If you harvest resources too slowly, you lose, if you are harvesting resources and your enemies destroy your capability to harvest resources you lose.  In other words, the strategic decisions are more akin to the real world where resources determine who wins wars, not who has the biggest guns.  Here the game incorporates many of the characteristics of other games. Starcraft probably originated or at least improved these elements, but I refer to them as references. 

Resource collection is one of my favorite parts of the game and it reminds me of the very old versions of Command and Conquer.  That is, the way you collect your resources, how much of your industrial capacity you devote to it, and how you balance the use of your limited resources between resource collection and military units is absolutely critical.  Personally, I apply the Powell Doctrine to all my Starcraft game play, which is you do not attack unless you have overwhelming force.  I spend all my time and energy developing resources and military units sufficient to protect that activity against any attack.  Once my resource levels are overwhelming, I simply send my entire army into the attack en masse and make quick work of the enemy.  Not unlike the real world where the original combat operations in Iraq were over quickly due to the U.S.’s overwhelming force levels.  Related to resource collection is base design. You must think about where you place your storage facilities, base, barracks, bunkers, air defense etc.  And these decisions must reflect the terrain you find yourself in, the location of the enemy, and what you know about them.  Which then links to the need for good intelligence.  You cannot make good decisions about resource collection and base design until you know what you can expect to see from your opponent.  All these elements combine seamlessly into a frenetic real time rush to make life or death decisions about your campaign.  Just like the real world, but in this case there are no consequences and you can restart the mission if you get wiped out.

Just as rich as this resource/design/scouting experience is the actual tactical combat.  You have a wealth of units to choose from ranging from masses of foot soldiers, tanks, air attack units, large air units, hybrid air/land attack units etc.  There are a large number of tactics and strategies you can employ to be successful.   We could talk at length about the different tactics and strategies you can use, but that is not the point of this review.  The point is that this game is a canvass you decide how to paint, which is the mark of a superior real time strategy game.  There is no set way to win, or lose, and you can play it over and over experimenting with new strategies and tactics.  There are a few missions that feel like Warhammer, where you have a set number of units and you must achieve a limited, specific objective such as rescuing someone or destroying a target, but those simply punctuate the overall free hand strategy game.

As you can imagine, the campaign culminates in a large scale all out battle that took me a few tries to figure out and succeed, and there is a nice end cut scene.  But after all that, and about 70 hours of game play you are just getting started.   Once you finish this campaign you can enter the brilliantly designed single and multiplayer non-campaign game which is quickly becoming a subculture of its own.

Multi-Player

Starcraft II built this right.  You can ease into the on line multiplayer experience, play cooperatively, get training, play against the computer, and play as a Zerg, Protoss, or human. 

There is so much depth to this experience the quickest way to describe it is to simply relate our experience. After we completed the campaign we took the tutorial lessons.  This is a training ground that allows you to use the different races, their very different structure and resource models, and their very different units.  The tutorials start out with simple unit combat and teach you what units from each race can accomplish against the other race’s units.  Tactical tutorials for specific missions, i.e. nuking a large number of massed enemies to designing the best defense against the Zerg horde help you get acclimatized.  You will need to spend some time on the Zerg and Protoss tutorials as they are entirely different armies than the humans.

After the tutorials, we tried out some of the AI games.  This is a simple map combat instance where you pick your race, your opponent’s race, the map, and how many teams are on each side.  You can choose to have 1 v. 1 up to 4 v. 4.  This is good practice, but the best way to learn quickly is to play the cooperative version on line and watch your teammates.  Start out on medium to get some good players to learn from.  After you get comfortable with the different races, or if you are like us you simply just play the human forces, you have a 50 game testing period where you can play easy level 1 v. 1 or larger maps for points which garner you some benefits.

What benefits?  Not sure, but at a minimum you get some bling which you will discover when you try to change your avatar.  You cannot pick anything but the frat dude picture and a few others until you level up.  We haven’t had time to figure everything out yet because of our pesky careers and family obligations, but apparently the point system contributes to a complicated match up system so that you are paired with opponents with similar experience and skill levels. 

We usually play the AI or the coop game with lots of opponents so we can stop playing when the phone rings or the kids wake up late at night so that we don’t shut down a game with someone abruptly after playing for an hour (those guys are dicks).  At least with the AI game you don’t piss any person off, and the large coop game teammates get all your resources when you surrender to get your kid a bottle and hush them back to sleep late at night.

The long and short of it is that the best part of the Starcraft game play is quickly accessible in many different flavors in the multiplayer game.  This mode is widely popular as of this article.  As of today there is a subculture out there using terms like “racking” or “rocketing” or something like that.  It stands for a strategy of sending out an SCV (Resource collector and builder) and setting up a barracks across the screen right next to your opponent very early in the game for the purpose of pouring all your resources into the barracks to quickly eradicate an enemy before they have a chance to build military units and defend themselves.  It is like sneaking into Germany in 1929, setting up Fort Benning, training thousands of soldiers, and wiping out the National Socialists before they arm.  Well not really, but sorta.

In any event, there are lots of game play opportunities out there, and the experience so far is very rich.  We intend to play this for awhile.   As Mr. Crusty said a few months ago, it looks like this game has legs.  Buy it.  It does not suck.

Methodology Summary

 Excellent On Line Gaming Experience:                                                 Yes

Success in game play through teamwork and smarts:                      Yes

Complementary Single Player Experience:                                           Yes

Involves Shooting Someone:                                                                       Yes

Can be played over and over:                                                                       Yes

Playable by a geezer who has a life and other obligations?              Yes

Conclusion:  Excellent single player translates seamlessly into richer multiplayer experience in this well designed and executed RTS.

