Game notes and reviews

Sniper Elite

It is with some embarassment that I am talking about Sniper Elite because I used to work next to the producer and designer for this game, which may prejudice my opinion.

In particular as my opinion is rather positive, because this is a game that stands out from a field crowded with games that are mindless, sequels or clones. Most notable recent example is Titan Quest that a review lauds as:

But despite this, Titan Quest remains the most successful Diablo clone of recent years. While it's a little dispiriting that the game has no higher ambition than sitting in the throne while Blizzard's king is engaged in important business elsewhere, it's still a highly capable custodian of the genre.

Of course Sniper Elite is not wholly original, and it may be described as Thief set in Battlefield 1942, but not quite of course.

The PR for the game makes a greatl deal of the accurate simulation of the sniper gun and action, including gravity drop, breathing and heatbeat, but these are mere details, even if they fulfil the unique selling point goal marketing people are fond of (misunderstanding that it should be a specific feature).

But really, the major elements are:

• a mission structure with a free format environment;
• the environment is active, as tanks and planes and infantry fight among the ruins;
• a powerful weapon is balanced by the many enemies run by a good AI.

The combination is really fun, in the sense of being engaging. The player is engaged because outcomes are not obvious, and different approaches yield different situations that require different solutions; for example since the environment is active and firefights go on around you, different timing results in different outcomes. For example firing while artillery rounds are falling masks the noise of the shot and leads to a lower chance of detection.

In other words, there are tactical problems to solve, and there is even some element of strategy.

Many other games turn the player into a level janitor that just has to kill all the enemies in a level, tediously, corridor by corridor or into a platform jumper, or both, like the vastly overrated Half Life 2.

Because of the stealth element Sniper Elite might seem similar to Thief, but while Thief bored me, Sniper Elite does not, because the balance between stealth and action is much better (more action) in Sniper Elite.

Sniper Elite reminds me a lot as to engagement of the Apache Havoc masterpiece, with a sniper gun instead of an helicopter. Approaching under cover an enemy sniper, crouching, and taking him out with a rifle shot has the same tactical and tension elements as flying low behind hills to within range of enemy AA site and popping up and taking it out with an air-to-ground missile, something that one often wants to replay from a different angle, in both games.

Sniper Elite's active environment provides it with a sense of immersion and with much the same tactical elements as online play. It also an online play mode, which is to me a little less satisfying because while there is a rather active community of online players, online games don't quite have the same numbers of actors as offline ones.

Sniper Elite has only a few and minor weak points:

• On PC it uses the abominable StarForce copy-protection, and this is a rather serious issue.
• Play is fairly hard, as the enemy AI is rather good. It can take a few hours to finish a level.
• Graphics are a bit underwhelming on the PC (and Xbox, they look good on PS/2), as the looks are between Quake 2 and Quake 3 in sophistication, or about 2001-2002 vintage. This helps it run well on a PS/2, but it is a bit disappointing on even a low end contemporary PC, but then unlike recent overambitious games like say F.E.A.R., this game runs decently even on a low end contemporary PC (even if the engine obviously was not targeted at the open spaces that prevail in Sniper Elite). CPU speed matters a bit more than graphics card power.

Quake 4

Well, Quake 4 is not too bad, and I like it better than Doom 3, both the gameplay (but then my favourite ID game is Quake 2) and the multiplayer aspect is rather better, but it requires even more memory and CPU power than Doom 3: at least 768MiB, and my Athlon XP 2000+ is not quite fast enough.

TBC

Half-Life 2

I have only seen the first two-three hours of gameplay, and finished the full Ravenholme demo level, and it is very disappointing as a game. The major two elements of gameplay are platforms and a bit of physics. Basically a mix of Donkey Kong, rolling barrels included, and Trespasser, with some occasional Mario Kart style vehicle runs.

