Another Dissapointment: Crysis

The hype machine in 2007 has been in overdrive, first Bioshock, then Hellgate: london and now crysis. Bioshock won many awards but in all honesty wasnt that great a game, yes, it look pretty but the gameplay was boring and repetitive, the only reason i forced myself to finish it was due to the storyline.

Hellgate london from what i hear is terrible, i’m not going to even waste my time on it when i havent heard a single good thing about it, from atrocious maps to bad gameplay to bugs popping up. Its starting to be compared to one of those bad diablo 2 clones that came out.

Now the latest and greatest game at the moment is crysis! The hype machine has overdone itself for this game, yes its the prettiest game available and … well thats about it, the game is let down by a pretty bland story and even blander gameplay. It feels just like another average shooter, or just like a far cry expansion.

 Coming back to the atrocious story, in the first part of the game, you get stealthily inserted into the island so as not to cause an incident and 2 hours later with no proper motivation the US army invades as if its just been sitting around waiting to invade. Plot hole deluxe. The story is the same old alien artifacts are found, they were dormant, we woke them up, Oh NOES!!, the aliens are teh_evilz, We musts killz themz N0w! ugh…

Dont get me wrong the engine is utterly amazing from a technological standpoint and the game features some of the best examples of modelling and texturing available but in the end who cares if the game isnt fun to play? Its like putting a ferrari shell on a toyota prius, it’ll look gorgeous but it’s still a prius and will drive like one.

I’m around halfway through the game on hard difficulty and honestly i cant seem to find a reason to carry on playing. It’s boring the crap out of me. I was utterly hooked on Call of Duty 4, and finished the game in 2 sessions, and am still playing it enthusiatically multiplayer but yeh crysis… sigh…

There will no doubt be a large group of idiots claiming it to be the best things since sliced bread, but then again it’s probably the same idiots that buy and enjoy console games aimed at single iq players. I want exciting, challenging, emersive gameplay not shiny looking boredom… I’m sorry but crysis for me was a “far cry” from what it was made out to be. There are too many idiots that judge a game on how good it looks, they seem to forget that the game is just that a game not an art exhibition…

Crytek – you guys have amazing programmers, dont you think it’s about time to hire some amazing game designers to go with them…

World in Enemy Territory

well, its been a rough couple of days lately, my car was in for repairs, the weather’s been a bit depressing (mainly cause I had to walk everywhere in the rain) and i’ve had so much work to do. At least on the bright side my c++ radon transform is finished and working. My surveillance system is pumping out masses of training data. On the downside i’ve done all the work on this project, around 95% of the code is mine, the final marks are out so i should stop caring but i cant for some reason, i have this urge to get the image recognition working!

I completed my graphics practical but my camera wasnt working properly and i just gave up. I’ve started reading up on quaternions and have written a basic quaternion class which i’m hoping to now use to write a working camera system i can reuse in further tests. I also had a bit of trouble placing objects on sloped terrain, something with my orientation matrix was screwed but at that stage i was about to kick a hole in my computer so i just faked it. It wasnt required i just thought it would have been nice.

 I now have 2 more graphics practicals which i’ll try complete this weekend, operative word being try.

I’ve been playing a fair amount of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars lately and i hate to say it but i’ve got mixed feelings about this game. they did alot right and a lot wrong. It tends to feel like a battlefield 2142 clone with objectives. The addition of vehicles is nice but they could have put a bit more effort into the vehicle designs, not to mention the wonderful fact that a vehicle falls apart when you dont use it… uh lame? You should punish idiots that leave vehicles in the middle of nowhere not work around their stupidity. Also the very basic vehicles each side gets are a little unbalanced, useless unarmed quad bike versus armed personal jet pack? Other problems i have is the locked frame rate, yes i understand your server runs at 30 ticks, yes i understand that you dont want interpolation, no i do not understand why my mouse needs to feel like its moving in honey. Honestly guys, interpolation is bad but it’s something almost all gamers have learnt to deal with, i’d prefer a slight degree of interpolation and a smoother mouse than no interpolation and not being to aim as well, its on a pc not a damn xbox for crying out loud, so use that power. I will grant you this the doom3/quake4 engine has been infamous for its terrible networking code, maybe you guys are trying to compensate for this, i dont know, all i know is that: mouse control feels icky!

Apart from that the game is a lot of fun, its really fast paced which makes good aim necessary (cough, see above) and the tide can turn pretty quickly making for some intense matches. I’m looking forward to getting some good times out of this.

Another games i’ve been playing lately is world in conflict, how should i put this: WOW! I’m really impressed, excellent performance, excellent gameplay, great loading times, great graphics, great back story. Seriously this is one good game. I’ve had absolutely no issues with this game apart from the fact that you cant just sit down and have a quick skirmish at least not offline. Apart from that i’m really digging the campaign. I really liked ground control and this is like a cherry on top. A worthy successor to that series Unlike what fallout 3 is becoming, but that is a topic for another rant…

Anyways once again i need to rush home, shower and then battle the evil quaternions (sounds like and alien race doesnt it) and then i got a hot date tonight, oooooohhhh yeeehhhh… Haha, i’ll also try finish my radon transform tutorial too..