Publisher:                   Blizzard

Developer:                  Blizzard

Release Date:            July 2010

Best FAQ/Guide Site: www.starcraft2strategymasters.com (for multiplayer)

Price as of Today:         $49.99 (Amazon)

Warhammer 40,000:  Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising

Summary:  Good real time strategy (RTS) game, but not great.  We were spoiled by the games with similar depth of choice for actual tactical play, but the strategy aspect leaves us asking for more.  Land, shoot, win.  Thus missing the strategy part of the real time strategy genre.  We give this a sucks rating.  Do not buy it.[1]

Overview:  You start out as a space marine in the future, you have massive weaponry and the archetypical space armor that is present on all humans in the science fiction compendium.  You are alerted to an invasion of the Zerg and must defeat them.  Zerg?  Oh yeah, this isn’t Starcraft, but it wants to be.

Warhammer’s game model is a tactics heavy real time strategy game.  And it is a very good tactical game.  But if you are looking for a real time strategy game where global planning is just as important as who to send on point, then this is not the game for you. 

You begin as the hero/recruit and wait…wait…wait for it.  You are a 6 foot white guy.  As the play begins you defend a planet against space orcs, but in this game they call them orks.  Another tired framework opponent.  You will see the space elves, or the Eldar, as they are known in the Warhammer Universe, and the Tyrannids, otherwise known as a more evolved version of the creature from alien.

The game play is quite good.  Your hero leads the Blood Ravens/space marines. Your individual character is a hero who operates alone in his unit.  You have the choice of several other squads to bring with you, up to four.  There is the scout squad (Cyrus), heavy machine gun squad (Avitus), utility squad (Tarkus) and later in the game, Davian Thule (mech war type soldier).  You only get to bring three with you when you launch a mission, which is the one of the few strategic decisions you will make in the game.  Unfortunately you do not get much information to direct your decision making, so it isn’t a very meaningful decision unless you start over.

Once your people land you usually have to travel to an objective and shoot everyone there, thus winning.  This is where the game shines because you have to make good tactical decisions to be fully rewarded.  Your game play maps are all square, but usually have many obstacles requiring you to travel on one of a few paths to your objective.  You have some decisions to make here because there are usually one or two side objectives consisting of taking over a temple or a factory.  These are important because the allow you to use some powers more often.  They are also spread out to the far corners of the map.  You can also choose a direct path and miss this bonus element.  The tradeoff is that you achieve more experience points the quicker you achieve the primary objective.  This need for speed is also balanced by the reward of achieving the objective without your unit leaders becoming harmed to the point they become unconscious and need reviving.  Finally, you achieve points if you kill most of the opponents.

The actual combat is quite good as well.  You can mix up your tactics and play anything from a traditional combat patrol where your snipers flush out your enemies and draw them into a field of fire where your heavy machine gunners wear them down to a full frontal assault.  You can even flank some enemies by splitting up your squad to perform a pincer movement.  The combat even gets hard from time to time so you have to plan out good tactics. 

Leveling up was just as interesting as the tactical combat element of the game.  You choose between your health, ranged weapon, melee, and energy skills.  Periodic bonuses at certain levels of these four skills forced you to choose wisely and spread out your strengths among your units.  Weapon choice was equally enjoyable.  During your combat missions you pick up multiple weapons, armor and other bonus items such as health packs, characteristics modifiers etc.   You spend some interesting minutes selecting the right weapons for your team and then you can sell them for experience points thereby exchanging short term gains in levels for the missed opportunity to use a weapon later on a mission that could benefit from its presence. 

That concludes our description of the superior elements of this game.  Much of the game is punctuated by a dialogue between your unit leaders, the governors of the planets you are ridding of pests, and your own command structure.  I stopped listening to all this blather about a day into the game because the communication didn’t add anything to the game.  It was just filler.  The global strategic elements were sorely lacking too.  The only global decision you were wise to make was whether to travel to a planetary system that indicated that the Tyrannids/Aliens were overwhelming.  This decision was easy however because a big red light shows up at the planet, and being the strategic genius you are, you select that planet to invade next.

Multiplayer not very interesting. 

There was nothing creative in the multiplayer options.  There was one novel aspect of the game play, but you would quickly tire of it and we will only mention it briefly. 

Multiplayer consists of joining a game, picking a map type, always square, and the number of opponents.  There is nothing creative about this, just pure tactical map play.  Do you head straight for the opponent’s base as a feint? Or do you slowly build up your forces and creep across the map?  Do you concentrate your limited resources on recruiting a heavy machine gun army?  Or do you balance it with snipers?  We have all played this game before and the main difference is that there is a “K” where we usually expect to see a “C” in the work Orc.  This is still a good multiplayer experience, but nothing we haven’t seen before, and nothing that will keep your interest for very long with all the choices on line today. 

“The Last Stand” was a separate multiplayer experience where you and a few other on line companions start out on a disc shaped structure with four gates on each side of the disc.  It kind of reeks of a Terry Gilliam set from Time Bandits, and makes about as much sense.  You then attempt to survive as long as possible as wave after wave of Zerg/Tyrannid/Aliens/Orcs/SpaceElves/Eldars come at you.  You eventually die, but then you can play again!  Then wave after wave of Zerg/Tyrannid/Aliens/Orcs/SpaceElves/Eldars come at you.  You eventually die, but then you can play again!  You get the idea.

Methodology Summary:

Excellent On Line Gaming Experience:                                                                 No

Success in game play through teamwork and smarts:                                  Yes

Complementary Single Player Experience:                                                         Yes

Involves Shooting Someone:                                                                                    Yes

Can be played over and over:                                                                                    No

Playable by a geezer who has a life and other obligations?                           Yes

Conclusion:  Elements of this game are quite well done, but the game lacks the strategy we have come to expect in this sub genre of the on line game.  Tactical game play is superior, but we have seen it before.  And this good does not outweigh the bad in this sequel to a successful franchise.  This game sucks, don’t buy this game.

