The Gaming Extra

Here’s a list of known issues on Activision’s game, Prototype recently released (and was part of Activision’s E3 line-up) game.

http://www.gamingnewslink.com/2009/06/11/activision-prototype-2009-fixing-errors-crashes-freezes-and-installation-errors/

As much as I’d want to play this on the PC… but I can’t because it’s only available on consoles… sigh. Here’s the demo video for Beatles Rockband (one solid piece of game)

video from Machinima account in YouTube

E3 2009 has arrived and with it, some new videos of interest. One particular set videos, is on Call of Duty “6”: Modern Warfare (2).

Reveal Trailer

Pretty exciting, varying from Snow, Jungle, Desert and Urban (with civilians)

E3 Gameplay Trailer (Soap is now a Cap’n, and strange that he sounds like old Cap’n Price)

I wonder what that gun is all about. Cornershot maybe? But it’s a rifle. It’s gonna be 5 long months before I get my paws on this game. :D

*The FNG’s name is “Roach”, I wonder if he’ll have a lifespan like a cockroach.

*update* after reading through some of the comments in the YouTube video, the rifle’s called a Mk14 Mod 0 EBR (Enhanced Battle Rifle) :) Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_14_Mod_0_Enhanced_Battle_Rifle

Something to take from the Windows “Life Without Walls” Commercials

Introduction:

The Last Remnant is one of those few Role Playing Games from Square-Enix that has managed to arrive in one piece to the PC. Yes, since the last Square RPG to hit the PC was Final Fantasy XI, which to much consternation would require subscription (I’m a stingy guy, I’d not pay a monthly fee to play a game on top of buying it), and fast internet connection (yeah, I’m only running on WiFi at home).

Square-Enix took a different approach in producing a new franchise for Role Playing Games. Instead of using a tried old formula of developing games using their own design, they’ve used instead an existing graphics engine of Unreal Engine 3 (used in some games like Gears of War 1&2). By having a pre-made engine, it enabled the developers to create an RPG that is available to the X360, PS3 and the PC.

The world where Rush, the protagonist of The Last Remnant lives has four races: Mitra (humans), Sovani (cat like people with four arms), Qstis (frog like people), Yama (Fish like people known for their big sizes). His initial role was to save his sister Irina from her captors due to her skills in using Remnants and allies himself with the Duke of Athlum to save her, and later helps in defeating The Conqueror whose aim is to collect all of the Remnants and use it.

Graphics:

Characters and settings are inspired through a mix of Eastern and Western art and culture, with katanas and knightswords being used by troops, to the mixed clothing styles characters in the game wear. There are variations of Samurai like armor, and Knight’s armor, which can be found.

On the PC, The Last Remnant is something to be both enjoyed, and annoyed. since we’re using an engine developed for playing PC games, we can further improve the games’ graphics. The big downside is that the better the graphics, the better the video card we should have. Another issue on the PC version is the known problem of the UT3 engine which is the lag in loading the texture(detail) of a place/character. With higher settings on lower end video cards, this can be quite noticeable.  But with the proper balance of settings, the downsides can be avoided.

Gameplay:

Instead of the tried and tested three (or four) member party system in battles, The Last Remnant has a system called Unions where 1-5 characters can join into one Union (a squad), and these can make up into 1 or more (have yet to reach the max limit for the number of Unions) squads in combat. The advantage in having 5 members in the union makes it stronger as the HP, strength and defense parameters are combined, and with the added benefit of having more attacks, dealing more damage or adjusting to the condition. Unions are typically headed by a Leader Character, and Rush (the lead character of the game) can be a leader or a member character in a Union (but you’ll be missing out on Rush’s special attacks if he’s a member). As a little bonus to PC gamers of The Last Remnant, we are able to create all Leader unions (5 leaders in one Union), effectively making strong unions.

There’s no existing level system in the game, instead a generic battle rank is given as an assessment of the entire group of characters, and leveling up doesn’t require hours on end of fighting to increase in level, as there’s no collection of points needed for each individual character, everyone’s stat increase will contribute to the increase in battle rank.

