Also Known As: Skyrim, Elder Scrolls V: Sky Rim, Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Also on: X360, PS3 Genre: RPG Publisher: Bethesda Softworks Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
I for one am not thoroughly schooled in the world of RPG’s (Role Playing Game), I only ever tried Diablo 2 once and frankly I felt it was all too late as I couldn’t really play with the dated graphics and interface and also you just seemed to be a bit too far away from your character. During Diablo’s heyday I was much more involved with RTS (Real Time Strategy) inc Warcraft, Starcraft and Total Annihilation. I’m not exactly sure what exactly classifies a game as an RPG, I think though the easiest way to tell is that with an RPG the user usually has an inventory to store weapons/armor etc and other items most of which they can browse and use usually at any point, such as The Legend of Zelda, whereas in a more action style game such as Grand Theft Auto you still control one character and the game has a storyline but your ‘inventory’ is very minimal and usually just restricted to weaponry which you select by the number keys or the mousewheel. Speaking of which, I have played all the GTA’s I have played Just Cause 2, I have played Spyro the Dragon and American Mgee’s Alice games, but none of these different types of games can really be classified as proper RPG’s. Of course I have played ’the’ MMORPG of all of them World of Warcraft but I have never delved fully into classic titles such as the Chrono Trigger, The Secret of Mana, Deus Ex and KotoR (don’t even ask me about Final Fantasy). I’m not exactly sure why this was, maybe because I was into more action and RTS games that were more multiplayer based and simpler whatever it was I never played an RPG for a lengthy amount of time until I happened to give Dragon Age: Origins a try.
Dragon Age Origins
Dragon Age was a big step for me, I just decided to delve right into to a predominately challenging game in a genre which I hadn’t really had much experience in, but to be honest I liked it, at the start at least. I liked the way that your selected race, sex and class determined where your starting area would be, what the story was behind it and what would happen in the initial stages of the story, also you did actually choose a class (Warrior, Rogue, Mage) which no matter how simple is something I thought I would want mandatory in an RPG with no predominate named character that you play as. Dragon Age was fun at first, but then there was a few problems, firstly the game, as I had mention before was quite hard especially the boss fights, even on easy, secondly I found that throughout the game you were accompanied by NPC companions. What this meant was, throughout the game you not only had to make sure you were doing the right thing in battle and organising all of your own gear and items, you had to organise the battle tactics and gear/items all of your group members as well, this made things very complicated as say you found a ring which granted extra health, which pretty much all of your group members could use you had to check the inventory of every single group member and check if their rings were worse or better, and when you have the 5 or 6 other group members, this is one hell of a lot. This coupled with the game being fairly difficult in certain parts made it quite a hassle to play and I found myself (as Zero Punctuation described) starting new characters and using different classes, races and sexes until I got bored of it, so that was that, until…..
Skyrim title and Logo showing a portion of Alduin's Wall
Skyrim, just the name sounds epic, this time, I told myself, I was going to give it a decent go, which was not the case with Oblivion. I actually tried Oblivion before I tried Dragon Age, it was the first of the Elder Scrolls games I had tried and although I did have a brief play of it, the whole classless character, (semi)complicated inventory and weight system along with the seemingly hundreds of items you had to sort through to see if you needed them and also the fact that at that point I was heavily into World of Warcraft may have had an adverse effect on my likeness of the game and I only played for a few hours. So in short I feel I didn’t give Oblivion enough time and thought, the only thing that made me seem to want to go back as the visuals, which I found be stunning. But this time was going to be different, and I was well rewarded for my patience things just had to be worked out I quickly and easily got by the non-class problem by deciding to be a warrior from the start and choosing the appropriate race for the style of play, choosing the Warrior Stone I made a good choice with the Nord as Skyrim is home to the Nords and also they well fit for using a two-handed weapon in which I used different kinds of greatswords and warhammers for most of the game. My character ended up looking quite freaky as I had selected a big tall bulky guy as fit for the two hander, then I had decided to choose the almost entirely white eyes and the black eye paint so along with his yellow tinted skin made him look half-dead, so for a bit I was roleplaying I was some invincible warrior who was back from the dead but I stopped after a while as there really wasn’t any way of expressing it in the game, and also I got married (more on this later).
