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Gaming overload!

GTA: Vice City, Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, Desert Combat .35, WaveRace: Blue Storm, and Rise of Nations.

I’ve started to work my way out of the pile. The fact that Playstation gaming mags and websites laud the GTA series is just confirmation of my theory that there’s not one good title on the PS2.

Yes, you can drive around the city, and yes you can do whatever you want. However, to advance the plot, you have to perform annoying and repetitive missions. Frequently, the only way to find out how you’re supposed to succeed in a mission is to try it and fail. Failure returns you to a pre-mission assigned state. That means that frequently, you have to steal a new set of wheels, buy some new threads, and arm yourself, then have the mission reassigned. Usually, the clothing store, gun shop, and appropriate vehicle are on totally opposite sides of the city. This means that any sort of failure is rewarded with 5-10 minutes of driving through the city. Now picture a mission that takes four or five tries to get the perfect combination of weapons and vehicle and I think you’ll see my point.

There is a lot to enjoy in GTA:VC though. The new vehicles, especially the motorcycles, are fun to drive, and modeled well. The radio stations are entertaining, especially if you’re into 80s music, and exploring the city is a blast. Everytime I find a rampage icon or a new weapon, I have a little more fun. It’s just not enough to get past the tedium of most missions.

This one turned into another massive update, so click below to read on.

The Godzilla game, which I picked up for Gamecube, is a very slow fighter, with a bit more depth than I initially gave it credit for. My only real complaint is that in order to fight in more than one arena, you’ve got to get through the single player campaign. Most of the time when I’m playing a fighter, it’s against another person. I have them here for that purpose alone. I really don’t enjoy playing them, and when you’re in a situation like Gina and I where we only play them against each other, the person who takes the time to unlock new arenas and monsters gets a big advantage over the other person.

Speaking of big advantages, Gina’s entirely too good at WaveRace. On all the tracks she’s unlocked, except for one, she consistently beats me by 4 or 5 seconds. I wasn’t good at the N64 version, and I guess I’m no good at the Gamecube version. It looks damn pretty though, especially in single player mode. The water on camera effects on the Gamecube, as seen in Waverace and Metroid Prime, are unlike anything I’ve seen on the other platforms.

Rise of Nations is still a blast. I’m playing through my third Conquer the World campaign now, this time as the French. I figure if I can beat the game as the French on the Hard setting, I’m ready for online play. The turn-based Conquer the World section is good enough that it could be it’s own game. Hopefully, the Medieval: Total War people will tweak their turn-based game to be more Rise-like.

I played about 3 minutes of the Xbox port of Return to Castle Wolfenstein’s single player game. The last time I checked, I was at 250 minutes of multiplayer play on Xbox Live! and rising. I’m really impressed at what voice comms add to the game. I’ve made fun of voice chat on the PC before because it’s unwieldy, difficult to configure, and a little wonky. I’ve been playing since Saturday on Live, and am amazed at the overall maturity level of the people online. I think much of the maturity stems from the fact that it’s easy to mute someone, and changing your name doesn’t un-mute you.

The predominant map online right now seems to be Beach Invasion, but I see that starting to change. Using voice chat to setup a three pronged attack on a well defended basement is a high point in gaming. It’s just too difficult to coordinate that kind of attack with strangers using text communcation. I’d love to see voice comm added to Battlefield: 1942. Hell, I’d even be willing to pay for an expansion pack to have that ability.

The lack of dedicated servers is a real problem. It would be really nice if we could get a standalone dedicated server for PCs so that I don’t have to have two copies of Wolfenstein, two Xbox Live accounts, and two Xboxes to host a dedicated server. I’d be happy to toss a 16 man server up on a PC connected to the net, but I don’t want to leave my Xbox on 24/7 for a server that I’ll never be able to play on.

Lastly, Steve over at Shacknews finally put up the video he took at E3 of the Half-Life 2 demo. That was the first thing I went to see at E3 and it’s actually better than I remembered it being. The video shows footage of vehicles, in-game cameras, combat versus a giant strider-type monster, helper AI, and character animation. It’s definitely worth a little time to download. After you see it, you’ll understand why Half-Life 2 shot to the top of my “Oh dear Lord, please let me play this game” list after the demo.