Publisher:                                           THQ for Microsoft Windows

Developer:                                         Relic Entertainment                          

Release Date:                                   February 2009

Best FAQ/Guide Site:                     IGN at http://guides.ign.com/guides/14243516/page_2.html

Price as of this Article:                      $26.42

Bioshock

Summary:  This game does not suck.  Buy it.  Good example of new thinking and creativity that generates a single player only game that can be replayed every year.    

Single Player Play

The plot:  You are the sole survivor of ocean plane crash.  You just happen to crash near the entrance to an underwater city built by a fascist.  Picture Donald Trump building an underground world.  But in this world the Donald doesn’t hold back on his opinions of the governments that hold him back.  You are contacted by a strange voice on a radio.  He informs you that the underground city, Rapture, is in disarray, the lunatics are running the asylum, literally, and you must help him free his family from the facist overlord’s grasp.

To top it off, the City’s progenitors developed a gene altering system that allows you to shoot fire out of your hands.  This of course needs a power source to allow you to do it, which is called Adam.  It should be no surprise to you that Adam must be harvested from dead people by 4 year old girl/zombies who are accompanied by automatons in hyped up deep sea diving suits.  The girls use a nasty syringe to jab corpses repeatedly all the while carrying on a conversation with their protectors referring to them as “Mr. Bubbles.”  Ok, maybe that is a surprise, but I am not making it up either. This is also one aspect of the game that combines with a thoughtful attention to the audio and visual detail to make it entirely compelling.

The game progresses on and you have to complete tasks in several separate sections of the city, all the while urged on by the mysterious person who just happens to one of four sane human beings left in the whole world.  We assume this is because they haven’t altered their genetic codes with the Adam, but it is generally strange that they are the only ones left.

Why this Single Player Game without an On Line Option does not suck.

Sometimes a single player game will overcome the lack of an on line multiplayer option to get to our “does not suck list.”   This is one of them.  Here are the primary reasons.

1,  The visual environment.  This is a totally new concept in the first person shooter environment, and the developers built it correctly.  You are in an underwater city, it leaks, the graphics are awesome.  More importantly, you never have any repetition.  It is quite easy for game programmers to recycle wall textures and rooms here and there with a few alterations.  In Bioshock, there is no repetition.  You don’t notice this at first, but as you progress through the levels you will become more and more amazed at the level of detail applied to the environments.  Underground forests, medical facilities, and stores all look very very rich in their detail.  This attention to detail is evident in other areas of this game as well.

2.  The audio environment.  This aspect of the game may be a better testimony to the love and affection the developers have for the game.  Every single material detail of your environment makes a well intentioned audio response.  The lunatics who try and kill you throughout the game can be heard talking to themselves around corners.  You can tell they are in a big room or a tight space.  You can feel their derangement in their voices.  The dialogue is kind of scary after awhile.  Your ammunition, supply and Adam stations also make excellent sounds.  “Welcome to the Circus of Values” will become a familiar and welcome sound.

3.  Guns and Adam.  Ok, this is the same thing as any first person role playing game with swords and magic, only here it is called weapons and Adam.  Here however, the decisions are delivered with some depth.  You need to purchase the right Adam/spells with your limited resources.  Your choice of ammunition can be meaningful if you run out as in most games, but you can also collect parts to make unusual ammunition such as exploding shotgun shells or incendiary crossbow bolts.  You have to decide.  (Build the incendiary bolts).

4.  Little Sisters.  Ok, I have two girls, so I am a sucker for this aspect of the game.  But it is also the most distinguishing factor that contributes to the non suckiness of Bioshock.  As most of you know, your journey through a first person shooter is typically a linear journey.  You start, you are usually a white, brown haired American around six feet tall who by some quirk of fate or your genetics are placed in a situation where you are going to save the world, or destroy it through your shortcomings.  Even then, you can replay the game and save the world using a saved game that the rest of us do not enjoy.  This is no different peering down on Bioshock from the surface. However, you have a moral decision to make throughout this game when you come across these little sisters/Adam gleaning zombies.  You can either harvest the Adam from their own bodies, or free them, turning them from zombies back to the cute and innocent 4 year olds they were when they were abducted into the Adam harvesting service. 

I couldn’t stand the idea of killing a four year old girl, so I never considered harvesting one for my benefit, even in this fake world.  I am told there is an alternative ending to this game if you do harvest them, but I think that makes you a sick fuck if you do, so suck my balls.  Me and my overweight middle aged ass will kick your depraved butt if you argue otherwise.  However, this may be a distinction lost on the younger readers because I sometimes well up during a McDonald’s commercial if there are hungry kids in the screen shot.

Deep breath.  Anyway, this part of the game distinguishes your gameplay from the formulaic journey we are all used to and makes it very compelling.  You find yourself actually caring about these pixels on the screen.  The end cut scenes after you save the world actually brought tears to my eyes the first time I played it. 

Summary:         Same as above.

Publisher:          2k Games

Platforms          PC – we don’t care about any other platform

Published:         Summer 2007

Publisher Site:   http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock

Best Help/FAQ Site:  http://www.gamespot.com/features/6176968/index.html

Purchase Price as of 7/6/10:      $19.99 new.

Bad Company 2

Summary: This game does not suck.  Skip the single player mode.  Multiplayer is rich and inviting, but missed some easy opportunities to best BF 2142 in terms of the replayability and technical shortcomings.

The Single Player Mode. Let me set the stage.  You are part of a dedicated squad of soldiers on a special mission to save the world.  Your past haunts you.  You have a Texan, a black man, and a forgettable fourth guy in your quad.  You are white.  Aw shit, who cares.  The story is just like every other single player campaign in recent memory.  To be totally honest, I cannot remember too much about the single player game except for the fact it was hard in about 2 places, you walked in a straight line from beginning to end, and blah blah blah… you save the world – – run credits.

