Linkage! http://thereticule.com/

The first hour or so of the game – in the Vault – is excellently realised. Dialogue from both the characters, and your own options to reply are excellent. Immediate detractions are the pretty shoddy animations, but I quickly stopped caring. The rest is just so generally strong.

Leaving the Vault, you’re given an impression of the sheer scale of the game. The Capital Wasteland is huge. In the horizon, you’re given a panorama of the decaying ruins of DC, while the immediate surroundings perfectly capture the desolation you’d expect from the post-nuclear world of Fallout. To the left in the distance is a demolished suburban town, to the right is the shanty town of Megaton. They’re clearly the two areas the game wants you to go first, but I decided to hell with it, and turned around, went up the hill, and into the unknown.

Quickly, I ran into a gang of raiders, giving me my first taste of combat outside the relatively easy going time in the vault. And quite simply, it confirmed to me that the combat would be just as interesting as anything in Fallout 1/2.  Armed as you are, with a limited amount of ammo, and a pistol, you’ve seriously got to pick your shots. You cannot simply sit back in first person mode blasting away – you’re going to have to use VATS, which is no bad thing, since it’s a joy to use, brilliantly harking back to the aiming system of the originals. You have to think on your feet – no sitting back waiting for death to come when you’re out of action points, you’ve got to keep moving between cover or try to hit back in real time. I recommend you find cover.

As the raiders came up the hill, I tried real time shooting – with my low stats, that just wasn’t an option. Instead, using the nearby road buffer as cover, I got close enough to use VATS with high enough chances of hitting, I decided my best bet was to try slowing them down or removing their weapons. I managed to shoot the weapon out of the hands of the first raider – just in time as he was armed with a flamethrower and getting scarily close. I had enough points for one more shot and aimed at the next’s leg. With no luck, only scoring a glancing hit. Back to running and finding cover then. And that’s how you’ll find the combat really – a combination of tactically choosing shots, and trying to lessen your numerically superior enemies ability to harm you, and it’s excellent. I love the combat.

On an aesthetic level, it’s generally brilliant. First thing I noticed is that anyone who was scared Bethesda would shirk from the violence of the originals is sorely wrong. Enemies exploding into glorious displays of claret, while environments are littered with dismembered bodies in chains and the like. The shanty town of Megaton comes off as being the wild west made of corrugated iron, and is no less for it. And yes. Prostitutes are in, and yes. You can sleep with them. Rejoice.

But it’s perhaps not all good. My first real disappointment was how quickly you find yourself fighting off supermutants. I fought my first at an abandoned outdoor cinema, and the next appeared during the second story quest. Maybe it was just the Brotherhood of Steel troops near by – who also really appeared sooner than I’d like – that made it too easy, but I didn’t really feel that they were a true testament to their place in the canon. The Brotherhood of Steel didn’t really get a decent introduction to be honest. In the first game they are introduced as a distant, reclusive, almost mysterious faction somewhere in the wastes. In this one they appear very quickly, patrolling DC. They’re also a little more gung-ho than the sombre men and women of the first game. This all said, I’m very early in the game really. I don’t really know how either the BoS or Supermutant threat will develop. Despite the paragraph of dismay, I still enjoyed the encounters greatly, and seeing the BoS, power armour and all in all their 3D glory was a genuine thrill. I’ll note, while you can loot the armour of dead BoS, you can’t wear it, and it’s worth nothing yet. Good move there I think.

So there are my first impressions. To emphasise anything above all. I really do feel that it’s an excellent successor to the series. It’s not quite the same on some levels, but I can say without a doubt so far that it’s blown me away.

The expo itself was a somewhat unimpressive affair, especially given the amount of hype, being little more than a large hall with a load of games consoles, and very little else. Some developer appearence there would have been nice. But being able to play the games there was genuinely useful.

First off the bat, Left 4 Dead. It’s hard to know where to start. Maybe it’s those moments where you go round a corner to see 20 or more zombies out for blood. Maybe it’s when one of the boss monstrosities throws even the best organised team into distress. Maybe it’s the sublime feel of the weapons that are a joy to unleash on the horde. Quite simply, this is a quintessencially Valve game. It’s balanced to sheer perfection, and unbelievably polished. The cinematic touches that have put their singleplayer endevours at the heights of many gamer’s lists have finally come to the multiplayer arena, in a procedural method no less. It’s utterly brilliant. I simply cannot wait to get my hands on it now more than ever.

The biggest surprise to me was Prince of Persia. When announced, I was skeptical: The art style seemed to me more manga than middle eastern, while Elika particularly struck me as appealing to the Final Fantasy crowd. And the Prince seemed like a douche. Well, unfortunatly the Prince is a douche, and the new female lead “Elika” really is more Final Fantasy than anything else. But for some reason… I still loved what I was playing. The environments that I feared would loose the middle-eastern charm of the last games, actually come off as being more Persian in style than ever, with classic Persian mythology being brought to life in stunning environments. I particularly liked the Cuniform writing adorning much of the terrain. I’m still not sold yet, but I’m now somewhat considering it now rather than leaving it as a complete write off.

