New Star Soccer (iOS)

After 5 games and numerous iterations it’s often easy toforget that the New Star Soccer series is basically made by a single person;Simon Read. For those who haven’t heard of the series, it’s a top-down soccergame in the vein of Kick Off and Sensible Soccer. The hook is that you controla single player through the course of his career from a young nobody warmingthe bench at a non-league team to, hopefully, an international super starplaying for a top club team and also your national team. You improve yourskills and attributes by playing more games and by completing trainingchallenges (which take the form of numerous tiers of mini-games such asdribbling through cones, heading in crosses, etc).

What really draws you into the game is are the numerousoff-field activities which are just as important as the on-field ones. Theoff-field activities can be divided into financial and inter-personal.Depending upon the level you’re playing at, and your negotiating skill, you geta per-game salary. This can be supplemented, once you become more successfuland well-known, by various sponsorship deals. The money you earn can then beused to buy things such as property, vehicles and various other goods andservices. These things aren’t just for show – they have a direct effect uponyour match performance! The more nice things you have the higher your happinessrating and this acts as bonus for your attributes. Furthermore, differentproperties have varying bonuses upon your ability to recover from fatigue aftermatches!

Interpersonal relationships are also very important. As aplayer you have relationships with your teammates, your boss/manager,  the fans and (if you get one) yourgirlfriend. The more you improve these relationships (by selecting to spendtime with each and then playing a match-three mini game) the better you do onthe field. For example, the better your relationship with your teammates, themore likely they are to pass to you! You have a finite amount of time betweenmatches to for interpersonal activities and the more you spend doing these themore it fatigues you prior to a match so it’s a balancing act between somethinglike spending time with the fans at a photo-shoot to butter them up but notfatiguing yourself so much that you end up playing poorly in the next match andthen having the fans on your back!

I’m a huge fan of the PC NSS games – the sense of immersionand pure addictiveness is incredible – but I was wary as to how Simon Readwould bring the top-down action to an iOS device as I’m not a big fan ofvirtual thumb-sticks. The solution is ingenious and absolutely perfect for bite-sized, on-the-gomobile gaming. Instead of letting you control the moment to moment action, yousee Football Manager-style text commentary and interspersed are certain keymoments where you take control via little mini-games for passing, shooting, setpieces and tackling/intercepting passes. The passing and shooting mini-gamesare simple (move an arrow, touch a moving/bouncing/still ball where you’d liketo strike it) but have quite a bit of depth under the surface. Importantly,there’s a good balance between user skill and also an accurate reflection ofyour avatar’s abilities.

I’ve played close to a 75 different iOS games but New StarSoccer is easily the most addictive.  Thecombination of addictive gameplay, quick matches, and the RPG aspect of carvingout the individual career of your player. My player started off in the BlueSquare South division playing for Boreham Wood before moving to AccringtonStanley, then Brighton, before moving to France with Evian in the French seconddivision. After successfully winning promotion with Evian I earned a move toLille and ended up winning the league in my second season there – scoring theleague title clinching goal with a thunderous 30 yard volley in the 89^thminute against Marseille! I had also helped Canada qualify through CONCACAF tothe 2014 World Cup Finals! My third season with Lille didn’t result in a titlebut ‘we’ did manage to get to the Champions League semi-finals before losing toBarcelona.  The following season I earnedmy dream move to Liverpool and I find myself fighting for the EPL title goinginto the last few weeks (I didn’t say the game was necessarily realistic)! 

If you’re a fan of football/soccer I think you owe it toyourself to check out NSS. You can play a limited trial for free but can unlockthe game for just 99 cents. It’s a no-brainer and easily my favourite iOS game.

Lavan

Battlefield 3 Premium and Close Quarters Impressions

After a little break from shooters, the past few weeks I've got back into the armed combat groove with both Modern Warfare 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I enjoyed the single player experience of the former and tolerated parts of the single player of the latter. Multiplayer in MW3 is a known quantity - tight controls, great gameplay, spoiled because it's largely played by 13 year old psychopaths. I really, really wanted to like GRFS and while the few games of multiplayer that I played with friends were solid, the matches I played with randoms made me want to throw my controller out the window. After one particularly frustrating game where my team lost by something like 10,000 points (or so it felt like), I decided to jump back into Battlefield 3 and immediately fell back in love. Since I had a hefty Microsoft Points card for Father's Day I decided to pony up for Battlefield 3 Premium.