More importantly, this is not the typical Battlefield Franchise game in single player mode.  It is no longer the training grounds for multi player.  You will probably play this mode because you paid for it, but it does not justify the price.  Typical of this genre is the strain between writing a good single player game for that market and the multiplayer.  What does one have to do with the other?  Very little.

Where is the revised Battlefield Theme????

Little glitchy.

Some crates in the middle of the air.

Selecting exit game in single player menu doesn’t always work.  Someone less experienced with computers would be frustrated.

Weapon and ammo supply and selection somewhat meaningless.  You either have a sniper rifle, automatic rifle or rocket launcher.  Some distinctions here and there, but I don’t feel like it made a material difference.  Easy to find and ammo not a problem anywhere in the gameplay.

Good AI

Graphics Good.

Runs smoothly, no lag on my rig

Multiplayer

Not BF 2142, but in many ways better.

I am pretty sure this game was written for the XBOX or whatever other loser gaming system the teenagers of the world own, and multiplayer shows it.  Good, or even great multiplayer experience however.

Graphics of course, are better, and they should be at this point in history.  Another very interesting difference is the fact that the environments are destructible.  For example, you can blow up a wooden building holding something important and it crumbles to the ground.  If anyone is in the building, they die.  If your objective you need to destroy is in the building you achieve it.   Bullets are affected by gravity.  Very interesting aspect that minimizes the effect of snipers.  The mix of weapons and gadgets is also richer than in BF 2142, but the distinction is superficial.  Like all multiplayer team shooters of the genre, there is an assault, sniper, medic, and engineer option.  I mean, hey, what else are you going to put in there, a chaplain?  Also, the improvements in your weapons within a given class are very incremental, so there is no big gain in ability unless you compare the entry level assault rifle to the ultimate one received.

By and large the vast majority of the on line play is in Rush mode.  This mode’s gameplay involves two teams (duh, but wouldn’t it be interesting if someone came up with a three team on line game?) one playing offense.  They must destroy two M-Comm boxes (I’m sure someone has figured out what that stands for, check our FAQ recommendation) by approaching them and arming them.  It is unclear why the defending team leaves explosives near a box they are defending, but we cannot question too much in this universe.  For example, just exactly how does your body transport and heal itself at your base in approximately 8 seconds after you were shot in the face with a bazooka?  Once those boxes are destroyed, the gameplay then shifts to an adjacent area where two more boxes must be destroyed or defended.  If the offensive team fails to destroy the boxes before they run out of men, they lose.

Multiplayer has other modes including standbys like base capture and Squad Rush, which is a smaller version of Rush limited to two four person teams.  But for the most part all the action is on the Rush servers.

BFBC2 has three significant shortcomings when compared to BF 2142’s multiplayer experience.  First, teamwork is not as rewarding or possible.  There is no overall commander, and the voice communications is not utilized well.  We cannot tell if this is a problem on our end or not, but we have only joined one squad in the last three months where the voice commands were used.  Repeated attempts to engage our squad members using voice chat failed.  This does not hamper the game, but it does mean you miss a chance to maximize teamwork opportunities.  Related to this shortcoming is the map size.  There are very few wide open large scale maps.  This makes sense because the game is foot soldier oriented and the vehicles are less important.   If you did not have small maps you could spend a good 2 minutes running to the action because the vehicles do not appear very often in most maps.  Because these multiplaying fields are so small, it is possible that many people do not use the voice chat option because events are too chaotic to plan.  For example, if you are in a frenzied firefight where you simply need to shoot in front of you and dodge grenades, a few words from your squadmate relating the location of the eight enemies directly in front of you in a building isn’t going to add much to your ability to defeat them.  The reward of voice chat commands in most situations just simply isn’t worth the effort.  In turn, this also highlights that the multiplayer game doesn’t reward discipline, teamwork, or simple planning like BF 2142 does.  In BFBC2, the 13 year old with the screaming game rig with a 25” monitor and no lag is far more likely to best you than the calm, patient guy like me who is willing to stay behind the action as a medic solely for the purpose of healing my squad mates so that we can win the overall game, even though it may be a little boring.

Second, this game has is that the leveling up for improved weaponry and gadgets can be fully complete in about a month of gameplay.  Therefore, there is no meaningful reason to continue playing unless you like the game play.  After month two, I am just about bored because I have all the guns and gadgets.  I do not have all the awards, gold stars, and rank etc.  But as far as I can tell there is absolutely no difference between the 4 Star General who caps me and myself in terms of weapon damage, accuracy etc.

Third, and the most frustrating, is that the on line experience for the XP  in terms of locating a game and joining the one where your internet connection works best is infuriating.  First, the ping indicator does not work on XP.  If you get it working on a PC that runs on XP home edition, let us know.  However, we have read about 30 articles on line on how to fix this problem and absolutely none of them work.  This means that when you search for an on line game you have no indication of whether the game you enter is going to be choppy or smooth until you actually joint the game.  Once you enter the game, the ping indicator works just fine, which is irritating because it means that your computer is not the problem, it is Electonic Arts’ fault.  One other irritating thing about this characteristic is that the ping indicator does work intermittently, but randomly further teasing you that you could avoid selecting your games based on the hint of where the server is located in the name.  Now granted, we are running this game on XP, which is 10 years old, but the problem should be avoidable.

Conclusion: Same as the summary dude.

Publisher:          EA DICE

Release Date:   March 2010

Battlefield 2142

By Nelson and Mr. Crusty

Summary: This is the least suckiest game in the universe. Ever. Until we find a better game. This is the archetypical on line multiplaying first person shooter. And it is the best one we have played so far. We review this 2006 game for the purpose to explain our binary rating system: games either suck or they do not. This is the best example of a game that does not suck and we compare it to all other games.