Mirrors Edge was basically what I thought it would be. An undeniably polished and unique game that’s ultimately more hype than substance. The animation was fantastic, and retained an excellent sense of place in its first person perspective. The environment was entirely unique in its art style, but contrary to all that’s been advertised, I found it incredibly linear. Essentially the game gives you a building, and a few ways around it. Then another building. Then another. I can’t help but feel this, and the art style, will render it repetitive and unsatisfying.

Call of Duty 5 was in a nutshell, bloody awful. Retrogressive, unattractive and dull. The lighting was impressive, but the texture work was truly shoddy. The AI was pretty tragic, me being able to charge across the enemy line without taking a hit, while managing to find myself behind the enemy line, without even being seen apparently. Maybe I just played the wrong moment or something, but it really was not capturing my attention.

Fallout 3 is going to be a clear hit, but since I’ll have that tomorrow anyway, I won’t offer any more than that.

And game of the show? War Twat. I don’t need to describe it. The name does enough. Download it here. Now you heathen.

That basically sums up my experience with the games there. I had a look at some of the others, but I didn’t really feel any compulsion to try them, mostly being console games. I have to say the PS3 versions of basically anything that wasn’t a PS3 exclusive with bloody ugly. Very glad I’ve not invested in one now.

I decide to sneak my way through the settlement while the comatosed drug dealer sleeps, and place a charge by him. Oh, and the giant tank of fuel next to him. I crawl out again. Reaching a nearby watchtower I pull out the detonator. I’m expecting a flash and an objective completed message. Then the I.E.Ds go off. A second later, the fuel tank erupts into a second explosion, the bass shaking my room. Ammunition boxes fling tracers into the night sky while the confused survivors scatter trying to track me down. They won’t find me. I’m already a cloud of dust over the horizon. All the game needs right now is a cigar. Dubya would be proud.

Dunia renders some utterly beautiful savannah.

Farcry 2 basically gives you are the tools to tackle its numerous foes using whatever tactics you can muster with its vast arsenal of weapons and hugely open game world It utilises a brilliantly innovative, if roughly hewn semi-procedural set of missions set in a grim sub-Saharan civil war. As the game starts, you enter a country in flames. Refugees flee for their lives while militias roam the streets. You’re here to kill “The Jackal”; A weapons dealer who turned a local dispute into a CNN worthy blood bath. Things soon take a turn for the worst, and among other things, your character seems to have contracted malaria while the gangs exchange gun fire in the streets. You’re soon picked up by one of the faction’s lieutenants, a gun put in your hand and pointed in the direction of the first of many encampments you’re to infiltrate or demolish, whichever takes your fancy.

And this is where the genius of the game truly begins. Approaching the motley assortment of shacks and sandbags, you’re pointed to a spot to recon the area. Bring up your map allows you to mark heavy weapons, vehicles or snipers on your map, but that’s not important. What’s important is that you’re given time to plan your route in advance. You really can just waltz in guns blazing, should you choose to, and sometimes that’s the best way to do it, particularly when the weapons are so excellent and the combat so viscerally entertaining. But more fun is working out the best way to attack a situation without taking a hit. When a plan comes together… there’s very little more satisfying. Equally fun though are when your plans don’t work. Because when you get found out, or there’s just a few more enemies than you anticipated, the world erupts into a frenzy of bullets and explosions unlike anything else. The minimalist UI, the brilliant physics and excellent weapons come together to create cinematic masterpieces that no such scripting light game has any right to.

Fear this ramp’s ability to screw up your driving.

The locations for this madness vary in quality. Some are a little generic, but others are really quite special. The scrap yard for example, is a sprawling maze of battered, gutted buses and trucks. The petroleum depot as another gem: The combination of dry, grassy savannah and tanks of flammable liquid lends itself to explosive expose’ on a grand scale. Some might call the amount of things that explode overkill. I consider them deliciously tempting. And Far Cry 2 truly goes out of its way to satisfy the pyromaniac in all of us. When you let off a bomb, or fire rounds into a tank of petrol, you can pretty much expect anything around it to go up with it. The sheer amount of physically active objects means things fly everywhere. When someone gets caught up in the blast, they go flying, thudding into things as they go. And the best bit? When you make one thing explode, you can bet there will be something else to go with it. Sometimes you’ll be wandering off, mission completed, only to find that the fire has spread and there’s more going off in the background. Where’s that cigar?

‘Splosions!

All of this is supported by the fine Dunia engine. It’s clearly not as technologically great as the likes of Crysis, but it’s far superior in application. Firstly, it’s got far more reasonable system specs, and will run on lesser systems quite well so long as you turn some of the settings down. Secondly, its use of lighting is far more cinematic and dramatic, fitting the environments beautifully. The developers have also made some brilliant strides in cinematically immersing the player into the action. The technique of retaining first person perspective; championed by Half-Life; is taken further by Farcry 2, with most actions animated and illustrated through the eyes of your character, not the HUD. It’s a genuine step forwards.