For those who don't know, Battlefield 3 Premium is EA's version of Activision's Call of Duty Elite service. For 50 bucks you get access to all 5 of Battlefield 3's pending expansion packs (2 of which are already out - Back to Karkand and Close Quarters). The remaining 3 expansions are coming out September, December and March of next year. You also get access to the expansions 2 weeks early. There are some other minor perks like exclusive decals, a custom knife (for a gun fight?!) but none of them are particularly impressive.

Close Quarters is the newest expansion pack and features 4 new maps, 2 new game modes and 10 new weapons. The new maps are all smaller, mostly indoor levels, with no vehicles and focus on...erm...close quarters combat. The four new maps are; 

Donya Fortress - a 3 level Middle-Eastern castle/fort 

Operation 925 - a multi-level office building with an underground parking lot, lobby, cafeteria and lots office space 

Scrapmetal - a labyrinth multi-storey abandoned factory with a variety of walkways and open and enclosed spaces 

Ziba Tower - a hotel in Tehran 

Each of the levels is beautifully rendered with a fair amount of destructible cover. Of the new levels, Scrapmetal is definitely my favourite as each of the three capture points have a variety of ways to approach them and you can use a great deal of strategy for both attack and defense. 

The two new game modes are Conquest-Domination and Gun Master. Conquest-Domination is a version of the regular Conquest mode but modified to suit the small, infantry-focused maps. Now it only takes 10-20 seconds to capture a point and you can only spawn at a random point or on your squad - you can no longer spawn on a capture point and there's no home base for your team. 

Gun Master is a neat mode where there are no classes (no Engineer, no Recon etc) and everyone starts with the same handgun (the MP-443). Once you get two kills with the MP-433 it's automatically upgraded to a 3-burst handgun (the Barretta 93R). Two kills with the Barretta and you unlock a Magnum. This keeps going every two kills until you start unlocking submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns and so on. Though you're put onto one of two teams, the winner of the mode is the first person to cycle through all 17 weapons (the last is a knife). 

Because the maps feature no vehicles and are infantry-focused, the Close Quarters matches play very different to regular Battlefield. It's very much like the COD/MW run-and-gun style gameplay, except you're not playing with/against 13 year old sniper-rifle savants and you still have defined player roles (Medics and Support are key in these maps). The maps are also designed really well and while you can run around like a headless chicken trying to kill everything in sight, you'll be a lot more successful if you work with your squad to try and defend capture points. The Scrapmetal map is the perfect example of this with each of the capture points having multiple avenues for attack on a variety of elevations. 

Gun Master can be fun if you're able to make it past the first few rounds and unlock the submachine guns. If you find yourself in a funk and stuck with the first three weapons (the handguns) it can be very frustrating as everyone else is running around with superior hardware. 

I really enjoyed the Close Quarters expansion pack but I can see how it may not be everyone's cup of tea. The frantic nature of Conquest-Domination isn't going to replace regular Conquest for me but I do find it a very fun palate-cleanser and good to have in the map rotation. If you like COD/MW but prefer Battlefield 3 then I think it'll be a nice diversion. If you really hate the COD/MW-style gameplay then I'd steer clear of this one. 

That decision also factors into whether or not you should pony up the $50 (FIFTY DOLLARS!?!) for Battlefield 3 Premium. Each of the expansions sells for $15 but most people will have already purchased the excellent Back to Karkand expansion pack so if you're planning to buy the rest of the expansions going with Premium saves you $10. However, if you're not interested in Close Quarters then you're better off buying each of the three remaining expansions individually and saving $5. 

Lavan

Max Payne 3 (360)

My apologies for the lack of updates - both work and personal life have been a bit crazy over the past month so I haven't had as much time to write as I'd like.

Fortunately, I have had enough time to sneak in some gaming and most recently I played through Max Payne 3. I really enjoyed the first two Max Payne games (particularly the second one) but this game represents a departure for the series as it was produced by Rockstar Games whereas the previous titles were made by Finnish developer Remedy.