I'm one freaky looking Nord
Once I had my thoughts set on a Warrior style character things just fell into place from there, I’m not going to spoil the opening for you but it’s quite epic I have to say, in the middle of this you pick your race and sex and can change your appearance and name and as usual with the Elder Scrolls no picking class, that’s it. Race plays a big part in Skyrim as I said before I chose Nord because I wanted to use 2H weapons but this is really just the opening stats and abilities, I really didn’t use the Nord main “scare enemy” ability at all you can really do anything with any race it’s recommended and/or easier to do a particular playstyle (for example to play a pure Mage it would be recommended to go as either High Elf or Breton). So after the epic opening there is the usual linear cave to get you used to the controls and gameplay, and after you get out it’s the same reaction as Oblivion, “wowee do the visuals look awesome” I’m probably a bit more enthusiastic then that but you get the idea, but they truly are, Bethesda definitely have a tick in that box, it’s something that’s very hard to describe (and that’s why I have screenshots), everything looks pretty much up to scratch as you’d expect, the shadows, textures and models are pretty realistic and have ragdoll in death though being a WoW player as I always seem to have fairly low expectations when it comes to graphics, but I quite impressed not so much blown away as in Oblivion, or when I first played Vietcong for that matter. The actual land of Skyrim itself is beautiful, rolling hills, rocky ledges, snowy mountains, dragons randomly appearing etc, the game actual has a very interesting physics system when it comes to ledges as it seems if you move slowly enough you don’t seem to fall of any of the rocky ledges no matter how steep they are. Overall Skyrim looks fine, it has the difference that Oblivion lacked which was basically just copy one beautiful area over and over again.
The Area near Riverwood
The gameplay in Skyrim is what makes it shine, I have only really scratched the surface with abilities at the moment as I’ve played a lot of the game now using only a Greatsword or Warhammer and have forgone all spells apart from the shouts so I don’t exactly have much feel for other weapons or spells. I feel it’s best to pick a certain style of play and pick the correct race and manage your perks (or ‘talents’ ‘specialties’ whatever you want to call them) to best fit your style of play, you don’t have to block yourself into playing a particular style for the whole game although you can change from a warrior to a Mage quite easily, but unfortunately (unless you use PC console commands) you can’t change around your perks. I played a as a Nord Warrior the first time around and I started off thinking I was going to use the safe option and use a one handed weapon and shield, though I soon found that using a two handed weapon was way cooler and that’s how I worked it out, and let me tell you it makes things a lot easier in the perks department, of course I did have to use the console commands to change around my perks to reflect my new chosen style of play and you aren’t able to do this with consoles so that’s the risk you take. The perks take in the form in the manner of constellations in various trees which you zoom around to view each (which can I say makes them freakin difficult to navigate, no pun intended) There is a tree for skills in one-handed weapons, one for destruction spells etc letting you specialize in your chosen field, there is also minor trees such as speechcraft which improves your skill at persuading and intimidating people and bartering with merchants.
A Nord with a two handed Sword.
The Skyrim perks screen
Some things I found kind of annoying but forgivable is that even though I was swinging around a big 2H Sword or Mace I didn’t feel as though I was quite making the impact until the killing blow, the reason for this is of course when you strike a killing blow on an enemy they ragdoll then fall in the direction they should after your strike, but unless you land a power attack which sometimes staggers your opponent they don’t always seem to be adversely affected by your swings which makes it seem like your wildly flailing around until you land that killing blow, the best ones of course are the cinematic kills (which can only be done with melee weapons) which there is no question that you didn’t finish off your opponent proper brutally. One other thing I did find a bit limiting is the way that you can only use 2 spells at a time “one on each hand” thing, it means you’re constantly freezing the game so you can switch spells and equipment around, of course this is all up to you, if you want to use 4 or 5 abilities or weapons in the one fight then that’s your decision, of course your always freezing the combat anyway to skull, health, magicka or stamina potions or some other kind of elixir that gonna help save your weak ass.
Yahh get away from me!
And weak it may be when you first start playing the game but to be honest, the game isn’t exactly too hard and has a difficulty setting too and you’ll pretty much start out finding it kind of hard and put it down to a nice friendly novice then find it easier and easier and put it back up again, at least that’s what happened with me, I of course who is not the best with action RPG’s but any hardcore RPG fan will have no trouble at all. The most annoying problem I think for people of any skill is the vendors, I’m always trying to sell things that I make or find but don’t want as the NPC’s have limited money for bartering and of course with your weight problem (that’s weight that your carrying thank you very much) your only carrying the very expensive things worth bartering which the NPC’s never have enough money for, this situation can be remedied by joining the thieves guild who supply fences who have a much larger pool of money or taking the ‘speechcraft’ perks, which I admit I am going to give myself all of them using console commands as soon as I start my first character as I am sick and tired of running around everywhere trying to find a vendor which has some money left.