There are however, issues. A lot of issues. The biggest are probably the much maligned checkpoints that dominate the arteries of travel throughout the game world. Quite simply, you’re funnelled into fighting people every minute or two while trying to conserve ammo for your next mission. This could have been excellent and immersive. But it’s not. This leads onto Farcry 2‘s next major issue: In making every effort to totally immerse the player in the world it succeeds: Except when it doesn’t. The glaring “gamey” elements that would stand in any other first person shooter break its excellent moves towards true first person immersion: The total lack of HUD is shattered by health bars and ammo counts while the map as a physical object is ruined by icons which further exasperates the nature of checkpoints. They really are just a predetermined spots where enemies are spawned – at ridiculously high rates no less.

Another glaring omission in the game is the lack of sense of the civil war occurring in game. In the opening of the game, a street battle erupts, and there’s the occasional scripted occurences later in the game that assert some sense of the conflict. But the real meat of the game – the free form, almost procedurally generated bulk lacks any sense of the war. The cab driver’s attempts to explain the lack of civilians at the start saying they’ve “fled the country” comes off as a weak attempt to explain why the developers didn’t bother putting them in. Anyone who sees about these civil wars on the news knows that the civilian populace suffers greatly in them. We get no real sense of what the war is about, or anything about the nature of the country. All we really know is that there are two vaguely communist factions are tearing a country apart, yet they never attack each other throughout the vast majority of the game. Attempts at really exposing the nature of the conflict are minimal. While the game makes an admirable attempt to highlight some aspects of southern African internal unrest, it fails on others. It could have been an utterly unique exploration of a setting as of yet untouched, but really, it falls short here.

Hints of Farcry 2′s backstory exist – such as characters like this slimy British twat influencing the war, but there’s not enough characterisation.

Issues aside though, I can’t help but say I really, really love this game. The freedom is electrifying, the combat intense and honestly, the value for money nigh on unheard of in modern first person shooters. I find myself consistently wowed by it on so many levels, that the faults are rendered forgiveable.

Far Cry 2 has created its very own genre niche: The sandbox of destruction.

The first and most damning aspect – it does. Not. Work. Spore was pirately more than any other game I can think of – somewhere in the region of half a million people downloaded it, despite having measures to supposedly stop it from happening. A lot of those downloads were in protest of the DRM measures. So in effect, it has had the opposite result. I guess the only thing we can take heart in knowing is that the shareholders will very most likely be connecting the dots when what could be the biggest thing outside of World of Warcraft doesn’t bring results… all because of DRM. Like the consumer, I guess we can only hope they vote with their wallets.

Second. It’s cliched to hell, but you simply cannot stress it enough. It only affects the legitimate consumer. So honestly. EA, Ubisoft. Tell us. What’s the point? What is the point when it does not work, and it drives away sales?

Lets turn to the devil themselves, EA’s John Riccitiello:

“We’re still working out the kinks. We implemented a form of DRM and it’s something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn’t notice. But for the other .2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.”

Kinks? The whole damn concept is one black-hole of a kink. And it’s drawing PC gaming into its event horizon. 99.8% who don’t notice? I’m sure they’ll notice when their title fails to install in a few years time – right when the company will likely be loosing interest in supporting said title. My favourite bit though is “a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it”. A cabal?! So we’re somehow now an occult body plotting PC gaming’s downfall or something? Actually conciously considering where we invest our money; being conscientious consumers apparently makes us some kind of feverant zealots? Thanks Johnny. I hope you’re enjoying the hundreds of pounds I’ve probably given you over the years.

Next, he adds, “I personally don’t like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there.” I simply do not understand the man if he acknowledges it has problems. EA is made up of some very smart business people. They basically define the model for commercial gaming enterprise. But somewhere a long the line, their think tanks have failed them miserably here. It’s really quite pathetic.

Thus, I reach the most important part of my rant. DRM and the crusade against the pirate boogie man is going to drammatically harm the industry if it keeps up. I’m not going to deny it: The industry is probably driven more by sales than any other mainstream media form. The only way they make money is by shifting copies. Again, our friends the shareholders will be thinking with their wallets here. Why on earth are they going to invest in an industry where its executives will blindly drive away sales with intrusive DRM?

And it’s not just the publishers. Once respected figureheads of PC gaming – Cliffy B of Epic and Peter Molyneux and the like are equally to blame. By abandoning the PC as a platform simply based on the arguement that piracy is “rampant” in the PC market, their doom and gloom is likely to cause an exodus to the consoles. And you know the worse thing? That’s going to damage the quality of gaming too. I hate to generalise and all… but honestly, console games, especially FPS’s are becoming criminally generic. There should be laws against the development of “Halo-killers”.

