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Thoughts on “Enemy Territory: Quake Wars” Public Beta

June22

THE ICARUS (Strogg personal jetpack) IS THE COOLEST THING EVER. I cannot stop flying that thing; it’s a TON of fun. The game overall is quite fun. The different classes allow for multiple ways of playing the game. The vehicles are pretty cool and add a nice touch to the game. There’s usually plenty of them, so you don’t end up having to wait a long time. The objectives are fun, though get a little dull after several hours (it’s beta, there’s only one map; that’s to be expected). I like the fact that the scoreboard only shows your XP (points) and not your kills/deaths. I found that this made me far more relaxed in the game (I get angry in games VERY EASILY). I didn’t necessarily care how MANY kills or deaths I had, rather, I was more concerned THAT I was getting kills and completing objectives. For the record, I finished most games at the top.

Now for the bad: Surprisingly, the graphics are pretty disappointing. Unless you have 16x filtering on, the ground textures look like shit up close. The animations appear to be capped at 30fps, which makes the game look somewhat choppy and not smooth like the Quake 3 engine was. The massive landscape looks nice (though the trees look shitty), but really adds very little to the game, as the battles are concentrated to a small(er) area. The explosions are pretty damn dull, too, although some look decent. The sounds for most GDF weapons are RUBBISH, and I sincerely hope they are placeholders for other sounds in the final game. Seriously, one of the guns sounds like someone spitting into a microphone.

The GDF anti-vehicle/anti-air missles pretty much kill you right on the spot, with little or no chance to dodge (unless you’re craft on the jetpack), which is pretty annoying. There isn’t anything such as a flare like in Battlefield 2.

While the emphasis seems to be on teamplay, it seems to me like there are very few conventions to make this style of gameplay convenient. You can opt to join a “firesquad” at the start of the map (via a very amateurish “Would you like to join a firesquad? F1 Yes F2 No” style prompt), but there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to it. I didn’t find any way to switch squads or choose a specific squad, and there didn’t appear to be any form of squad management, such as assigning objectives and marking the map. The biggest thing that’s missing for teamplay is voice chat. It’s 2007; how could a game like this not have voice chat? I hope this is just something absent from the beta and intended for the final version.

Overall, it’s a very fun game. Despite the disappointing sound and graphics, I played for several hours straight and had an excellent time. I’m hoping some of these issues will be ironed out by the time the game is released (next month, I believe), but I’m afraid it will be more of a release now, patch later situation. Regardless, I’ll definitely be there to pick this game up the day it comes out.

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Nintendo Wii: My Adventure & First Impressions

November19

My adventure for Nintendo’s latest console is complete. I began my campout this morning at 2:30AM at my local Best Buy, having missed the opportunity to make the midnight launch. I stopped at several Meijers and Wal-Mart stores yesterday evening, but I was already too late. I called the local Toys R Us which was having a midnight launch, and the guy on the other line said there was one hundred and fifty people in line; they only had a hundred units. I called my local Best Buy at around 10:00PM last night. The girl in the media department said they had eighty-seven units and were going to start handing out tickets. I asked how many people were in line, and she said a little over ten were there at that point. I decided to roll the dice and wait a few hours before subjecting myself to the November cold.

I was a bit nervous on my way to the back of the line this morning, as I wasn’t sure if I made it early enough. The guys ahead of me said they counted about fifty or so people ahead of them, and I sure hoped they counted right. Luckily enough, as it turned out, I was number fifty-seven of eighty-seven. It was a cold, cold night, but about as good a cold night in Michigan can be: little or no breeze, no rain, and no snow. It was great to be out there among fellow nerds to be the first to snag Nintendo’s latest system. Most of the time was spent complaining about the cold, with random conversation in between. At around 4:00AM, me and a few others borrowed a Monopoly board from a group down the line and played for about an hour before giving up to the early morning delirium.