Penny Arcade Comic: Thulsa Broom
One of the best parts of Skyrim is the way you interact with other creates and peoples, you’ve got your usual Bioware style questions and responses in conversation which is always fun to do, I try to take the sensible route each time but the ‘arrogant prick’ responses are sometimes hard to resist just to see how the npc’s react. There are a lot of quests and quest chains around Skyrim, you pretty much just pick them up while doing other stuff and if you’re the kind of person who likes to do things linear and in order i.e. finishing one area then moving to the next then you’re not particularly going to like this as there’s shit to do everywhere especially after the initial part of the game. The main storyline of the game revolves around you being the Dovakiin i.e. Dragonborn,Dragons play a major part in the main storyline of Skyrim, most notably their return by the hands of a certain other that is the basis of the main storyline, and you are a human who was born of dragon blood and can take dragons souls, and you use these souls by finding various dragon words in dragon shrines so you can use dragon shouts which are basically different spells with 3 stages. For example you automatically learn the first word of Unrelenting Force,after you kill your first dragon, which knocks enemies back slightly and gets stronger as you learn the next two words until you belt out 3 shouts in a quick succession and watch as your enemies go flying across the room, or off a cliff which is my preferred example. Though later into the game Dragons seemed to be turning up more frequently and it almost turns into a chore rather than a fun and epic experience, you’d quick travel to a place where you’d battled one before and sure enough then there would be another one, you’re just running along trying to go about your business then sigh as the music starts to get louder and more dramatic and you hear the roar up above you,” Here we go again…” *cue the Benny Hill theme song while you battle the dragon while in fast forward*.
Penny Arcade Comic: Their Name Means Big
There’s various quest chains that you can do some especially the Imperial vs Stormcloak missions do have a lasting effect on the game world there is a main storyline you can do it any time but there is also various things like Mage and Warriors guilds, random game world quests and other activities such as alchemy and blacksmithing to delve into. The game world is vast and you’ll spend most of your time exploring the various dungeons, castles and caverns you find while travelling to your next destination, some of which are important to quests/etc while others are just another bandit hideout or tomb with puzzles and lots of skeletons and minor things such as becoming a Thane of a City, buying a house there and getting married, yes that is a minor thing, in order to find a mate all the Nords do is wear a certain amulet showing their "available" and after you've selected your mate (human or otherwise) you have a full ceremony. and you live life together happily, apart from having them accompany you in battle or move to your home or vice versa, they don't change things all that much just the "fun" of gettin hitched I suppose. As far as completion is concerned, I think I timed my quests very well, as by then time I had finished the main questline, joined the Stormcloaks and ousted the Imperials, joined the Companions and finished their questline, and also finished pretty much all of the other quests I could find in all of the towns, barring of course the ones I missed and the other questlines which I either didn’t want to do or was inappropriate for my style of play, i.e. Joining the Dark Brotherhood or the Mages Guild.
"Lovely to see you again dear, did you remember to get the dragon meat"
Skyrim on the whole is a very tight package, it can get repetitive at times and I have to admit I was not able to get to level 50 in the one go (I was 37 when I stopped), which begs the problem of why they let you finish the main questline before getting to max level?, I will never know for me it was a kind of anticlimax but that also happened with the whole Stormcloak series. I think Skyrim has restored my interest in singleplayer RPGs (if I had any in the first place) and I could probably guess that if I spent a bit more time with Mass Effect 2 I would have lasted a bit longer. Skyrim was clean cut and (somewhat) simple to play, it looked beautiful and it was easy but technical enough to keep things interesting. There were a few issues but there were overlookable, the Elder Scrolls series just have this feel about them that’s different to other RPG’s of course that could be led back to them all being made by the one developer. You’ll find lots of other Dovahkiin around and be able to chat about shit you gone and done in the world and of course your dragon kill count. Due to the fairly easy overall difficulty of the game I would definitely suggest this to casual gamers and non-RPG players alike.
I ain't tellin you where or what this place is, it's a great shot nonetheless
I had a great time the first play and look forward to playing again with a completely different style of play (probably Pure Mage), and that what makes Skyrim stand out, you’re not forced into playing separate classes, be one thing and change either 3 hours into the game or three weeks, it’s up to you.
I have had some queries about my ‘reviews’ of games about having a score out of ten or having pros and cons at the end of the posts, I have actually considered this, but have decided against the idea for the moment as there is enough places that give you that kind of thing. Though I call them ‘reviews’ this site is more my musings on the various games I play and aren’t intended to be akin to a commercial website, I suppose if you wanted I do a sort of sum-up at the end of posts which you could read if you wanted the basic jist. I just don’t want people to base their judgement of the game by my opinions cause (let’s be honest here) they may not exactly be correct and if I have a section right down the bottom that someone may skip to and read the “quick facts and score out of 10” they might get the wrong idea, of course who says anyone on sites such as IGN & Gamespot reviews are %100 correct either it’s all (mostly) based on opinion.