In summary of the bad then:

1) It doesn’t work!
2) The consumer gets a bad deal…
3) While the pirate enjoys it DRM free. And free. And before us consumers.
4) The doom and gloom of developers could have more serious ramifications for the industry than piracy itself.
5) It apparently makes me some kind of Cabalist.

This is however, not to say that it’s all bad. In fact, I would say quite the opposite. At least with Cliffy B content to keep his hulking cardboard cutout heroes on the 360, we might actually see the good developers shining through.

Secondly, there are other avenues of light. Steam is fast becoming my new love affair. It’s got a perfect balance between price, community features, excellent download rates… and it does help stem piracy, and certainly eliminates zero day piracy, which is by and large the most damaging form of it. Noticably may I add, the 360 version of Fallout 3 couldn’t make that same claim, while the PC version is joyously DRM free and still well away from pirate bay.

Third, the indie PC games industry is making some huge strides these days – Hinterlands, Multiwinia, World of Goo are triple AAA titles in every respect. We don’t need EA or Ubisoft for this kind of excellence.

Lastly, I can’t help but find it ironic that low or superior DRM titles such as those by Stardock and Valve are better supported, and that support is not something the pirate can easily attain either. So we’re being rewarded for paying, and we get a better deal on the whole aswell.

Anyway. I’m done rambling for now.

What made Deus Ex great? For me it was the detailed, deep and all but realistic plot. It was about the excellent dialogue and thought provoking philosophy that drove its characters. It was the way you could fine-tune your character for any number of roles, from tanking in with a GEP gun, to hyper-pacifism. It was about the enormous variety of approaches to any one situation. It was about the trenchcoat and shades; future agent chique.

And to me, from what little information we have, I do genuinely believe Deus Ex 3 is on track.

From a gameplay perspective:

Auto-Healing: Admittedly, I was shocked at first. Genuinely shocked. But think it through – you’re a frickin cyborg guys. Some form of auto-repair makes sense compared to magic health kits. And we know nothing about how it works otherwise – what’s to say that you can’t upgrade it via stats or augmentations. What if it’s simply just one of the ways you can customise your character?

New stealth: Again, a little concerned at first. Honestly though, have you ever actually tried to use shadows in the name of stealth? It’s not really that easy. Moving quickly behind cover, or blending into your environment (by that I mean, the people around you). That’s real stealth. As big a fan I am of Thief, the shadow mechanic is basically unique to Thief – given Garrett is actually trained in the art of melding with shadows if you actually read into the backstory. It just doesn’t seem right in other games in my opinion. Especially the likes of Deus Ex with its claims to comparitive realism.

The augmentations: They sound bloody fantastic. They are perfect additions to any cyborg secret agent’s armory. Personal bungee jump? Smashing through walls? I don’t know about any of you guys, but those are exactly the kinds of tools you’d want for alternative routes, snatch operations or avoiding fire fights. Remember we’re not dealing with the Nano-augs of Deus Ex 1 or 2. These are mechanical bio-augs. The kind Agent Navarre or Hermann had in Deus Ex. They’re going to be a bit more in your face. Granted, they do have to be done right, the martial arts aug, and the “claymore” aug sound almost like insta-win buttons. Hopefully they’ll be a bit more complex than that.

“Personal marksmanship skills”: Good frankly. I hated it in the first game. Hopefully you won’t simply be able to pick up certain weapons and be able to use them right away, but I hate statistic based aiming in first person games. Total immersion breaker. Good. I don’t care how much you prefer statistic based aiming, I hate it. Besides. If you want to go through the game guns blazing, it might as well be fun.

That’s basically all we know for gameplay.

Art/Setting Direction

I’ve read a fair few comments by people on the art/setting direction concerned that it looks too futuristic for a prequel – that Deus Ex‘s todays world 50 years down the line look seems to have been abandoned. Yes it has. And it’s for the best – our world today already looks more futuristic than that of Deus Ex to be quite honest (have you seen the likes of Dubai?). It’s also perfectly clear that the best games are distinct in their aesthetic – Bioshock, Fallout, Half-Life 2 or Thief for example. All are very distinct with their design, and it suits their backstory entirely. Deus Ex is a world embroiled with the Illuminati and the Knights Templar and references to Da Vinci and all kinds of dusty old philosophers. Surely it should be gifted with design suitable for its grand plot overtones? I think so.

Also, we know for a fact that in the 25 years between 2027 (presuming Deus Ex 3 ends in the same year it starts) and 2052, the US had gone through civil war, massive earthquakes and general social distress. Societies go backwards as well as fowards. And for all those who want their hobo fires and hookers back, we’ve already been told that Shanghai is a two tier world of rich on the top and poor in the slums below. Don’t worry. The grime will be there. The social commentary, will be there.