I am a massive whore for anything by Rockstar makes - not because of the wanton sex and violence, not even because of the solid narratives found in their games, but because of the sense of place their games create. San Andreas, Liberty City, Vice City, New Austin and even Bully's Carcer City all felt like real, living-breathing places to me and I loved that about those games. However, almost all of Rockstar`s games are open world titles so I was intrigued to see how Max Payne, a completely linear experience, would fare. 

In short; despite it's linearity, it does an incredible job of making you feel immersed. 

Max Payne 3's story takes you on a back and forth (in location and time) between Brazil, Panama and New York/New Jersey and the level of detail and subsequent sense of immersion is incredible. Graphically, the game is stunning - not just with regards to textures, resolution and frame-rate, but also the incredible attention to detail in the environments. The locations in Brazil are the real highlite and range from run-down favellas, glitzy neon night clubs, city squares, swamps, abandoned hotels, and even office buildings. I wrote in my impressions of Deus Ex: Human Revolution that it was the first game that ever made me stop and appreciate art-direction in a game. Count Max Payne 3 as the second game to do so. 

The narrative tone is very similar to that of Tony Scott's 2004 film, Man on Fire and the cinematic presentation borrows heavily from the Tony Scott and Michael Mann playbook with a gritty, realistic look, jump-cuts, rapid editing and multi-frame shots. The titular character is a stranger in a strange land and along with the unfamiliar (at least to those not living in Brazil) surroundings this sense of unfamiliarity is also conveyed by the excellent choice not to translate the Portuguese dialogue. Max doesn't speak Portuguese and in the narrative often doesn't know what is going on and the player shares his sense of frustration and uncertainty as characters yell at you in their native dialect. 

There is one particularly tense scene where you are held at gunpoint by a member of a Brazilian gang who is clearly losing his shit and screaming commands/questions at you in Portuguese and at some point Max read my mind and in exasperation shouts back; "I don't fucking understand what you're saying!"

Story-wise, Max Payne loses the comic-book, occult-heavy, style of the first two games for a tale more grounded in 'reality'. Max is now working as a private security guard for an ultra-wealthy Brazilian family. He takes the job seeing it as easy gig and a way indulge his heavy alcohol and prescription medication addictions in sunny South America. Unfortunately, things quickly go to hell and story weaves a dark, gritty, intricate tale involving police and government corruption, revenge and lots of gun violence. I really enjoyed the narrative in Max Payne 3 and I found it fairly well written. Max's signature voice-overs are ever present but far less hammy than the first 2 games.

I also really enjoyed the characters in this game, particularly Max's friend Raul Passos and the enigmatic police investigator Da Silva. Both are well rounded and very well written. Max Payne himself is probably the most congruent main character I've ever seen in a recent Rockstar game. He's not like Niko Bellic who's painted as a man trying to escape his violent past....who then proceeds to run over pedestrians. John Marston is probably my favourite Rockstar character but even he loses character consistency when he starts shooting up innocent villagers in the Mexico section of Red Dead Redemption. 

Max Payne, however, is a broken, drug addicted, alcoholic piece of shit and acts accordingly. This is a character who's hired as a private security guard and don't just drink on the job - he gets absolutely tanked. He pops pain killers like they're going out of style. And he hates everyone - most of all himself. He still has a vague sense of what's generally right or wrong but overall he's not a very nice man. And as such, you're not so surprised when he starts shooting people in the head - he's the kind of asshole who would. 

I left any discussion of the gameplay for last because it's not exactly rocket science; Max Payne 3 is a solid 3rd person shooter with bullet-time mechanics. It's easily the best gunplay in a Rockstar game to date and there are some phenomenal set piece moments. It would be tough for me to say that the gunplay was absolutely engaging for the 8-10 hours it took me to finish the game because I was utterly engrossed by the atmosphere and narrative.

If you haven't guessed by now, I thoroughly enjoyed this game and if you're a fan of Rockstar's previous games I think you will too.

Lavan

The Missing Link (Deus Ex: HR DLC)

I recently raved about how much I enjoyed the heck out of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and right after finishing it I downloaded the 'Missing Link' DLC. I'll try to avoid spoilers but there is a part in the Deus Ex:HR where you are cryogenically frozen and transported, via ship, to a mysterious island. The Missing Link fills in the story of what happened on that ship (here's a hint; you didn't stay frozen for long)!