The Single Player Mode. – The ideal single player mode.

You are a soldier in the 22nd century. The ice age has returned. Geopolitical power blocs have condensed to one or two. You must win specific battles as part of a team to protect your nation’s interest in limited resources. But none of this is meaningful as the game is so well designed the back story does not matter. The only cut scenes this game has is at loadup, and you can skip it. It is interesting to watch for the first time.

Battlefield 2142 (BF 2142) is so good that there is only one distinction between the single player and multiplayer game modes unlike the mass audience FPS offerings on the market in this age: your opponents are AI instead of human beings. Practice on this mode before you go on line to avoid frustration. Come back when you want to practice flying the helicopters, but like all good games, there is no material difference between the single and multi player modes, so we can skip to that right now.

Multi-Player Mode – Superior on line gameplay that is still relevant four years later.

People still spill blood on the BF 2142 battlefield. A lot of them. Interest is waning as the new offerings sate many of the needs fed by BF 2142, but the fact this game still has legs is testimony to its superior design.

The Battlefield franchise may have invented the first person on line shooter. If they did not, they certainly deserve credit for perfecting it. BF 2142 is a significant improvement on the original Battlefield 1942, 2, and Vietnam.

Maps – We could write all day about these maps.

DICE gave these maps some thought. There are nuances throughout the game, they are well designed, and they provide something for every player. They range from contained urban fighting environments to expansive desert landscapes. You can find yourself fighting door to door, or launching a tank strike from 10,000 yards to hit an opponent with the assistance of a spotter. Some maps have both. All maps allow players of every style to have meaningful participation and contributions. These maps are the best maps we have seen to date. Nothing compares.

For example, you can participate in a Titan Mode game as a sniper by making your way to a tower to defend a capture point for 20 minutes by making spectacular headshots on unwary opponents. Later you transport to a titan to either attack or defend in a close combat situation by dropping c4 charges in strategic locations to await foes who are poster children for Darwinism. You shouldn’t run into a corridor without checking for bombs or anti personnel mines in a combat situation. The permutations are numerous. Multiply the last experience by number of classes (4) by number of map types (4) and the number of game roles you can play (3), and whether or not you are on offense or defense (2). By our horribly simple math, that is 96 different types of game experiences within BF 2142.

You won’t be bored with your choices, and you will not have many complaints with this game aspect.

Vehicles

Well thought out and appropriately empowered. Tanks are powerful, but slow. ATVs are quick, but weaponless. Helicopters are moderately fast, and moderately powerful. Vehicle weaknesses are perfectly proportioned to their strengths. Flank your opponents with an ATV, but be prepared to fight with only what you can carry, and never while driving. Bludgeon your way through a front line with a tank, but prepare for slow reaction times and don’t count on running away. Watch your ass as they are susceptible from the rear, as they are in most on line games. Helicopters don’t dominate the skies as jets did in BF 2, and you can see them coming for the most part. At the same time, the pilot doesn’t have fire and forget missiles, so you will need a gunner in the cockpit with you or the luxury of many shots against an enemy to be much of a threat.

Balanced Character Classes

Battlefield 2142 is the prototype for most on line shooters today, and for good reason. Just as the vehicle weaknesses and strengths are balanced, so are the classes you can choose from. And they are what you have come to expect, largely because the Battefield franchise invented/perfected the class balance. Assault soldiers are well armed, but not useful from a distance or to anyone or thing that is injured. Assault soldiers are deadly, but just as susceptible to a bullet so less effective without someone watching their backs.

Snipers are more powerful than other games today, but you have to earn the kills. Headshots take people out, but they are hard from a distance. C4 and anti personnel mines make snipers hard to kill if they see you coming, but they have next to no armament if you come at them head on and zig zagging. Balance? Check.

Engineers are in one way the most powerful classes. You can mine roads, fix tanks, and blast away against soldiers with a shotgun. The balance of power shifts when you upgrade to a trait that allows your character to fix your teammates’ vehicles simply by being near them. You can even fix vehicles while inside your own tank. Picture this: You and a buddy are on line. You are both engineers. You both jump in your own tank. If you drive side by side down a road you are nearly indestructible because you are both constantly repairing each other’s tank. Teamwork rewarded. More teamwork equals more power. Brilliant.

You can probably guess what we think of medics. Medics are critical. Especially when you are near a distant goal and death followed by respawning at your home base will cut your momentum off at the knees. Oh yeah, and you score far more points by administering first aid because you can heal multiple allies at one time. You don’t even need to be there if you drop your med kit off and go somewhere. Unlike the morons in every WW II movie who sported the red cross/target on their helmet, you are armed. Play this character to level up quickly.

Teamwork = power, power is magnified by communication, communication with patience and selflessness is richly rewarded. Only because the writers at DICE are brilliant.

Communication Like No Other Game.

If you have ever been unfortunate enough to see combat, (we have not), you are unlikely to be surprised that privates do not talk to generals on the battlefield. The same rules apply here. Soldiers can talk amongst their squadmates. Being as it is 2142, everyone has GPS, so you know where they are. You can listen to your squad leader, and you are rewarded for it. Same as the real world. Check. Squad leaders have a channel to the boss, or in this version of reality, the Battlefield Commander. They get the benefit of the Commander’s unique information and can pass it on to the squad. Later in the game you can drop a homing beacon that allows your teammates to spawn anywhere on the battlefield. Imagine what a war would be like today if you could drop something the size of a roomba on a rooftop and insert troops. Commanders play a key role, and they have key tools. In a typical game, much like the real world, commanders have the cush job of sending troops to their death. Check. Here, also like the real world, you have access to satellite cameras, radar, artillery, and E.M.P. bombs. You get to order squad leaders to attack separate targets or concentrate everyone on the most pressing needs. You get points for winning and more points if your squads do what you say. This aspect of the game is also well balanced. If you are too busy looking at satellite photos, and you are sitting in the open as a Commander, you are likely to take a head shot or a knife across the throat as you are completely unable to look out in the first person while you are ordering a bombardment. Balance? Check.