The Bottom Line

Basically, I think it’s important to stress that these are very, very early days. We simply don’t know enough about the game to make any true judgement as I see it. What we do know is that yes, they will make some changes, and no, not everyone will like them. That’s the problem with doing a sequel/prequel. We know that it’s got an incredibly strong aesthetic direction, and one quite distinct from anything else out there.

Myself, I can’t wait to find out more.

Max Payne 2

It’s pretty rare for games to truly score points when it comes to emotion – besides raging over bugs perhaps. Max Payne 2 however achieves them in spades. Max Payne, the first game was by all accounts a depressingly emotional experience, and indeed, it’s the backdrop of the broken protagonist destroyed by the Valkyre conspiracy he brought down in the previous game. But Max Payne 2 eclipsed this – it’s a stony hearted gamer that could play through without at least one or two moments where it’s more than just a game. You care about these characters.

So, where were we? Max may well have lined the pockets of a fair few funeral directors in his previous escapade, but contrary to his statements in the game, they were not all dead. Thus, the scene is set for another path of total destruction across Noir York when Max chances across the woman he thought dead, Mona Sax, at the scene of an attack by a mysterious group of armed “cleaners” who are gradually revealed as part of a civil war within the group responsible for the previous game’s conspiracy. For all his attempts to escape his past, fate has another course planned.

The story telling techniques for the most part are identical to Max Payne; though arguably this time are supported by a far stronger set of voice overs, including the return of James McCaffrey as the excellent voice of Max. This time round however, each of the characters is as strongly developed as Max, particularly Mona who takes the centre stage alongside him, also becoming a playable character in some excellent sequences during the game – more on those later. All the voice work perfectly compliments the emotional heights of the plot and script.

The Max of the first game was driven by a singular goal: Revenge. Revenge on those responsible for the drug that destroyed his life and love. Though spectacularly well developed compared to most characters, his character in Max Payne 2 is given a life of its own; Max searches desperately for a sense of his own life. The bullet hole where his wife and child once belonged could never be resolved by revenge alone. Desperation clouds his judgement, but is the adrenaline that keeps him going. His love for Mona is both the cure and cancer. In seeking her love, he dooms himself to his fate.

Mona is similarly well developed: Possibly one of gamings great, underrated female protagonists. Unlike Max, Mona understands everything that is going on; and hers is the last and most tragic conspiracy to be revealed: That she must kill Max. Yet like Max, she seeks love, and escape from the world of violence and cloaked daggers that surrounds them both. She’s also incredibly well presented; she’s sexy (oh so, very sexy), but not an overt objective desire. Max, and I myself, saw the allure in her tragedy; the escape from the brutal reality of the story doomed to fall.

The betrayal in game is one of veritable Darth Vader proportions. When it finally hits, suddenly everything falls into place. It makes sense right back to the very moment you met them in the first game. Vlad Lem is in the right place, at the right time, every time. But he’s so innocuous, and apparently external to the power play that his true position within the conspiracy seems impossible, and until you are told the truth, unthinkable. His dialogue is the big give away, yet the wool over your eyes. The best gaming comparison is perhaps Atlas in Bioshock, only it’s “Max! My dearest friend” as opposed to “Would you kindly…” that acts as the dagger always an inch behind you. And more so than with Atlas, to have Vlad turn on me genuinely wrenches.

Supported by a cast of such multi-dimensional characters, the plot was always going to excel. It took what made Max Payne great in terms of plot – memorable lines, characters, and twists, and adds levels of complexity which truly compares with any great film or piece of literature. Max’s desperate crawl to salvation is depressing, but utterly compelling. The final result – with everyone really dead this time bar Max and the stalwart Jim Bravura seems destined to occur: For Max to find real happiness at the end of it all was always fated to fail. The betrayal, Max’s desperate search for love and resolution, and the final collapse of everything good or bad in his life at the end is above and beyond, one of the finest and heart wrenching climaxes in gaming.

For all my somewhat pretentious, somewhat self-indulgent rambling, I suppose I’ve not said much about the game itself yet. I could quite simply say that it improved on what made the original great. And it does. But there’s a lot of nice features that did this. First up would be the physics. Anyone who played Max Payne 2 all 5 years ago will remember that first hood that you encounter – bullets ripping through him, body jerking realistically with the impact of each round, collapsing into a stack of utensils, which also proceed to fall apart around him, in slow motion. It’s a gaming memory that always sticks. And developers still haven’t really got physics quite this right in a game to date in my opinion. Yes. Even Half-Life 2. The key thing is the degree of clutter littering basically every level. The original allowed for carnage of an unprecedented scale on the environments, but with Havok physics, the sequel allowed you to absolutely tear a room to pieces. It’s that aspect of Max Payne 2 that gave it an aura of realism that I don’t think has been quite bettered in many respects.