The major positive element of gameplay so far is that it is the only major game I have seen so far with pallets among the profusion of crates. This is highly significant! The legendary game site Old Man Murray argued quite correctly that a strong indicator of game quality is the how soon and how many crates one finds, and that a profusion of crates was just a sign of lazy gameplay design, and in any case with all the crates that litter many games, there are no pallets around. Well, in Half-Life 2 there are lots and lots of crates, all obviously there as a filler, but at least finally there are also lots and lots of pallets!

Another positive element is the technology, as the graphics and the physics (the Ipion engine) are actually pretty good, and produce good looking scenery and interactions. But the extremely linear, platform style nature of the gameplay means that at least in the first 2-3 hours, and in Ravenholme, the player actually goes through endless corridors, even if the outside scenery is very open.

The plot is also interesting and there is are good characters, but they are not supported by interesting gameplay, which deadens the impact.

TeleFragged.com admits that:

At first, Half-Life 2 feels a bit like a tired, old shooter in a very beautiful world. It seems like you're going to be falling into a long series of scripted sequences, led through the nose into one identical shootout after another.

Buth then argues that it grows on you:

But after a few hours, you'll start noticing that the physics-oriented gameplay, fantastic environments, and puzzles really turn this game into something far more than just an exquisite-looking, brainless action game.

which so far has not happened to me, as I am perhaps too weary of the worn out gaming cliches which the gameplay amounts to: the player ends up being both a level janitor and a platform jumper. The best bits are some of the occasional set pieces that offer some points of interest.

Tribes 2

Tribes 2 is a classic, a kind of expanded and deeper version of Team Fortress, another classic.

Tribes 2 is one of my favourite games for quite a number of reasons:

• The gameplay is excellent, going beyond the average fragfest shooting to involve thinking, both about tactics and strategy. Action proceeds in preparation-fight phases, providing rythm and time for planning.
• The gameplay adapts itself, depending on map size, to small or large teams, and there are maps that lend themselves to awesome 32-a-side action, delivering on the team play on an epic scale claim, and it is still possible to find online servers with teams that size.
• It has seamless indoors and outdoors gameplay, and both parts of a map are usually very well designed.
• There is excellent variety both as to gameplay and to the environment and looks in the provided maps, which are all of excellent to awesome quality.
• Due to the mostly random composition of teams, and the many tactical and strategic choices available, there is endless variety and interest in replay even of the same map, as well there being quite a few excellent maps.
• The technology is impressive, handling large maps and detailed interiors pretty smoothly, with good graphics and sound, including quite cool special effects. When Tribes 2 was released contemporary PCs struggled to run it, but after a few years the visuals are still impressive (but for some coarseness of polygons in the terrain) and it runs very fast indeed.
• The more advanced parts of the community of players provide a wealth of support, including many excellent extra maps, and scripts, mods, guides.
• There is a pretty good Linux port of the game, even if it is now a bit hard to find it.
• Games last from 30 to 60 minutes usually, and this is an excellent range, because it allows for a deep enough game to be satisfying, and at the same time allows to take an easy break by jumping in, doing one or two games, without being stuck for too long.

There are unfortunately some limitations and infelicities, that only detract slightly from the overall satisfaction:

• The technicalities are a bit overdone. There is a bit too much variety in the equipment, and too many subtleties in its operation.
• Team play adds greatly to the enjoyment, but the game does not particularly reward individuals for being team players, and in particular for taking defensive positions, which means that sometimes play degenerates a bit into a fragfest, especially on servers with a lot of new players used to fragfest style online play.
• Some maps reward team play too much, so much so that even a small group of better cooperating members of teams can ensure it overwhelms the other team. The best games are instead
• Since even playing the same map over and over gives completely different games each time, some servers end up running a single map all the time, usually the one called Katabatic, which is one of those with less variety (no water for example), and despite the gameplay variety this gets boring after a while.
• Some parts of the community take a while to understand that it is a technical game, in which knowledge of the technicalities of the equipment matters a great deal more than in other games.

My overall rating is that it is probably still the best and deepest online multiplayer game, rather better than pretty but shallow corridor shooters like Quake 3 or cruder team play forerunners like team Fortress or Counterstrike.