I will think about it for the future, but for now if you just want the bare minimum, skip to the bottom and read my final ultimatum or go-a-searching through the world-wide-sea of game review sites, there will be plenty more on the matter I assure you.
I leave you now with a cartoon from Scott Ramsoomair of VGcats.com whose comic has kept me occupied over the years as a pleasant alternative to Penny Arcade
One thing that makes me sad about doing these reviews for past games is that I sometimes never get around to playing them again, it would be wrong to review a game that you haven’t played for a decent amount of time which I think is what happened with my Battlefield 3 review, I had only just finished the singleplayer and hadn’t played that much of the multiplayer and apparently it did show with feedback from some people I guess I was just in a hurry because people wanted to see the review and I wanted to deliver. This is not the case with Vietcong however I have played the singleplayer and multiplayer extensively in the past just not that recently, usually with‘The Past and time of Yore’ reviews I have replayed the game and wrote the review within a short period of time. To be honest it’s only because of the quiet period at work brought on by Christmas and New Years that I decided to write this review as my time at home is currently filled with Test Drive Unlimited 2 which I have previously reviewed and of course The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim which I possibly intend to finish (to some degree) before I write the review.
Release Date: March 26, 2003
Exclusively on: PC Genre: First-Person Shooter Publisher: Gathering of Developers (aka GOD Games) Developer: Pterodon Software
It’s been awhile since I’ve played Vietcong, and will probably be some time before I play it again, if ever, and this isn’t because I don’t particularly like to play the game of course, it’s because I love it and have possibly played it a bit too much however I have tried to replay the Fist Alpha expansion with some success but did not finish due to some strange bugs happening with it. You may have heard me mention it in my Battlefield 3 review, I did have a lot to talk about in regards to the Vietcong’s singleplayer mode which greatly outshone Battlefield 3’s even by today’s standards but I’ll get into that later. Vietcong was one of the first games I ever played online, the first possibly being Starcraft or even Quake 2, I’m honestly not sure but as I’ve said before it was the first one where I was serious, serious as in I was in a clan as was online at specific times in order to play for “wars” against other clans, Vietcong was a great game in a way that it had a great multiplayer and a great singleplayer which is a great achievement for an FPS. I think the first time I played it was a friends Lan and instantly I was amazed by the authentic Vietnam war style and very realistic (2003) graphics. The only First Person Shooters (FPS) I had played before this were Doom and Quake (of course) which were all sci-fi alien invasion shoot-em ups and were obviously not based on anything real whereas Vietcong was my first taste of a realistic tactical shooterwhich would eventually lead to many more.
Vietcong Main Menu
Vietcong, as you probably may have guessed already is a realistic shooter set during the Vietnam War, you play as some American army dude called Steve R. Hawkins who along with 3 other American army dudes and 1 South Vietnamese army dude (ARVN) you live in a dirty camp and pretty much every day go into the jungle and kick ass and kill commies, well that’s the basic jist of it. Of course the storyline is a bit more in depth than that, you arrive at Nui Pek camp in the middle of the jungles of Vietnam as the new sergeant, replacing the previous one who had been shot dead by the good ol Vietcong. The Fist Alpha prequel which had a similar setup to the first game you play as Sergeant Douglas (the man Hawkins replaced) and you had the same team except for Nhut, who joins later once the previous guide is killed. The story this time is about how your whole team including the Captain moved from the Plei Ku base and constructed Nui Pek and the events that led up to them destroying a major Vietcong base in Cambodia. I loved the opening scene of the first game where you were travelling in the helicopter while talking to Hornster, one of the squad and were able to look around during the whole thing, and when you land and the usually army banter happens between two of the soldiers, and you are able to walk around and take a look at the camp and meet the rest of the crew.
The Nui Pek US Special Forces Camp
After that you soon meet your commanding officer and settle in to your new room/office and then after some shooting practice with your new best friend Hornster, then you were ready for your first mission along with el Capitano. Vietcong has a great storyline, you play as Hawkins for the whole game a new sergeant going into a new base during the Vietnam war, you have your office and quarters where you can read your diary, previous mission reports and many other documents you also have a firing range you can go to and pick any weapon you had unlocked or picked up to test out and take on the next mission, (even enemy weapons) then when you’re ready you read and accepted the mission brief and there is almost always a meeting in the briefing room which was heaps of fun to watch before you went out on your mission and on several occasions you could walk around the whole base.
The Weapons Room at the later stages where pretty much all of the weapons have been unlocked and are available. you could select any weapons (even Vietcong) pick it up, try it out at the shooting range then take it on a mission.