Next, a major improvement as I see it, is vastly superior level design. It still suffered from the numerous locked door issues Max Payne did, but this time round it’s not quite so noticeable, and the environments feel far more realistic and less forced. And there’s some excellent highlights – examples including racing around a construction yard taking down snipers pinning Max down as Mona for one, or desperately trying to reach the bottom floor of a rich apartment block in another. Another particularly interesting and entertaining area is Mona’s amusement park hide out that is excellently visited and revisited, gradually falling further and further apart with each one. Finally, Enemies aren’t quite as likely to seemingly drop from nowhere – and there’s a lot more audio cues when they are just around corners, resulting in less quicksaving headaches than before.

There’s some other tweaks: Bullet time is improved; controls are even more intuitive – allowing you to stay on the floor firing after a dive for example, as well as giving you a secondary attack for melee blows or grenade throwing. A slew of new weapons, including the infinitely fun MP5 further add to the action and far superior AI both challenges and impresses. I also love your ability to knock enemies over with a dive or by throwing yourself through a door they’re behind, adding more tactical options to the mix. The result of all these little and large improvements are quite simply, some even more spectacular gun fights that really are as intense as any bleeding edge release.

On the whole, Max Payne 2 was not only a solid sequel, adding more refined mechanics and technical enhancements, but somehow also managed to improve on the originals already excellent storytelling. This leads me thus onto the final part of my retrospective look at the Max Payne.

Where it goes from here.

The plot:

Here is the major headache that any next instalment will encounter: They are all dead. Literally, the only characters from either game still alive now are Max and Jim Bravura, unless of course they decide that the Dead on Arrival ending where Mona lives becomes canon. Not a good idea. I’m not going to speculate what could be. I’m just going to hope that whoever in charge of the script has got some bloody good skill, and I wish them every luck with it, since I do think part of Max Payne 2‘s strength was its ability to do away with introducing too many new characters – which would prevent the development of those returning. It’ll be tough to find a new angle.

What needs to stay:

Max’s narration; his constant nihilism and perchance for metaphor is essential. His greatest asset in winning the player over is his narrative excellence. I don’t think any would-be developer could forget this one.

Intuitive controls as per both games are essential.

Keep the violence as gritty and unrelenting as the first two – I worry slightly given Rockstar’s general relegation of violence to humour. In Max Payne, it’s far more mature than that. It’s not sadistic in the way it is in the likes of GTA or Manhunt. Maybe I’m generalising with regards Rockstar, but it is a slight concern to me.

Self awareness – Max Payne 2 didn’t have too much time for it, but it was a highlight of the original. More of this would be excellent, and I think it’s something that Rockstar tend to be effective with in games.

In general, I have to say I wish Rockstar all the luck in getting this one right. It’ll be tough by all means, but my affection for the series is too great to want it to end where it has. And something will (probably) have to make up for the movie. I’m not judging it yet by any means, but it’s a game-to-film. Hoping for a miracle is perhaps a little rash.

So why a retrospective, and why now? Well, first up, it’s on Steam at criminally low prices, and I managed to score it and its sequel for £6.40 during one of Steam’s excellent bargain weekends. Secondly, the Mark Wahlberg starring film based on the license is set to hit cinemas later this month, and finally, news of a Rockstar produced sequel in the works appears to be picking up.

Released in 2001 after a somewhat protracted development period, Max Payne told the story of its titular protagonist; from the death of his wife at the hands of designer drug pumped junkies to the moment he finally takes the finger off the trigger, an obscenely high body count of mobsters and sinister corporate power players dead in his wake. Film noir and graphic novel sensibilities, laden with Max’s relentless narration of metaphor barrage drive the story, while slow motion gun-fu creates some of the most spectacular shoot-outs gracing gaming history. It was a grim, angst and death ridden tale of blood, betrayal and bullets. All to the setting of New York’s worst snow storm in history.

Max Payne’s story is perhaps unparalleled in gaming. The crucial plot points are unveiled through graphic novel style slides; oozing with Max’s biting sardonic wit. Excellently, you can review the story so far at any time by hitting F1, which is essential given the twists and turns in the plot. Max’s crusade against those responsible for his wife’s murder is a domino trail of death, destruction and desperation, each shot fired bringing Max closer to the truth, a new twist and adversary rearing themselves just as Max works his way up the syndicate. It’s a genuinely tragic tale. Max is constantly haunted by his loved one’s deaths; survivors guilt from this and the ever growing body count eating away at his sanity. Max is supported by a cast of superbly written characters; Lupino for example, a mob boss gone mad on power and drugs turns his gothic mess of a club into an occult den. The trail of letters, phone calls and dialogue leading up to Max’s encounters with the characters builds them up in a way which I think has only been matched by Bioshock’s audiotape expose’.

The dialogue is deliciously self aware: The dream sequences, though suffering from serious deficits in the level design department, contain one of my favourite pieces of dialogue in any game ever: Max realising first he’s trapped in a graphic novel. Second that he’s in a video game. Throughout – hoods talking about how cool bullet time would be for example, or Max thanking you for taking out the speaker spewing cheesy music in a lift – such touches are masterful strokes of humour, and demonstrate critical awareness of its own art that lift it above the tired machismo dominating lesser games dialogue. Simply put, Max Payne’s narrative depth and intricacy alone quite rightly raises it to the heights of gaming aristocracy.