The Missing Link provides more of the same great gameplay that's found in the main game, along with some excellent storytelling that fills in even more of the backstory and the last chapter of the main game seems to make more sense once you've digested the DLC story. Two things I particularly enjoy about the DLC are the mandatory 'respeccing' at the begining of the DLC and the final boss.

Like most, I'm not a huge fan of when games 'Metroid you' at the start - i.e. they give you a full complement of powers to begin the game and then suddenly take them all away. I was initially a bit annoyed when The Missing Link did this (with a servicable narrative explanation for why your abilities have gone) but the speed at which you upgrade in the DLC is several orders of magnitude faster than in the main game. As a result this gives you a really neat opportunity to completely redefine your character in a short time. 

As I wrote in my impressions of the main game, I upgraded my character primarily in the areas of stealth and hacking, spending much of my time lurking in the shadows. For the DLC I decided to put all my upgrade points into combat and had a blast walking around like the Terminator! Best of all, since the upgrade path is accelerated in the DLC I was unlocking the higher abilities within just a few hours. 

One of the few shortcomings of Deus Ex: Human Revolution was undoubtedly the boss fights. In a game that was all about freedom and quasi-sandbox style gameplay it was completely out of keeping that you were suddenly thrust into the kind of rote boss fights that you'd find in your average 3rd person shooter. It was also frustrating because you could spend most of the game focusing on stealth, hacking or conversation to proceed through the narrative, using your upgrade points to improve these traits but then suddenly you were put into a combat-only situation that became needlessly frustrating, just because you neglected to improve your combat stats. 

Fortunately, the boss fight in The Missing Link is much better. Now, to be fair, I did have a character that was maxed out in his combat abilities but it was very easy to see how you could win the fight just by using stealth or hacking. I don't want to spoil it but it was far, far less frustrating than the boss battles in the main game.

The one downside of The Missing Link for me, personally, was the location. You spend all of your time in/around what is basically a military facility and while the art design is very good, my favourite parts in Deus Ex: Human Revolution were the inhabitied cities (Detroit and Hengsha). As a result, there isn't much NPC interaction that doesn't involve guns/fists and there are only a few side-quests.

The Missing Link DLC took me just under 4 hours to finish and is currently $15 on Steam and Amazon. I bought it during a Steam sale for less than half the price and though I did enjoy it a lot, due to it's length I'd suggest holding out for another sale. That said, I really did enjoy it and if you liked the main game I'm sure you will too. 

Lavan

Sign This Petition Or You Will Die

CLICK HERE

I'm serious. You will. Not now, probably in 50-60 years. But at least you could have another Player Manager game to play in the interim.

If you're wondering, it's basically a petition to convince Dino Dini (the creator of my favourite game of all time; Player Manager) to make a new game using Kickstarter for funding.

So far there are only 50 signatures, please add yours....or I will cry.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - why didn't I play this sooner?

When I did my Top 10 Games of 2011 I made the caveat that there were a few games that came out in 2011 that I hadn't played but that I expected could get into my Top 10. Among those was Deus Ex: HR but I didn't really expect it to break my Top 10. Skyrim, The Witcher 2 and even Batman: Arkham City were games I expected to really blow me away. Well, Deus Ex: HR took me by surprise from the moment I started it and 22 hours later I'm ready to not only say it should have been in my Top 10 games, but in my Top 3! In short, this game is bloody incredible!

I guess part of my apathy towards this game when it came out was due to the fact I didn't really love the original Deus Ex as much as some of it's bigger fans. Words like 'ground breaking' and 'innovative' are often used when describing the original Deus Ex - not that I necessarily disagree or dislike the game - but it just didn't grab me as much as other games I was playing at the time. It probably didn't help that when the game came out in 2000 PC gaming for me was predominantly Quake 3: Arena and Unreal Tournament so a slow-paced, methodical first person game was perhaps too radical a departure.