At around 6:00 or 7:00AM, the GM came out to the line to lay down the ground rules. I have to commend Best Buy #407 for their organization during the launch. He took down the names of everybody in the line and checked periodically to ensure that everyone was still in their spot. If someone was missing, he or she had five minutes to return before their name was scratched off the list. He even made a very generous offer to the loyal campers, offering 10% above cost on everything else in the store for anyone interested, which he apparently did for the PS3 launch. I couldn’t think of anything else I really wanted that would render a worthy discount, so I decided to stick with the Wii and a couple games.

Shortly after 8:30, he performed his final check and handed out the coveted Wii tickets. This moment was definitely worthy of a photo op:

The final half hour seemed to stretch on for days. The cold was getting colder and it began to drizzle, not unexpected in a typically overcast Michigan morning. When 9:00AM hit, we eagerly filed into the body-thawing warmth of the Best Buy store, one step closer to the Nintendo Wii. Here we waited in another line as the manager paired up each and every ticket holder with a salesperson. While it was slightly irritating to have to wait longer, I can understand why the manager did so. Having worked for Best Buy before, I know they want to maximize their profits during such an event while ensuring that the customers got everything they needed (and be offered things they might not need). The extra half hour wait afforded me the chance to test out some of the demos from the DS Download Center on my DS Lite.

Finally, the moment arrived. I was handed off to my personal salesbot towards the awaiting table loaded with Wii games and accessories. I picked up Zelda: Twighlight Princess (of course) and Call of Duty 3 (being a PC gamer and loving the series as well as WWII games in general, I had to find out how well the first person shooter translates to the Wii). To my disappointment, they had already sold out of the Classic Controller, which I was planning on picking up to play some old Virtual Console games. With my Wii games in hand, I floated to the register and happily exchanged my ticket for the beautiful white box. The end level theme for Super Mario Bros chimed quietly in the back of my head as I proudly walked back to my car through the cold, which had acted as a rite of passage for the past six hours. After a stop at McDonalds for breakfast (gotta get the McDonald’s breakfast when the opportunity arises), I arrived home and crashed for the next five hours, with dreams of the Wii dancing in my head.

I awoke to the little white box staring back at me with its wanton Wii eyes. Without further ado, I excitedly unpacked the box and spread all the parts out. Setting up the Wii is a fairly straightforward process; anyone can handle it without having to consult the instructions, which include a Quick Setup guide. I set the sensor bar on its little stand and put it below the TV (my Sony 30″ WEGA has a curved top to it, so I can’t exactly line it up to the edge). The initial setup requires a few basic settings, such as placement of the sensor bar, hand orientation, and screen size. After that, I entered the settings for my wireless router in the Wii Settings menu. Entering information is a synch with the Wiimote, far easier than with the conventional gamepad as with all other consoles. The next step was creating my Mii, making him look as close as possible to…me. I may need to make some adjustments, as he appears a little creepier than I actually am.

This is where the fun begins. My first test is Wii Sports, the pack-in title. I wanted to run through all the games to get a good feel for the system. I fired up Tennis first as the obvious choice, as the video game forefathers paved the way with their own little version of tennis a few decades ago. I had a huge grin on my face from the first serve. I had high hopes for this system, and to my delight, with each pop of the ball against the racket, it became more and more obvious that Nintendo has met my expectations. I laughed to myself, thinking, “This is unreal.” Having been brought up on the 2600, then the NES, moving to the SNES, and graduating to the PC, I’ve had many a great moment in my own video game history, and this, easily, has hit the top five. After having experienced the many technological advances over time, here I am, swinging my arm in a simple game of tennis, and I am simply awestruck. I wanted to run through the house and bring everyone into my room to share the experience, but I couldn’t peel myself away from the TV.