Fighting takes place in a large field where Unions fight with other unions. Commands are issued to Unions and following certain commands, each character in a union will do his/her skill ranging from attack, to special attacks, magic, or use items. Commands are color coded, red for attacks, blue for healing/defense/stat boost, to yellow which signify the use of a special skill. For the red commands, these are further differentiated by their descriptions, from: “Attack”, “Cut off their Leader” (Take out the union’s leader), “Use Special Attacks” (use weapon special moves to deal greater damage) to “Attack from Long Range” (members who have long range magic only attack). Having this kind of command structure makes the battles less straining as we don’t have to assign each character a move. Though at times, the game can still be complex enough to warrant a defeat from a normal enemy if attacks are not planned/coordinated properly.

Items, such as weapons can be bought, upgraded, assembled and disassembled for parts to be used in upgrading other weapons. Weapons are suited for various races in The Last Remnant, and at times, some picked up or bought weapons will be asked for by some of the characters in the party. Items such as herbs are used for item arts for healing/recovering status. Other items include the upgrade/assembly ingredients taken from defeated monsters. Captured monsters can be split up into ingredients, but leaving it intact will net a significant amount when sold.

The actual storyline is quite short if played straight, and one would wonder the lack of other towns in the world map. This is because there are numerous side quests found in every town of the game, opening up more towns, and locations to explore and increase in battle rank. More items can be found and bought, and more characters added to bolster the entire party’s overall strength.

Suffice to say, The Last Remnant is quite for the role playing gamer. It has lots of battles that would appeal to the strategy minded gamer, yet the complexity of some battles can be a bit disappointing. The inventory management can be quite tricky as herbs are mixed (not used as single items in most RPG games), therefore keeping an eye out for stocks after major quests is a must before taking on another quest. Most of the issues found in The Last Remnant console versions have been resolved in the PC version thanks in part of the developers. Downloadable Content are readily available on the PC, but needs to be triggered by having special items found in the game.

PS: Did I mention that it took me over two months to do this blog because I couldn’t leave the game? And I’m running it now on Windows 7 RC, quite fast to boot.

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Activision attempted to introduce another player in the genre of Flight Simulations with Tom Clancy’s HAWX. This however, is made primarily for the consoles and released to PCs later on.

The main premise of the game is about a squadron in the US Navy (which I believe is the case, since they’re flying F-18E Super Hornets) called H.A.W.X. who are about to be disbanded due to their end of service with the US Armed Forces. They are then approached by a PMC called Artemis to become combat pilots for the start-up company. From here we get to fly for the PMC on missions around the world using various aircraft in varying roles. At the game’s midpoint, the squadron’s decision would place them at odds with their employer, and reinstating themselves back to the US Armed Forces.

The game mechanics is not far from other “arcade style” (having simplified controls) Flight Simulators like Ace Combat from Namco-Bandai, each plane in the inventory have their own pros and cons, however, unlike the planes in Ace Combat that include several fictional fighters by Namco’s design, there’s only one fictional fighter featured in HAWX that comes from one of the Tom Clancy novels. Also, like other combat flight sim games, varying objectives from air combat, ground attack and escort missions are given. But one thing that lacks in HAWX are the take-off/landing/in flight refueling side missions.

BUT, HAWX has its own unique features which sets it apart from the other games. One, it has an in-flight mode called ERS (Enhanced Reality System), a computer simulation which guides us to either an enemy aircraft (if where’ having a tough time chasing one down) or a ground target (effectively giving us the best path to a target avoiding any and all ground fire). It’s quite a nice feature especially when dealing with an area loaded with SAM sites. Another function for ERS is to help us avoid incoming missiles if we’re skimping on the use of flares. HOWEVER, since it’s a software and uses a connection with the allied satellite network, it is prone to jamming and can be a double edged sword if we’re rely on it too much.

Second feature unique in HAWX is the OFF mode. This mode shuts down the onboard computer’s limiters effectively pushes the limits of the aircraft and making flying a fun experience. The view shifts to a far off camera perspective letting us see the battlefield far from the rear of the camera. It makes flying the aircraft very smooth and fast, easily dodging missiles (it lets us see where the missiles come from too), and helps in locking on targets quickly. However, this mode turns of the engine limiters which control the aircraft from stalling, so we need to constantly monitor our airspeed, else we would have to recover from stalls.