Regardless, I went into Deus Ex: HR with minimal expectations and within moments duly had my socks blown off! I'm playing it on the PC and this game is absolutely gorgeous. However, it's not just the lighting effects, resolution, textures and animations that make this game shine - no, it's incredible art design. The game takes place in 2027 and you can see Eidos Montreal put massive thought and effort into the aesthetics of their world. In the game you trot around the globe from future Detroit to Shanghai and it really feels like a living, breathing future world. The environments themselves tell a story. I love the slums in lower Hengsha (a fictional city near Shanghai) not just because of the dark alleyways and neon signs, but because of things like the 'Alice Garden Pods' - a hotel where space is a premium, finances are tough and people are crammed into a space like sardines with communal bathrooms and living areas.

This is also the first game where I have ever noticed costumes and fashion. It's 2027, so the clothes aren't radically different but different enough to reflect 15 years of changing fashion and societal change. And it's not as if everyone is wearing the same clothes - wealthier NPCs dress the part. I never thought I would pay so much attention to actual art design but the amount of effort Eidos Montreal have put in makes it impossible to ignore. It's fantastic stuff.

Likewise, the sound design is brilliant. NPC chatter, ambient sounds, gunfire all sound great. And the score? Incredible! In fact, I'm listening to Michael McCann's incredible original soundtrack right now and the dark, moody electronic and orchestral notes really set the tone of the game. I'm not surprised it was nominated for a BAFTA for 'Best Original Score'.

As a game, Deus Ex: HR is first/3rd person action RPG. The combination of absolute freedom with which to approach quests, solid shooting mechanics (with a great 3rd person cover system), and a well-thought-out upgrade tree make for a game that I pretty much played till the wee hours even on week nights. The freedom with which to approach quests is what makes the game so much fun. You can go in guns blazing and appropriately use upgrades that pertain to that - such as improved aiming or bullet-resistant shielding. Or you can go using stealth and use upgrades to reduce the sound footsteps make, or even unlock a short term cloaking device. Another route would be to focus on 'hacking' - using the fun hacking mini-game to circumvent security droids, turrets and cameras. Upgrades for this allow you to hack faster, safer (from detection) and give you access to a greater variety of objects in the world. You can also try to talk your way to success with numerous dialogue options and even the ability (through upgrades) to use pheromones to influence NPCs.

More often than not you'll use a combination of all four of the above (combat, stealth, hacking and dialogue) but will focus more on one or two particular areas. I focused more on stealth and hacking - get in and get out before anyone knew I was there. But there were definitely moments that called for the more direct approach and the mission/level design design allows you the freedom to mix it up whenever you want.

The story and characters in the Deus Ex: Human Revolution are fantastic. You play as Adam Jensen, a private security officer for Sariff Industries - a leading biotech company in 2027 that specializes in human augmentation. At the beginning of the game, Sariff Industries' headquarters is attacked, a major research project destroyed and you're left with severe injuries. You awake, 6 Million Dollar Man-style, recovered but with numerous 'augments' such as robotic limbs, enhanced vision and so on. You return to Sariff Industries to find out who orchestrated the attack and as a result uncover a vast conspiracy that spans the globe. 

The game is generally linear in scope but intersperses chapters of the story with open-world, non-linear areas where you can explore and find/complete quests at your own pace. I am a sucker for open-world games so this grabbed me from the onset.

The narrative in the game is not nearly as crazy as the conspiracy laden narrative in the original Deus Ex (remember that madness?) and much more focused. The characters and side missions are well written and really suck you into the world. You also make a lot of decisions, even early on, that have lasting impacts on the characters and the game world. I only just found out, after finishing the game, that one of the main NPCs who dies in the game (I don't want to spoil it by saying whom) could have been saved - I didn't even realize that was an option! There's also the underlying theme of augmentation and human progress, should we augment our bodies to make them faster, stronger? Is this evolution? Do we lose our humanity by doing this, or are we merely fulfilling our potential? The game doesn't just bring up these questions fleetingly, it tries to address them through the narrative. 

Best of all, the story isn't rammed down you throat with just cutscenes and deliberate exposition (though those are both there). You could run through this game as a shooter, barely register the story and still have a fairly good time. But if you take your time you'll see the story in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is everywhere. It's in journals and PDAs that you find around the environment. It's in the news/TV broadcasts that are playing in the background, or the newspapers left lying around. As I mentioned before, the environment itself helps to fill in the narrative. 