Max’s brief critical evaluation of the game mechanics don’t quite do it justice, yet sums them up perfectly. Max spends a lot of time shooting, diving and causing spectacular explosions, in glorious slow motion, yet repetitive this may be, it never seems to get old. Diving round the corner, duel Ingrams blazing is only matched in gaming coolness by landing an M79 round smack in the middle of a bunch of suits, limbs flailing. In slow motion. Environmental damage, despite being pre-Havok is similarly entertaining. Bullets that don’t connect with hoods bleed plaster from walls or shatter glass. And at the end of a fight, you can’t but help to revel in the field of death you’ve caused. You’ll reduce Noir York’s snow white back alleys to a mess of corpses and casings; early on, a bank becomes strewn with battle scars and blood.

The control mechanics feel superb, they feel right. I don’t think there’s a third person shooter out there that manages to quite strike such a chord. I still feel to this day that no other third person shooter can best Max Payne in the perfect balance of kinetic finesse and total control. Max is right; you really do control his every step.

There are some minor detractions – some dodgy level design can infuriate for example. Some of the locations do feel somewhat forced; a maze of locked doors haunts some levels, and you do get the sense that the developers tried to squeeze as many corridors as they could out of some locations, leading some bafflingly unorthodox ways of getting around them. What do you mean the lift is out of order? They all seem to be. Why can’t I just take the fire exit? Enemy placement can infuriate, and you’re often given no warning as to when you’re going to come across gun toting hoodlums – and thanks to Max’s relative fragility, you do find yourself coming to rely on endless quick saving a little too often. It’s no chore to look past these issues when there’s so much brilliance to Max Payne however. You just can’t give up on it when the narrative is this good, the set pieces so precisely balanced and brilliant.

Max Payne nearly 7 years on is still a game any true gamer simply must have played at least once. It’s a benchmark in story telling, in games as art. Developers could certainly do a lot worse than to take cues from Max Payne’s strong sense of aesthetic flair, story telling and explosive action. If you didn’t play them before, they’ll prove as playable as any modern title. If you did, now is the perfect time to revisit them.

I’ll bring the second half of my Max Payne retrospective soon enough, as I’m now playing through the sequel. I’ll also spend some time looking to the future of the series with Rockstar, and what they need to get right in my opinion.

Depending on what you were expecting from the game, each stage – or maybe all – will come off as being banally simplistic or utterly brilliant. The first, the Cell stage plays out like Pac Man with spikes in primordial soup. Its brilliance lies in its fluidity. In order to advance, it’s kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. This is survival at its most basic; apt for the stage of evolution it represents. On the downside, there is a limited number of combinations – but then again, how many variations on it can you really get when you’re dealing with such tiny, simplistic organisms? It’s a stylised, simple, streamlined introduction to the game. Great so far.

The next stage, the Creature stage was a disappointment for me. I was personally hoping for a more detailed ecosystem – less like a set of cat-walks for peoples creations; however excellent some of them are. For me, the problem in this stage was not a fundamental lack of complexity, since I think any huge amount more of controls or tasks would have been overkill for a game with such an open target audience, but it lacks depth. It would have been excellent to see flocks of peoples herbivores interacting with one another, with carnivores skulking the plains. Instead the creatures for the most part simply sit at their nests, waiting for me to sing to them or slap them in the face till they fall over. Over and over and over. The interface is way too much like every other game too – it felt hard trying to express a creature when its personality comes down to a choice of buttons. I’m not going to defend this stage as being part of Wills vision, I truly did think it was awful. It – or rather the nature of the rest of the game – does somewhat redeem itself by show casing some genuinely brilliant player created creatures in game. Particularly the puppet master. Easily my favourite creature so far.

Okay. Next. The Tribal stage. A marked improvement, and for me, it’s a satisfying departure from the overly interface ridden creature stage. Here your tribe’s personality is governed by actions rather than tool bars, and it feels on the whole a lot more natural. Watching your tribe of frogs holding other frogs attempt to take down a giant beer tankard is infinitely amusing too. It’s also genuinely interesting how your creature’s attributes govern the way your creatures go about their tasks. You gave them wings? They’ll glide about. Stealth masters? They’ll manoeuvre themselves into position carefully before striking or raiding the enemy. Where before the creature stage manifested its procedural generation features in fairly basic terms, quite simply dictating what weapons or social tools a creature had, the tribal stage takes the creature and its attributes, and gives it personality. Brilliant.