As far as I have seen, very few modern shooters have that sort of thing, It took almost half an hour of playing before you got into the actual shooting of enemies and even then it was only about 3 or 4 until you get to the next mission and go through the whole walking through the jungle thing again until you see something, of course this is the Vietnam war, and that’s what things were like. Modern Warfare and the Battlefield series boots you right into the action immediately, I’m thinking I now prefer games like the Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis which was very much like Vietcong in the slow singleplayer story mode sense, and come to think about it. I’ll have to try out the new one sometime too. I really haven’t gotten into many shooters since Vietcong, I basically followed on from Vietcong with the Battlefieldseries starting with Battlefield 2, which I still have in high regard as my favourite multiplayer first person shooter ever. Of course Battlefield was all about multiplayer and no singleplayer, Vietcong has what I would think a healthy balance, I must have played Vietcong’s singleplayer over and over again eventually trying to perfect each mission as what started as quite a hard game eventuated into something quite easy and nostalgic, this was mainly due to the fact that my hardware upgraded over the years.
*insert Flight of the Valkyries here"
Graphically Vietcong looked absolutely awesome for its time, I’ll never forget the first time me and the team made our way into the dense jungle, with birds flying out of the way and just the tense atmosphere of the whole thing. It was such a change for me from playing things like Doom and Quake which are as stealthy and quiet as a bangin pots and pans parade and about as realistic as Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X is to a real flight simulator so this was a welcome change I suppose. Of course little did I know that I pretty much wouldn’t be going back to the days of the running rocket launching jumpathon, no siree bob, from then on most of the FPS games that had come out were based around the tactical shooter model which varies through World War 2 to modern day wars. Vietcong was the first game I played that pretty much required you to use your weapons iron sightswhich were required in harder levels and were taken out entirely in most multiplayer servers which used the ‘Vietnam’ difficulty skill which removed pretty much all objects on the HUD as well as the crosshair.
Back then, scenes like this blew me away
This along with the gritty weapon sounds and blood splatters made for a great experience, one of the best being that a lot of the time you couldn’t even see your enemy, this would have frustrated the hell out of more action style FPS game players and you found yourself shooting in the general direction and hoping you’d hit something (aka spray and pray). In singleplayer your squad consists of you as Sergeant Hawkins, a calm and common sensed Medic named Crocker, a nervous but straightforward Radioman named Defort, A black friendly Engineer named Bronson, a hot-headed Machinegunner named Hornster and an enigmatic Pointman who is played by the South Vietnamese ‘Nhut‘ all of which have their own personalities which add immensely to the situation with either situational character or humour. It’s hard to explain how well the singleplayer holds together with Hawkins experience in Nui Pek and the surrounding area I guess it’s just a great way to tell a story.
The Team from left to right, Crocker, Defort, Hornster, Nhut, Bronson
Hawkins aka you, you can also see some LLDB (Vietnamese SF) behind Hornster
Vietcong was one of my first fortes into online gaming, (the first possibly being Starcraft) one interesting fact being that this is the time I coined my usual gamer name; JDman. As you could guess my time online was quite different to the singleplayer as you were fighting actual people, the main game mode played was Capture the Flag (CTF) where you either played on the US or Vietcong team and tried to steal the enemies flag from their base and bring it back to yours. Two things I think the multiplayer in Vietcong did best was the two sides and the classes, for one the two different sides had completely different weapons this kind of thing was unheard of in Counterstrike of course in Vietcong this was because of the reasonable amount of historical accuracy as the Vietcong had mostly Russian weapons and the American’s had their own, this did keep things at a bit of a disadvantage at times but I think it worked.
Also the classes true to the singleplayer you could play as the soldier with the largest array of weapons, the medic who could heal other players with a limited selection of weapons, the engineer who could place traps such as claymores and tripwire grenades and had access to shotguns, the radioman who could call down artillery on certain places of the map, the machinegunner who had access to the heaviest weaponry and the sniper who of course had access to the longest range weapons. I loved this setup and played a medic most of the time which most people did not and it was heaps of fun to be able to heal myself and others, and otherwise do something other than killing in an FPS game and this was a big moment for me. This might sound silly but person-on-person killing in FPS is not my forte so you could understand why I’ve strayed away from games such as Counterstrike and Call of Duty and I constantly find new ways of helping the team while indirectly killing them. Though this is much easier in the Battlefield series then it was in Vietcong.