The graphics of the game is quite outstanding, with the aircraft having detailed panels, lines and decals, the smoke effects are nice to see, and the ground is detailed, thanks to a partnership with Geo Eye (the same folks who provide satellite scans to just about everyone who needs a satellite scan of the Earth :P). But up close, there are some maps having blurred detail, which makes it a bit bad. Some cities covered are: Juarez Mexico, Rio de Janeiro and Washington DC.

The game’s campaign mode is quite long though we’re only limited to replaying the campaign levels in Single Player mode (no create your own game) and Free Flight ala Flight Simulator X (which I’ve used for the photos here). The game has a leveling system in order to release the aircraft and their weapon packages through various challenges, like the one found in Rainbow Six Vegas. There’s a multiplayer game featured for playing with others (coop mode) and against others.

Electronic Arts recently announced their “De-authorization” move on some of their games released after May 2008.

http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize/ – The site deals with the instructions on the “how to de-authorize a game and free up an activation entry”. Surprisingly, it didn’t work on my PC (since I’ve long uninstalled the games before seeing this. And one of the games that’s covered here was sold, well, at least Mass Effect had 5 installations). It seems to me that one has to have the game installed to have it de-authorized (like that of the GTAIV for the PC).

Well one thing’s for sure, it’s not an April Fools Joke, well: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=EA+de+authorization&mkt=en-us&FORM=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox

Wow, tips for Games for Windows titles are now little by little trickling out from the website.

Here’s one sample taken from Call of Duty: World at War’s Nacht der Untoten (German for Night of the Undead), a fun mini-game where the point is to survive as long as possible against the mass of undead Nazis (I guess the all the Nazis killed since Call of Duty 1). It can be played both by one player or up to four cooperative mates (very helpful in the long run).

The challenge of playing the game gets harder each passing level. Here are some tips to survive a tad little longer:

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-us/Community/NewsArticles/Pages/nazizombiestrategy1.aspx

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Community/NewsArticles/Pages/nazizombiestrategy2.aspx

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Community/NewsArticles/Pages/nazizombiestrategy3.aspx

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-us/Community/NewsArticles/Pages/nazizombiestrategy4.aspx

Now here’s something. While looking at some of my Yahoo! Messenger Contacts, I managed to find a link from one of my contacts regarding a music game with the likes of Guitar Hero… only it’s online.

Enter Jam Legend. Right now it’s Beta, but it’s worth taking a look and try.

www.jamlegend.com

   I’ve been a fan of Macross stuff since I was a kid and one of the more ‘must find’ memorabilia would be the video games that Japan churns out once in a blue moon. Since the creation of Macross, various games went with it starting with the classic side scrolling Macross Game, then came the ‘upgraded’ version of the side scrolling classic Macross Do You Remember Love (sporting bigger and better art, nifty gimmicks such as 2D/3D level design and multi-missile attacks that actually swarm, not spread out). During the PlayStation era, aside from the DYRL, then came the 3D games like Macross VFX and Macross VFX 2, which gave players the feel of being in a dog fight, spinning around and dodging side-to-side like heck. The tradition lives up to day on the PSP, Macross Ace Frontier (which I loooooveee playing even at work, even with my busy schedule)

But since this is a PC games blog, let’s back track a bit to the year 2000. During this time, there came a Macross PC game, the only simulator style game called Macross VO.  It originally ran on Windows 95, 98 and Me, and with the release of the NT based Windows (2000 and XP) came some compatibility problems and it was re-released as Macross VOXP. I was figuring out how to play this over Vista and 7, and it’s quite simple. Just set the compatibility option to Windows XP SP2, and it should work like a dream.

*Pardon for the heavy technical Jargon in this blog post, as I’d expect not everyone knows Macross. I’ll try posting some background info after the article.*

Unlike the other Macross game releases, the Macross VOXP game didn’t touch on the other series except for the original 1980s show and movie. Meaning we’re stuck with variations of the legendary VF-1 Valkyrie fighter, and Zentreadi/Meltrandi units. However, there’s a big selection of weapons load out depending on our custom character’s level. The higher the level, the more credits to use more advanced Valkyries, like the VF-1S Strike Valkyrie, specialized gun pods and a wide range of missiles.