And all of this is coordinated with the mouse. Commanders simply click on an icon for a squad and tell it to attack or defend a target. You can do the same thing over the very simple microphone setup, but you won’t get credit unless you do it with the mouse so the computer can register your decision and reward you accordingly.

Leveling is Meaningful.

There is only one tongue in cheek award in the entire BF 2142 and it is the purple heart. You are likely to achieve it early in your gameplay as it rewards you for achieving a disproportionate death to kill ratio. Other than that, the leveling in this game makes sense and is completely meaningful. Each time you increase your level, you get to earn one unlock. There are important choices to make, and unless you pick well, it will take many months, yes months, to earn a truly impressive tool chest. Improved armaments are restricted to each class, so if you are focusing on your assault class improvements you will slowly improve to the highest level of unlocks, to the detriment of all the other class item upgrades. There are a few universal unlocks, but they are not terribly meaningful until you play this game for some time and discover the nuances that can be exploited with slight improvements in your running speed or the number of grenades you can carry. You won’t find a better leveling system outside this game. Modern iterances of the Battlefield franchise are similar, but they lack the purity of the leveling and unlock decisions and consequences that you will see here. Check out our Bad Company 2 review for more on this. At the end of the day the soldier who has 500 hours into this game has more toys than the newbie. The distinction is meaningful, and it is far more likely that the veteran can dust the newbie without much effort, but they earned it.

Two Words – Punk Buster

It may be one word, but we are too lazy to stop writing and check it out. Like all good on line games however, hackers and glitchers are booted from the game if they have installed a hack that assists their aim or makes them impossible or nearly impossible to kill. Here at gaming for geezers we do not have the time, patience, knowledge or desire to hack. Games should be set up for fair game play and success should be determined by skills with absolutely no relation to cheating. Get a life hackers. More importantly, get frustrated by the Punk Buster client operating well on this game.

Shooting Things

Check. We like to shoot things. Most good games involve shooting things. We are not allowed to do it in the real world; we want to in our fantasy worlds.

Replayability – Check

Now that we are about done with this review we are going to boot up the ole BF 2142. It is that good, and it is a game you can play over and over. You meander from time to time, not unlike an unfaithful dog, but you can always come back. And you do. The graphics have been left behind, the environments are not destructible like some more recent on line shooters and the programming doesn’t account perfectly for gravity’s affect on your sniper shot at long range. But you still come back. Over and over. You may even find yourself holing up in an on line battlefield solely for the purpose of getting that gold trophy for 50 knife kills. Some times you may hop from server to server until you find a squad who are all on the microphone, older than 30, and have the good sense to stick together and therefore find that synergy that makes this game the best out there for on line experiences.

Geezer Friendly – Check.

Teamwork is rewarded far more than skill in this game. Thereby fitting nicely into the paradigm described by the following saying: “Never side with youth and exuberance against old age and treachery.” Here that could not be truer. You do not have to hit the buttons faster than anyone to excel at this game. You have be selfless, see beyond your individual needs, and play nice with others to best your opponents on a consistent basis. Quick reflexes are certainly useful, and our arthritic friends won’t do well here in every situation. But they could play this game and play well, just not as a building to building combat team member. There is something for everyone in this game.

Summary

Fanboy gushing aside, this is the best overall game we have encountered to date. It personifies the ideal PC Game for Mr. Crusty and Nelson for the reasons we just gave you. You will discover more details than we have time or space to describe as you immerse yourself in this near perfect game. We cannot make a higher recommendation as of today.

Publisher: EA Games

Champions Online

Summary: Decent Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) with an excellent character build and design system that fails at only one thing: the game play. There are so many good things about this game that it is disappointing to give the sucks rating, but when you factor in the cost of the monthly subscription, the developer miscues, the lack of teamplay dynamics, the broken melee system and the limited roleplaying that this MMO offers, we simply believe this game sucks. With some caveats for the developers to give the game some mojo and work on the mission design and teaming structure, we give this a sucks rating. Do not buy it.

Overview: Your hero begins the game saving the world from an alien invasion through the mastery of your powers. The tutorial is well done and a good intro to the potential of the game. You learn that the world is a very unsafe place with evil masterminds, mutants, aliens, underworld bosses and general mayhem that needs to be tended to by a serious pummeling.

The real star of this game is the character creation system, which is the best of any game we have seen to date. This is a very very deep game, with multiple frameworks or power trees and build potentials that align with some archetypal character builds recognizable from other games. Builds range from ninjas to necromancy, spellcasting to gunslingers, and everything in between.

In fact I was able to build virtually every kind of character I wanted, from a tank to a crowd control maniac, and be able to design the physical look to match. Custom framework options exist where the individual chooses across all powers to create one’s own version of a superhero. This game follows the Health/Energy archetype for character survival and power usage, with one initial power reserved for energy generation. Additional effects for energy and health generation based on combinations and synergies of powers or power traits are earned later in the game. We continue to marvel at the system they created, and to anyone who loves tweeking stats and optimizing builds, this game’s character build tool is a wonder to behold.