Multiplayer Capture the Flag Game Spawn Screen for VC, note the limited weapons for Medic
It wasn’t long before I was introduced to a clan. Clans in Vietcong were made up of players who had banded together to form a team either out of online or real-life friendship and the purpose of these clans was to have scheduled “wars” with other clans, which sometimes included “training nights” this was quite a weird experience for me (and even weirder explaining it to my parents) as it was almost like playing a sport, except it was played using a computer and the‘sport’ was killing people. This started with simple messaging over MSN Messenger then went on to actually talking to people using a microphone and the Teamspeak software chatting with people I had not even met, some of which from other countries. Over the years I was in clans called “Band of Brothers (BB)” “Aus Nite Crew -=(ANC)=-“ and “Warcorps (VV)” which eventually led into Battlefield (until ADP) and WoW and as you can see each had their own “tag” that you put in front of your name.
A score display of one of the largest battles I ever had, 2 clans vs another 2 clans
I met a lot of new people during this many I did manage to meet in real life and got introduced to web forums and of course internet drama and clan politics which frankly I think are pretty interesting and sometimes funny and don’t bother me much. I tried many times to get people to play different maps and different game modes i.e. “Real War” which was a point capture mode and a map that was based on a singleplayer mission that was almost entirely thick jungle. This experience led to me driving reasonably long distances to actually meet up with my ‘clanmates’ or the people I played the game with at LAN parties, this was the first time I ever did this and honestly it was scary once you think about it, but always had a great time once I was there and Vietcong is one of the best LAN games around.
Me at my first lan with people from many different clans
Once the Fist Alpha expansion was released things really got started for example there were a few extra guns and a few extra maps to keep things interesting, and also more multiplayer game modes. The thing that made most of the difference of course was the custom made multiplayer maps, these added a whole new flavor to the same old thing, and I enjoyed having many ‘wars’on these special and fun maps Multiplayer was indeed a fascinating and fun experience and kept me going for a long time, you don’t know how challenging a game is until you played the multiplayer against actual people and there are many different aspect you can add to the equation for example you can hide and they don’t know where you are, and also the general teamwork and playing with genuinely friendly people. After Fist Alpha, Vietcong never had any real content after that, there was Red Dawn, which was basically just a new fairly long singleplayer mission along with some new maps. And there was also the downloadable custom map mode and pack made by the community. The sequel to Vietcong, Vietcong 2 came out in 2005 but to my dismay was poorly received by the rest of the community and was never indulged with clans or warfare, at least in Australia which I felt was a shame , as I did enjoy the multiplay and singleplayer, though I admit it did lack the quality and overall experience of the first but that’s a story for another time.
For Vietnam!
Vietcong I can say was definitely my best experience of singleplayer First Person Shooter to date, just missing out on the multiplayer by a worthy opponent. Vietcong multiplayer has pretty much died now in Australia at least, but don’t get me wrong, Vietcong had one of the best multiplayer experiences out there and that’s the reason why it built up such a strong community that lasted quite a while and one which I was glad to be part of it was what got me into multiplayer games and the general community even more then Starcraft did. It wasn’t too long ago that I played the both of them, but that was probably the last time, I’d be worried if I played again that it would start to get stale, but in this case I wouldn’t be so sure. So if ever you’re at a LAN or store and you have a chance to play or pick up a copy of the game, please do, I can’t guarantee but I’m pretty certain you won’t regret it.
A very Minecraft New Year to you all, courtesy of GameplayerHD
I should really get round to doing this shit myself, well anyway thanks to everyone who has read, commented on, followed or even just looked at my blog since I started in april this year, I'm very proud of it and glad that I started it and I thank you for your support and look forward to a new year in gaming, makes me kind of nervous to be honest.
Also Known As: TestDrive Unlimited 2, TDU2: Test Drive Unlimited Also on: PS3, X360 Genre: Racing Publisher: Atari Developer: Eden Games
Hello again everyone it’s time for another spiel and this time it’s the next installment of my favorite driving game series ever. The title comment for this review comes from the CVG.com review I read of the first Test Drive Unlimited (TDU) it was immensely funny reading it at first as it was quite true, it was the essence of what the first Test Drive was, pretty much all about cars (and bikes) and I ask myself, has much changed? I guess not, after all Test Drive unlimited is a racing game, and a racing game has cars but this time other features have been made more accessible, but just barely.