Once again however, the Civilisation stage is a bit of a mixed bag. All the developments in the previous stage is reduced to simply dictating which superpower you are assigned on the get go, and the type of “attack power” the units of your first are assigned. Imagine a world where the whole of human development produced nothing more significant than a single invention by which the whole of civilisation is determined. That’s essentially what you’re given. On the other hand, you are given chance to define your creations in new ways of expression. The building and unit tools, like the creature tools, offer immense variety. Using these tools you make up for the lack of depth of involving game mechanics, by simply creating your own societies. I’m particularly proud of my aforementioned Tall Frog race. Between the various editors, I’ve created a society where by the rich are literally carried by the poor. The poverty stricken class are mostly paid by the rich to carry them about. As a consequence the rich have evolved differently; their legs having withered and become incapable of carrying them. Their buildings are similar; the administrative centre being “Tall Street”. Their houses? High rise blocks of flats where the rich live in penthouses, the poor in squalor below. Now tell me a game where you have the kind of power to let your imagination fly?

Finally, we reach the Space stage. I’ve complained throughout till now that the game tends to throw out all your development in the previous stage in introducing the new. The space stage is no exception. But it simply does not matter. The universe is vast. Skipping from planet to planet, collecting equipment, you unlock the potential to let your imagination run wild in creating designer societies and planets. There’s restrictions – planets have to be terra-formed in order to attain the correct “terrascore” to support increasingly higher numbers of life forms, but once you get the hang of this, it becomes a joy in itself. There are balancing issues; and the empires you build, thanks to some disturbingly high numbers of attacks (I’ve since downloaded mods to lessen this), it can be a pain to administer, and just enjoying the sandbox style features can be hard as a result. The level of depth in this stage entirely makes up for it though. Creating an empire in one game allows you to visit them in another – maybe even reduce them into the ground if you can bring yourself to destroy your children..

What I would say of Spore, is that it is not for the unimaginative. I would say that those looking for a game with complexity and depth all the way through will simply not find it if they don’t know how to fully appreciate the tools at your disposal with regards the editors and various community functions – and I’m sure many of those I’ve heard being critical at it are those who never actually bought it, thus lacking these features. Many will also find some of the stages as I did, somewhat lacking. But honestly, you simply cannot appreciate the game if you do not appreciate what the game’s vision really is: To give the player the tools to create their own societies from the Cell to Space. If you can, you will love it, despite some distractingly disappointing stages or balance issues.

Score: 89%

With full command of the editor’s toolset, you can build a massive variety of creations. Such as my giant walking beerbottle, and recreation of the Mobile Oppression Palace of Futurama fame.

For anyone interested, my Sporepedia account name is “StalinsGhost”

Clear Sky from the outset has be purported as the salve to SoC’s many sores, yet somewhere along the line, it has clearly fallen short, and feels antiquated even compared to its predecessor. The story, which just about held together in the previous game, is disjointed and unsatisfying; and there are obvious gaps in it, especially towards the gut wrenchingly awful final act. There are some moments where you will genuinely feel as if GSC just didn’t bother implementing scenes that are written into the story, and as a consequence, the pacing is just totally ruined. Characters range from the believable if poorly scripted to the detestable. The dialogue just does not fit with the bleak atmosphere of the game’s setting.

Don’t want to kill this guy’s scripter?
You’re a better man than I.

The faction wars, so proudly advertised throughout the game’s development consistently disappoint, the AI tripping over itself as well as hundreds of other faction squads that constantly spawn. The Zone too has taken a hit, and the unstable, volatile world promised has become little more than a tour of the wastes, with dangerous areas clearly marked out on the tragic new PDA, and anomalies relegated to (admittedly fascinating looking) spots quite outside of the areas you’re most likely to traverse. The balancing is atrocious, bouncing from absurdly hard; throwing situations where your equipment and hard earned cash is stolen or where Zeus himself is targeting you with a machine gun; then suddenly, the game hands you a bullet proof suit and weapons so powerful you’ll find yourself taking on whole bases solo. One moment you’ll be on the verge of death via hordes of enemies, the next you’ll be giggling as you take down a helicopter with a shotgun. This game was simply not play tested to any degree of modern quality.

The game has its moments, and re-entering the Zone is a genuine thrill at times, with some excellent locations, but there’s not enough. Combat occasionally excels, and the ballistics model makes for some brilliant ranged combat. Then the AI hurls a heat-seeking grenade your way. Clear Sky just cannot excel long enough to impress. In a way I can’t help but feel I played through to the end just out of loyalty to the series.

It’s half-finished, and without enough goodness to make up for the shortfalls. With the leviathan figures of Fallout 3 and Far-Cry 2 on the horizon it’s soon to become a gaming dinosaur as well I suspect. Looking back on SoC too in hindsight, you can’t help but feel that GSC almost got lucky with producing such a game. I can’t help but wonder if GSC’s ambitious release time scale doomed Clear Sky from the get go. By all means buy it if you truly can’t get enough of the zone, as I couldn’t. But after this, I think you’ll find yourself jaded as to GSC’s ability to carry the series in the future. Unless of course they take on some of the excellent modding community who kept the first game engaging for me right up until the release of Clear Sky.