Another bit that separates this game amongst other games is that we required to reload are armaments, since the developers made it quite similar to an air combat simulator. Aside from just reloading and repairing our damaged craft, we’re also open to upgrade our fighter, and/or improve our weapons.

For its time, the game did boast relatively nice graphics, but required minimum hardware support (a 32MB video card with a measly 30MHz graphics processing would do well). I have it installed on a Windows 7 powered EEE PC 900 (Intel Celeron) and runs relatively fast. The only pixelation that is very noticeable would be the in-game videos, as they were built for lower resolution monitors back then. The player graphics, however, is scalable to the latest sizes.

The game interface is relatively straightforward, we have a map, the target reticule, life gauge, fuel gauge, speed, enemy target, and selected weapons. The only gripe would be the clutter of the targeted enemies as represented by hexagons on screen. There would be an orange hexagon to indicate the targeted enemy but it usually fails to give proper marking. Also another annoyance would be the popup of character text as it would block the speed, armor and fuel gauges partly.

Though for all intent, the way the targets are presented to be similar to the anime where enemies are shown to be targeted one by one by the heroes then missiles are released to take them down all at once. This provides that high feeling of being part of the show.

Model wise, the artists in the game faithfully designed the VF-1s to be exact to their show counterparts. from the parts down to their decals. The only thing that’s quite off in my opinion would be the flight physics of the craft, as it seems a bit loose.

Control wise, it’s indeed built with the PC in mind as it utilizes many of the keyboard keys for flight. I myself use my X360 Controller for playing, but the controls are quite limited. The game has controls for: target prioritization (cap ship, or fighter), another would be ECM (yes they have it here), Chaff (again, they have it here), and Autopilot (!!!)

As far as customizations go, we can’t change the overall appearance of our craft (color and all), but with the assortment of VF-1 types, there’s quite a handful to choose from. However, for the most part, we can change the type of missiles we carry (as long as we have the points to get them), gunpod, laser, or cannon.

Missiles range from the regular missiles, to long range missiles, to micro missiles that have the best maneuvering but with poorer power, to high maneuver missiles (regular missiles that have the maneuvering power of the micro missiles), and nuclear missiles. One nice trick is to mix up the variety of missiles loaded ex. missile/micro-missile/micro-missile/large missile or high maneuver missile/micro-missile/nuke/micro-missile, etc. The provided setup helps in putting in as much missile to a target in the least amount possible time, unlike having the same missiles. (I’ll try getting a video of that up)

For further customization, there’s quite a number of people who’re working on modifying the game to include designs coming from latter part of the series, like the YF-19, YF-21, and even I’ve hear there’s going to be skins from the recent Macross Frontier series VF-25 mecha.

Unfortunately though, getting this game will be quite hard, since it was out of production for over 7 years I believe.

Source for Macross background information:

Macross Compedinum      http://macross.anime.net/wiki/Main_Page
Macross Mecha Manual     http://www.new-un-spacy.com/m3.html
Macross Mecha Designs    http://www.steelfalcon.com/macrossmecha.html
MAHQ                             http://www.mahq.net/

These are all english sites (as the official ones are Japanese only)

Though it’s not out for the PC yet. I’m sharing Capcom’s Manual (usually issued to game reviewers) I found linked over at Joystiq.

http://static.capcom.com/streetfighter/manuals/SFIV_TM_SE_02252009_SML.pdf

*disclaimer* It’s quite big. And if you’re planning to print it, make sure to make it into a nice book. The art blows me away!!

Been quite busy with work and real life lately. Here’s something that I’ve seen a week ago.

To those who don't know yet, Games for Windows has its own forum all of its own and could be found here:

http://forums.gamesforwindows.com

I bought Grand Theft Auto IV a few days before Christmas (and explains why not a lot of posts popping up) and the first gripe people will be saying... "It has a beast of a requirement". True, but as I've been looking around various sites, I've come to notice that the game has a sort of restriction in the way the game is being configured. Given that my PC's Video Card only has 256MB of DDRIII RAM, the game limits my settings to LOW, LOW, and yes, LOW settings, since it believes that my video card couldn't handle the processing well.