The second star of this game is the map and environment design, and how the developers rendered the visuals and effects in the game. The game environment is at times mesmerizing, as if you just walked into a comic book frame and turned on the switch. The various maps, from pristine neighborhoods in a shining city to sewers, swamps, snowy mountains, deserts, caves and urban decay (and yes even underwater), are really well done. The various monsters, villains and minions are also well rendered with good story lines and great tie-ins to the character build system. The music soundtrack is very complementary and adds a lot to the game experience. The maps are huge and sprawling, providing many types of environments and the travel system allows the individual gamer to choose how to experience this game world, from superspeed, to teleport, superjump, rocket packs and multiple variations on these powers. The developer did almost everything right, and we love the intensity and care that was taken to represent the world of comic books in a fresh and respectful way.

This is a mission based game system, where a hero, mission database or emergency beacon calls you to action. You can choose to do some missions, but not others, and in general the missions are generated to move you from map area to map area as your character levels and gains more and more powers. As you level, you return to base and go to the Powerhouse and choose your next skill. Before finalizing a skill selection, you can test out combinations, remove certain powers at a cost, and even respec your character from scratch when a respec is given or earned. The developer-provided forum is a great resource for info on what power synergies complement each other and how one might grow your ‘toon.’ You also have choices for PvE (Player versus Enemy) and PvP (Player versus Player) in an arena format that at first is really fun , and does force a gamer to consider the various differences in a build to win at either pummeling enemies in game or other players in the arena. Again the developers did almost everything right in the game. But that’s the rub. Almost is the operative word.

Great. I have a build I like. Now what? So how does this all work together in the game? Not great as it turns out. The developers tried something new in the game to mixed results: there is no penalty for dying in this game. And no, that is not a misprint. This developer choice does something really strange in the game – there is no benefit to teaming or optimizing a certain type or role within the game.

Support roles are not given the benefit of the experience for crowd control or healing that one usually expects, tanks are underpowered, and spellcasters and area effects are too powerful to ignore, considering that there are many ways to seriously juice up your health points for typically squishy character types. There is little reason to play with others on a team, the communication isn’t important, and the supergroup or clan becomes a sort of trading group of sorts for a very ineffective crafting and item/trait upgrade system.

All the pieces of a superior title are already in the game, but the gameplay devolves into simply optimizing the build of your character and grinding through to the next level to upgrade again. This is a classic problem – if you can be anything, your choices don’t matter, and that means relationships and other players in the game don’t really matter. Some people will play this and enjoy the build/optimize part of the game, but for us at gamingforgeezers.com, we need more than tweeking builds to continue playing, especially considering the monthly subscription cost for the game. So what do you get for paying monthly anyway?

Really? You just nerfed me…again? Like most MMOs, the game develops optimized builds by dedicated players who really get into the game. The depth of combinations of assembling a power tree means your choices for your character number in the millions. Unfortunately, the developers reward this love by changing power characteristics and synergies at will. More than once we have had carefully crafted builds completely destroyed by the developers, who simply don’t understand that the players have put a serious amount of time into leveling up a character and researching a build that works and is fun to play. This happened so many times in the first 6 months of the game release that we seriously believe that the game lost a large potion of its initial committed audience.

What you should be paying for with a subscription service is new content and mission maps, and some of this has happened. But the “power balancing” in the game continues even now, and new material doesn’t come out regularly enough to justify the monthly subscription. The lack of consistency is really troubling, especially to a gamer who may casually play once or twice a week, only to have your current character build balanced into oblivion.

The power balancing has also shifted the melee (punching, swords and weapon powers) to a point where it is not very fun to play. Due to the extreme power of area effects later in the game, unless these types of melee builds choose similar area of affect powers, your superhero is toast. And since the teaming function doesn’t drive players to team up or optimize their ‘toon’ to a specific role to survive, what’s the point of even choosing a tank build if you can’t make it past even a group of minions. This also forces a power imbalance in the PvP arenas, with some builds really overpowered, leaving very limited reasons to even enter the PvP arena.

In the end the gameplay is a letdown and repetitive, not due to the game design, but due to developer choices. We still believe that this issue is a solvable problem, but the developers have burned their chances with their audience to shift the game with really dumb decisions early on in the release, and limited continued commitment to new content. We hope this changes.

Methodology Summary:

Excellent On Line Gaming Experience: No

Success in game play through teamwork and smarts: No

Complementary Single Player Experience: No

Involves Shooting Someone: Yes

Can be played over and over: Yes

Playable by a geezer who has a life and other obligations? Yes

Conclusion: Amazing character generation tools, great environments, compelling missions, but in the end the gameplay really suffers from some simple miscues by the developers, the lack of team dynamics, the broken melee system and undefined role-playing aspects of the game. Unfortunately, the cost of the monthly subscription does not justify playing this game over time.

Publisher: Atari

Developer: Cryptic

Release Date: September 2009

Best FAQ/Guide Site: IGN at http://guides.ign.com/guides/14243516/page_2.html

Price as of this Article: $19.99 for initial purchase

$14.99 Monthly subscription, or

$59.99 for 6-months, or

$199.99 for Lifetime subscription

Summary: This game sucks, do not buy it. Play the single player campaign if someone gives you the game. The multiplayer totally sucks.

How does a game with a solid franchise, good customer loyalty, and a massive marketing budget crank out a game with horrible on line experiences? Simple, they can. The publishers are probably still riding the whole Pitfall wave they started out with on the Atari, and figure that we would buy this game happily for $60 and be satisfied.

Like all mainstream and first person shooters released to a mass market audience in the last few years, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2 has the single player/multiplayer dichotomy. The gaps between the two in this case however, are staggering.

Single Player Play

The first person production values are awesome. I mean you have the voice talent for the Secret Service Guy for Life dude from 24, the protagonist from the Rome series on HBO, and the voice of the latest military recruiting ad campaigns whose name I cannot remember, but he is a good actor as well as a shill for the military industrial complex. I mean, this is some serious voice talent recruitment. Usually you get one or two known voices, but these guys have three. There are probably some I cannot recognize, but the talent in the voice over is good.