I will start with a brief review of the first Test Drive Unlimited which I had the pleasure of playing through multiple times, I first came to read about the game when I was looking to entertain myself with a new driving game. The last one I had played was Need for Speed Carbon which was the second last of the underground car modifying subseries of EA’s Need for Speed (NFS) line of products being released, the last being Undercover which quite frankly I didn’t even notice. So when Shift rolled its way out into the third generation of consoles with its real-life tracks and legal races I decided I’d need to get a (semi) realistic racer that I could get into, I’d been a fan of NFS Hot Pursuit 2 which was an earlier incantation of semi-street racing on large tracks with sports and supercars back in 2002 but I wanted to get away from the NFS series. The other thing I wanted to get into was getting online in a driving game especially in an open-world environment with a bit of multiplayer racing thrown in there as well and Test Drive Unlimited looked the way to go.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2: Beautiful looking for the time and functional
The first test drive unlimited shined in its graphical quality, giant open world, customization of avatar and selection of vehicles which includes dozens of cars and sports bikes. I had great fun buying cars of different classes and racing them in events all across the island which as well as normal and knockout races included things like taking models to their photo shoot, car delivery and believe it or not, drug delivery. As well as that you could buy clothes and houses to store your growing collection of cars and bikes. It faltered with its online aspect which was possibly the worst multiplayer system in any recent game I have experienced, the flaming hoops you had to jump through in order to get any kind of multiplayer event organized was ridiculous, at the time I was playing there wasn’t much multiplayer races going on, probably because they were so hard to manage that a lot of people didn’t bother with them entirely. Another very annoying problem was that the friend system was appalling. It was so hard to do the simplest things like marking someone as a friend and even harder to work out who was your friend and whether they were online plus the people who were around you seemed totally random all the time, I tried to meet up with a friend who played the game too and we organized to drive to the same place in the game world but we couldn’t see each other. There was next to no multiplayer interface and you could only chat to people nearest to you with no chatbox and no other chatting tools i.e. whispering which I think is the most basic thing you need for any kind of open world multiplayer.
Test Drive Unlimited 1: Cars and bikes
It was clear there was a fair amount of improvements to be made on the multiplayer front, but as far as the singleplayer aspect went it was well worthwhile. So when I heard that a sequel was in the works a lot of people had quite high expectations of an improved multiplayer system, as did I to a degree, but somehow I knew that it was only going to be mildly better. I bought Test Drive Unlimited 2 (TDU2) for PC namely because I wanted to focus on online playing and to be honest I would rather rely on typing then talking and trying to hear people through your speakers and/or headset, though now I kind of wish I had bought it for console because the chat system in the game is pretty much exactly the same as the first one. There’s only one chat channel when you’re in the open world and it’s only for people relatively close to you, this changes in the multiplayer matches of course and you can talk to your friends, but I really I found myself just wanting to use the Steam overlay (which doesn’t work by the way cause I didn’t buy the game through Steam) to talk to friends or just playing in a window. You are able to join a ‘club’ (kind of like a racing version of a guild) but I’m unsure of whether this has a‘club chat’ option.
I’d hate to use World of Warcraft as an explanation of how things should work, these games are both old and new but still have great ways of communication, WoW is held up by its mouse related interface of course but it’s a testament to the tools we should have to communicate with each other for example things like a search to see who’s online at the moment, the ability to speak to the one person (aka whispering) the ability to invite others to a group and only speak to the people in that group and/or guild and most importantly have a chat channel which everyone can talk in. The lack of these things make the online world a hollow experience, and of course you could argue that WoW has been out for a very long time and is much more popular and that’s true but there’s no reason why they could not learn from this. Minecraft which is in its earlier stages is an example which has been massively enhanced with hundreds of modifications by a very large community allowing all kinds of chat options as well as tools for playing the game. There’s a reason that these two games either have great text-based communication options already or have good ones added by a modding community , it’s because they were both made specifically for computers and are very popular games with very large fan bases. Test Drive Unlimited 2 sadly is and has neither of those things, this is one of the things I have realized then dealt with pretty much from when I started playing the game and what a lot of people (namely these few) were afraid of and that is the PC version of TDU2 is pretty much a direct port from the xbox360 version. This is mainly noticeable in the interface as the coloured buttons are the shapes of the xbox system controller and the menu system doesn’t have enough functionality and the whole thing have this big and clumsy feel to it, especially when trying to use the mouse to move around, the icons on the main map are way too big as well cluttering it up but it’s functional to some degree.
Notice the XBOX360 (and possibly PS3) resemblant coloured buttons?
Though I digress, I’ve never really played a MMO style Racer so I really don’t know what’s good and what’s not and I guess comparing it to a third-person long standing MMO really isn’t fair, also another problem that hinders multiplayer is that there it seems there is quite a lot of people from non-english speaking countries so there’s both lag and the language barrier. I feel I shouldn’t complain as I always see a decent of people playing TD2 when I come online but it’s still so hard to find random multiplayer matches, I could honestly not remember how many times I’ve seen a visual ‘occupied with players’ flashing ring around an event in the world only to find that there are no players playing in it, I just want to scream “just give me a list of every single multiplayer race going on both islands whether it’s ranked or not with some decent filters i.e. race type, players, not empty, not full, ping etc!!!” then I realize it’s kind of a long and complicated statement to scream out. Maybe because the first game’s multiplayer system was so terrible that it’s going to take them awhile to get things up to scratch, hopefully that’s by TDU let’s say‘4’ (that’s a good number) there’s actually a solid PC multiplayer system of course my wishful thinking never really rewarded me much in life.