RAM's been quite a problem for me this time around, as the game requires a huge amount of RAM to work nicely with. Here's a cap of my system and see the available dedicated memory that I have at the moment. Now, if I can have the game perform better and have great high resolution (big screen size) work.

Though in a sense using shared RAM isn't the best practice, since I'm using a relatively powerful video card, I could use some shared memory for use, to the point of having relatively balanced performance and quality within the game.  -- update -- though simple as it is to plug-in the command line arguments; through a friend, I found out there's another way to tweak the graphics, though basing it on the Dedicated RAM of the video card (so we'll be sacrificing the better textures on Medium), but on the upside, we can play the game on bigger resolutions, w/o having the nasty issue of having missing textures while playing.

Here's the link: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=384473&st=0

The explanation can be lengthy and may cause nosebleeding to some, but it gets the job done.

More like, Need for Speed Under -whelmed, -developed, -planned. That's what the latest Need for Speed says about. In its latest incarnation, EA promoted the game to have been in development at the same time as ProStreet, leading to a longer development time. And it was promised to be similar to Most Wanted (and I mean Most Wanted Need for Speed game), something I've been hearing about from gamers in the forums and in previews in other sites. Other promises included a game akin to that of playing Transporter (starring Jason Statham).

I've played the game and completed it after a few days of racing around with three cars. The cars that I got are mostly pink slip cars and I only bought a Tier 1 car from

Some quick observations:

a.) The game isn't similar in structure with the previous games where we're obligated to complete each and every task, like taking on races, evading cops, and taking out cops. Since we're playing as an undercover cop, the main focus/mission is to stake out the leads of a car smuggling ring, so the story's driven through "Jobs" which are opened by joining races and other objectives. New jobs are frequently revealed through video cutscenes prompting us to either race/have an encounter with the law to build up credibility.

b.) There's none of the old event/objective marker found while driving, what we have now is an event notice appearing on the dashboard. Having this format, makes navigating around the city less important, since we could all just go to the map and select the race/job to do.

c.) The game suffers severe frame rate problems. Even if I bump down my system's resolution to 800x600 (I normally set my lowest to  1024x768), I still get parts of the game that lags buffer doesn't load the next set of frames. This is quite disturbing, as my video card is quite capable of running the game at higher detail, yet struggles in loading the frames of some of the races.

Gameplay: The game plays mostly similar to Need for Speed Most Wanted, all except for the case being that we're a cop rather than just some guy who joined in the racing scene of a city. Our job is to go deep undercover as a racer and get associated with some of Tri-City's street gangs in order to get to the bottom of the illegal car smuggling Tri-City is having. The single player portion is broken up into several types: Races and Jobs.

With Races, we have the regular Sprint, Circuit, and Checkpoint races, but the game introduces the Highway Battle (reminiscent of the arcade game Midnight Wangan) and Outrun. Jobs, are story driven missions where the tasks are similar to those of the movies Gone in 60 Seconds or Transporter, as well as some missions are "takedown" missions where we need to takeout the villains in the game... Chase HQ style, though with the risk of alerting the cops. The online mode features races with other players as varied as the game, and with the addition of a cops and robbers mode. Gameplay reminds much of Most Wanted, except for the fact that there's no Blacklist, fewer bosses, and un-friendly interface, but still provides some degree of intense (and fast) racing.

Graphics: The game's graphics somewhat similar to Most Wanted with the bloom effects in high gear making at times the entire area too bright. Other concerns include game slowdowns, wherein the game suddenly stops in order to load the rest of the world during the race. It's quite a no-no for game design/QA, as these experience could usually mess up a race (and in my case it did happen several times). The graphics' nice but not optimized enough to make things a lot better.

Sound: EA mixes in a varied tracks in the game, however, I must say that the tracts have some kick in them that doesn't annoy or bore me out while playing it. Voice projection by the actors are clearer and radio chatter is certainly audible.

Control: I used the X360 Controller for Windows and it's a satisfying feeling to know that games going to the PC now have support for the X360 Controller which makes racing much easier. Still one may encounter that some cars may be too sensitive on turns, especially those that have very high handling stats.

In all, Need for Speed Undercover plays a lot like Most Wanted, but really lacks the oomph, the innovation and planning to what it should have been. It's playable, but the short game, much simpler AI is something old timers of the series would not look for in this game.