Doom 3

TBC

Unreal Tournament 2004

Pretty good technology, unfortunately always limited to a box (even if sometimes a large box) environment.

The vehicles add to the gameplay, especially a 3D element (elevation!), even if not quite as entertaining as the vehicles in Tribes 2.

There are several very irritating elements: the boundaries of the environment are not marked or otherwise visible, and it is easy to bump into them accidentally; players can jump around too much on foot, and are too fast; there are no jetpacks or energy or deployables.

So, it looks better than Tribes 2, but the gameplay is too much like Quake 3, or Quake 3 Fortress, and thus rather more shallow. No surprise that by far the most popular game type is Onslaught which involves some elements of tactical depth and some deployable like features.

One of the major pluses is that there is a set of ports and patches for GNU/Linux of the full 3D client, which is high quality and well maintained.

The UTXMP mod is far more like what UT2004 should have been, but practically nobody plays it (it is also a very large download).

Ah, and relatively few people play UT2004 anyhow, and then often on odd maps. I guess that most anybody is playing World of Warcraft instead. Too bad.

TBC

Apache Havoc

One of the more impressive, extraordinary games that I have played. The depth provided by a vast environment and the ongoing battle among AI driven units is absorbing and entertaining. Sometimes I have spent quite a bit of time just following the action, jumping into my virtual helicopter only occasionally to fight an engemement.

Also, flying a slow, low flying, stealthy helicopter with rockets is a lot more fun than most other flight simulations, especially fighter simulations:

• Old planes can only fire aft, and dogfights or bombings are tedious affairs of lining up the target, missing, and trying again.
• Newer planes will just fly in very fast and high, launch a missile dozens of miles away from the air or ground target, and disappear.
• The technicalities of flying an aeroplane can be complex, which some people like in themselves though.

Helicopters instead fly close enough to the ground, and slowly enough, that one can appreciate it (and the game renders the ground, even close up, pretty well, and the cities are especially amazing), and there are considerable tactical elements in positioning the helicopter, a game of stealth and cunning, painting targets and launching short range missiles.

There are technicalities involved in flying an helicopter too, but given its nature they are far less complicated than for warplanes. This game can deliver the full complexity, and one finds himself switching fairly often between the various sensors, but the basic flying is fairly easy, and one can delegate quite a bit of the avionics to the NPC copilot, and the degree of delegation has been wisely chosen.

Considering how quickly and cheaply it was developed, it is an inspired work, of amazing depth and balance. It did not sell well, mostly because of a dire lack of promotion, but those people who have discovered it have usually been awed.

In particular one can download several user contributed manuals, extensions, modifications and tools, which attest the passion of those that have discovered this accidental masterpiece.

TBC

Comanche Hokum

Extraordinarily absorbing, deep and entertaining, it improves (slightly) on the already awesome Apache Havoc with better graphics and richer environments, but mostly with better and more advanced helicopters which are more enjoyable to fly, because of improved avionics, which allow real or virtual pilots to concentrate more on exploring the battlefield and figthing than just running the vehicle.

I especially like the russian Hokum, a heavy tanklike helicopter, because of the counterrotating blades, which give it better handling; also the Comanche is mostly a reconnaisance helicopter, and the deepest engagements are instead those against anti aircraft batteries, and for those the Hokum is especially suited, given the long range of its missiles. Too bad that they are not fire-and-forget, but that adds to the excitement.

There are some excellent reports of what it is like to play this game, with good screenshots, on the main game site, for example this one. Even if I think that they play it wrong though, flying too high and too aggressively, as if it were a fast plane, where helicopter flying is all about moving slowly hiding at 10 meters above ground and attacking from cover.

An added bonus is the ability to integrate with an existing Apache Havoc setup and to fly the earlier helicopter and use the earlier maps too.

In part because while the Comanche Hokum are less gigantic and thus more focused than the ones for Apache Havoc, they are also sometimes less interesting: in particular the Yemen map is fairly boring.

TBC