The plot in the single player campaign is excellent. The writers took some chances with one of the missions, and you will know which one I am talking about when you play this game.

The weapons in this game make sense too. And it makes a difference which one you pick unlike in some first person shooters where there is basically just four weapons: the pistol; automatic rifle, sniper rifle, and bazooka. In CODMW2, the selection of the rifle you use can make the game quite difficult or quite enjoyable depending on your selection. Pay attention to the sights on the weapon which are indicated when you position yourself to select it. The authors tempered the ammo supply well too, so you actually need to pay attention to how much you use and not just fire blindly into the action.

Vehicle play in this game is immaterial as there are only a few missions where you get in a vehicle, and half the time you do it, it is to go fast in one direction for a few minutes because you are chasing an objective, or being chased. You are a passenger in the other half of the vehicle trips, and I do not believe you can die while in them, rendering your decisions moot.

The AI in this game is quite advanced too. The enemy is not predictable, and not terribly dumb. I never found myself anticipating a computer bad guy, and their use of weapons is intuitive, just as if someone finally said, “Hey, how about we spend some time writing some subroutines into the AI for this game.”

The plot got confusing at times, but you generally understand that you are saving the world, and I believe there were one or two different protagonists throughout the game so you didn’t play one lone wolf who single handedly saved the entire fucking world with a gun, which was refreshing. Here, two individuals saved the entire fucking world with a gun. But overall, I really enjoyed the single player game, which is unusual. Normally, the single player mode in the games I play are just warm ups for the multiplayer. Which leads me to the next section, which if you are still reading this, will be an exercise in how to keep calm while excoriating a multiplayer game.

Multiplayer Sucks Ass

Big hairy blistered ass. Wow did this suck. How did a game team write and produce such a beautiful single player experience and have next to none of it translate to the multiplayer? How? I mean, I am not a computer programmer and could never even begin to write games, so to the extent that makes my judgment hypocricial, it is. But come on!!

I was at an 80’s dance night at a local establishment last week and the difference between the videos produced back then and those using today’s technology are just as different as the single player and multiplayer experience in CODMW2. Juxtapose the video for “I ran” by the Flock of Seagulls with, oh I don’t actually watch music television anymore, but I cannot imagine that the videos of today suck as much as those produced with 1980’s technology.

The controls for entering the multiplayer game should be an early indicator. You do not actually enter the multiplayer mode from the main game. You have to exit the single player campaign and start up the entirely separate multiplayer mode. I would like to think this is because there were two separate development teams for each mode, and the single player team did not want to be tainted by the multiplayer mode.

The gameplay is not visibly or experientially different from the last CODMW multiplayer, which I thought totally sucked too.

I played the multiplayer in the last version about 4 times. I played this one about 8 times to see if it got better. It didn’t.

First, the maps are incredibly small and not intiuitive. The game play takes place in a world where there are an incredibly high number of corners. It is an urban planning nightmare where there is absolutely no traffic flow, and you cannot climb up to the top of the buildings.

Vehicles are non-existent, which makes sense because the psychopath who designed the environments didn’t allow for roads and you couldn’t drive more than 10 feet on any map. Actually there are vehicles, but you do not get to climb into them, and they seem to be linked to some sort of bizarre reward system. You can shoot these vehicles with your bazookas and they disappear.

Aimbots. Hello, did you ever hear of Punk Buster? Cheating is too easy, and it is quite obvious when you enter into a game and a player is using a hack. The problem is, you get punished for leaving a game so you either get whacked by a kid using a pistol to place three head shots in you with a tight spread at 150 yards while he is running, or you leave and lose points. Argh.

I did not play this game long enough to understand the leveling, but it seemed to make sense, and you have to earn the level ups. Small golf clap for that.

I didn’t even bother to look this up, but I assume this PC version was probably a port from the X Box or whatever gaming system the chronically undereducated and unemployed are playing today, which would explain a lot of the suckness in this multiplayer game, but not all of it. There are a lot of good ported games out there, so that doesn’t explain the suckfest that is CODMW2 multiplayer.

As I write this, Activision is running a paid media campaign to tout its expansion pack for the multiplayer game which is an indicator that a lot of people enjoy this part of MWCOD2, but if you have tastes similar to the Geezers, you will avoid this game unless someone gives it to you for free. Even then, you won’t waste much time on the multiplayer, because you have far better options out there. The single player will entertain you, but only for a short while.

This game sucks. Do not buy it.

Prior to launching our website and podcast, Mr. Crusty and Nelson spent 14 years doing intensive market research into the gaming market using focus groups under actual real world conditions. We followed this up with an exhaustive review of the academic journals on leisure time, game theory, the part of the brain that processes strategic decisions and ethical studies of on line gaming.

Actually no. We didn’t do a damn thing except decide it would be fun to start this project. We were drinking. The amazing thing is that the project survived to sobriety. Also, we wanted to have an excuse to tell our wives that we had to play video games.

Here are our real criteria followed up by an explanation of each:

The best game for geezers to play, of all time, is Battlfield 2142. All other games are either better or worse than the best game ever published in the whole universe. So far we have not found the better game, but when we do, we will let you know. At which point in time, all games will be better or worse than that game.

Games that do not suck have the following characteristics, much like BF 2142:

What this means:

Numbers or stars such as 9.5 out of 10 or 4 stars tell you a lot, but game ratings using these mechanics are not always useful. One person’s 9 out of 10 is usually different than ours. Therefore, we have created this relational rating system. You will know whether this game sucks, or does not suck at the end of our reviews. We recommend you play all the games that do not suck, and do not play the ones that do.

In addition to the information on suckiness, you can tell how much we like this game by how far away from BF 2142 it is in our list. We like the games closer to the top of the list than the ones on the bottom.