Bowling was next. Being a big fan of bowling, I finally a way to play without the choking fog of cigarette smoke and bad music. At this point, I wanted to unplug the Wii and bring it down to the living room to show everyone, but I didn’t feel like navigating my way around my parents’ makeshift A/V setup. The controls are a bit different here, but very intuitive. The nice (and extremely intelligent) thing about Wii Sports is that it gives you instructions on how to control each game. There’s no need to consult the manual or go through any strenuous training exercises; at most, you spend a minute or two practicing the motions, as in Boxing and Golf, but in the others, a simply picture in the bottom right-hand corner instructs you on how to handle the game. After seeing this, Nintendo’s vision of creating a family friendly console for gamers and non-gamers alike became perfectly clear. This is a system I can see having a group of friends gather around at a party to play. They don’t need to know a thing about the system in order to join in, and within minutes, everyone can be enjoying a rousing game of Bowling or Tennis. With future titles down the pike that have this very concept in mind, there is no doubt that the Nintendo Wii is truly the “party system.”

The next game on the list is Baseball. I wasn’t as completely impressed by this as the others. The mechanics of the game are very simplified. You don’t control the running between bases or the players on the field; you either bat or pitch. I can’t complain much there, as Wii Sports is simply a pack-in title meant to demonstrate, entertain, and entice. Full featured sporting titles are best left for the professionals. Batting is very fun, though, and very intuitive in its controls. Being someone who is not into sports whatsoever, and who hasn’t played very many sport video games, I found myself thinking, “This might be the only system I ever get into sports with.” If the Wii can convince me to play sports games, then it’s pretty clear that Nintendo is well on its way to turning a few heads.

Golf is another straightforward game which I somewhat sped through. Of all the games available, Golf is probably the lowest on my level of interest. I didn’t spend a lot of time here, mostly speeding through to get to Boxing. Had I paid better attention, I may have enjoyed it more. I’m sure this is one that will grow on me with time.

Boxing is a trip, plain and simple. This is where the control scheme really comes into play, and is probably, out of all the games, the most embarrassing to play due to all the lifelike motions. One thing I had not known prior about the Wii, which was a pleasant surprise, is that the nunchuck controller is also motion sensored. Previously, I had thought only the Wiimote was. This was definitely an exciting discovery. Boxing game is a ton of fun, and a great workout to boot. I was somewhat disappointed that the computer player wasn’t very challenging. I’m not sure if there is a setting for difficulty or not, but I wished that the computer would give me a run for my money. I grinned with excitement, imagining a great classic series making a comeback on the Wii: Punch Out! I would be shocked if Nintendo doesn’t come out with an installment for its newest system, which almost seems like it’s made specifically for it. Multiplayer Punch Out over the net? Yes, please.

There are few experiences for me in which aren’t ruined by hype and high expectations, and this certainly one of them. I have been waiting for the Wii for several months, eager to return to my post as a Nintendo loyalist and own a console system, which I have not done since the SNES. The Wii has met, and possibly exceeded my expectations simply with its pack-in title; I haven’t even plugged Twighlight Princess in yet. Do I have any criticisms? A few, sure, and perhaps more will boil to the surface once the initial glow wears off. But I’m not expecting to be let down any time soon. One thing is for certain: Nintendo has struck gold here. What does this mean for the market and for its competition? I couldn’t care less. Do I think Nintendo can actually reel in the non-gamer market that it has sought out for with the Wii? With its price point, practically non-existent learning curve, high fun factor, and multiplayer capabilities, I wouldn’t doubt it. With all the great group-oriented games coming down the pike, along with its online capabilities and Virtual Console games (Nintendo nostalgia is everywhere; it’s a gold mine), Nintendo has everything it needs to capture that market. Only time will tell if that will happen. I can certainly say it’s great to be back, Nintendo.

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Games I Never Realized Were So Freaking Good, Episode 1

February3

This episode is dedicated to Civilization III. I always heard so many good things about this game, read all the glimmering reviews, but the idea of a “turn based strategy” turned me off. The funny thing is, I don’t think I ever really played a TBS prior to my passing judgement, so my argument was baseless.

I downloaded the demo and could not stop playing. Well, I had to, because it was a time bombed demo that only allows for one hour of play. If you’ve never played it before, please do, unless you don’t have the time to dedicate to an addiction (which I really don’t).

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