I love this game. Sure, there are four 'boss fights' which are utter garbage and shouldn't have been in the game but even they weren't enough to sully my opinion of the game as a whole. I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a masterpiece. The amount of effort that Eidos Montreal put into the story, the world, the mechanics and the presentation are clear to see and it really shines through. 

If you haven't already, you simply must play this game. It was on sale a few weeks ago on Steam for $7.50 which is borderline theft. Even without a Steam sale it's still around $30 and the soundtrack is around $11 (and well worth it too). 

Why didn't I play this sooner?

Lavan [off to play the 'Missing Link' DLC]

007: Blood Stone...Bizarre Creations died for this game?

RIP Bizarre Creations.

I was pretty bummed just over a year ago when Liverpool-based developer Bizarre Creations (BC) closed down. I've always been a massive fan of the Project Gotham Racing series and I still hold PGR 2 and 4 as two of my favourite racing games of all time. I felt that BC really nailed the sweet spot between simulation and arcade style handling models and that the Kudos system was a work of genius.

Unfortunately, after being acquired by Activision they were no-longer able to work on the Project Gotham series and instead created Blur. I have to say I wasn't the biggest fan of Blur, a Mario-Kart inspired arcade racer, but new IPs are often difficult to get off the ground. I suspect BC would have been able to right the ship if they had of been able to make a sequel.

Unfortunately, in January of 2011 Activision announced that Bizarre Creations would be closing down. They were able to get one last game out of the door prior to this date though - James Bond 007: Blood Stone.


Perhaps my headline/title is a bit misleading. I don't know for sure that Bizarre Creations folded because of Blood Stone. I'm sure Blur not doing so well had some part. But I imagine all the licensing cash to pay not just for the 007 license but also for the voices and likenesses of Daniel Craig, Judi Dench and, er, Joss Stone must have weighed heavily in the sales expectations at Activision head offices.

Unfortunately for Bizarre, Blood Stone only sold an estimated 260,000 copies world -wide. Usually, licensed games are a....ahem....license to print money, that Blood Stone sold so little surely spelled the death of this studio.

I was one of those quarter million people who actually bought Blood Stone. Such was my excitement that I bought it at half price a couple of months after its release last year and it still sat in the shrink-wrap until a month ago.

After finishing the game, I have to say it's an awful, awful disapointment. Not because it's a crap game. No, because for the most part it's stunningly mediocre. 

Blood Stone is a 3rd person shooter with cover-based elements and interspersed driving levels. Almost everything about this game screams average. The shooting is solid but enemy AI and the environments are a bore. The 'original' plot is even more non-sensical than the average Bond movie/game story (that's saying something!) The graphics are decent but are more reminiscent of a first generation 360/PS3 game with very bland textures and minimal lighting effects. Voice acting is also poor to average - Daniel Craig's Bond is fairly monotone in the movies so a similar performance here isn't out of character but Judy Dench sounds like she's been lobotomized. 

Bizarre Creations also went to the effort of creating a decent online multiplayer feature. Amazingly, there are still a few gamers playing this and I was able to get in a few games. The level design is uninspired but since you're playing against human players rather than AI idiots it can actually produce a few moments of fun. Unfortunately, there are other 3rd person shooters I would rather be playing online (Gears of War says "hi"). 

However, not everything in Blood Stone is mediocre - the driving levels are complete dog shit. I think that's what hurts just as much as knowing this was Bizarre Creations last game. How could a company that produced such great driving games make driving sequences so awful? The car handling makes Ridge Racer seem like iRacing, invisible walls are everywhere, and there's nary a sense of speed. Likewise, the scripting events (explosions and the like) are completely uninspired. The only time I felt my pulse race was when I would get frustrated at the shit controls - it's the complete opposite of something like Split/Second - every race in that game felt like Bond driving scene on steroids!

I'm a completionist so I did finish Blood Stone but as I put down the controller I felt an incredible sense of sadness - how could a studio that produced games that provided me countless hours of fun go out on such a downer? We'll never know but after this post I'm going to choose to forget this game exists - and go play some PGR 4 instead......

Lavan