Multiplayer lobby with people in: I don't get to this stage much but it's fun when I do
Well now that I’ve got that off my chest, and believe me I do apologise for those 4-5 paragraphs about me complaining about the multiplayer and interface. I will continue now with something I enjoy about test drive, the actual cars and the driving. Believe me I for one aren’t the best sports car driver in games or in real life, I have never driven very fast for an extended period of time, but I have a decent amount of mildly realistic car game experience, while nowhere near the kind of stuff you need to do any good at the likes of Gran Turismo 5 or Forza Motorsport. I play driving games with my old Logitech Rumblepad 2 which is basically a PS2 Dualshock controller for the PC so I use the joysticks to steer and accelerate/brake instead of the bumpers that the PS3 controllers have, but it still works well enough. I’m slightly ashamed to say I play the game on the middle road “sport” setting of the driving assistance. In my defense I did try the higher level (hardcore) but could not handle the more powerful cars as I was pretty much permanently with no grip cause of the huge amount of torque and besides there’s only 3 levels anyway (the other being “full assistance”). So that’s that I may not be great a virtual driver but Test drive makes it fun no matter what skill you are and soon you’ll be cornering and hitting those gear shifts like a pro, and yes even with automatic transmission you still can’t just floor the accelerator, unless you want to do a burnout that is.
At the next intersection, turn left
And now for the cars, the cars are obviously a big part of Test Drive as before they are divided into classes of type and engine power (roughly) the car types are Asphalt (A), Off-road (B) and Classic (C) each type having a range of tiers A1 to A7 etc and annoying to some people you have to do pass a couple of trials to acquire the license to drive every single one of them, but I don’t mind, the tests are pretty helpful. Type C and B only have 2 classes though and this makes the A class seem kind of an overhaul as it has much more cars than the others and the A7 and A6 tiers only have 3 and 4 cars respectively which doesn’t exactly give you much choice seeing as you have to get at least one . This is what gets you buying a lot of cars and a lot of houses to store them in (as you do) and the varying kinds of vehicles make it more interesting it’s great fun going from screeching around in a modern sports car to cruising in a 1950’s Cadillac, even more so is the new off-road tracks and cars that just about makes the game worth playing by themselves, there’s something very non-realistic (and environmentally baneful) about roaring down a woodland path at 200kms an hour in a huge SUV but oh man is it fun. Another big point about test drive is the various camera views you can use both while driving and in the replay mode, and what’s more you can use your controller’s D-pad (or appropriate keys of whatever you are using) to look around the car in outside view or with your head in the interior view. TDU has always had very good interior detail, and it’s fun to watch your character steering and changing gears or just not looking at where you’re going for fun’s sake.
The garage/showroom in one of my houses, yes plural
The environment in test drive has improved a bit I would say, the new starting island Ibiza has very picturesque scenery with rolling fields, woodland forests and western style rocky mountain ranges with a bit of change in the environment compared to TDU1 which apart from the inner cities did not differ that much. Unfortunately though the graphics are reasonably good looking they do somewhat pale in comparison to the like of Forza and GT5, the cars and environment does look good, but not as good as they could so to speak though I like to think that their good in their own special way. There also has been the exciting addition of roundabouts which are a nice touch of realism but technically no-one apart from the traffic goes round them the right way and their a ripe spot for hooning players (just like in real life). As well as the new island with its new scenery and roundabouts you get pretty much the old game for free as the whole island of Oahu makes a return, the only difference being that there is now off-road tracks and you get there via a different airport and starting location, the layout and scenery in Hawaii are pretty much the same as before just given a bit of a touch-up but it’s good to have it there again, I’m especially fond of the way the edges of the road are very wide and don’t count towards ‘running off the road’ penalty which they have removed in Ibiza. There is also a new reason to do some exploring, various car wrecks of certain cars are scattered around the whole island and if you happen to drive near them your “car wreck radar”will start bleeping depending on how close you are (just like in Aliens) finding 10 of the same car wreck awards you with a new free car to add to your collection, tis a nice little fun activity to do that beaks up your usual everyday activity of driving really fast expensive cars with no regard for your own or others safety (well most of the time).
Tres magnifique
Unlike the previous game there is now a story mode where you start with that old cliche movie ‘dream sequence’ “where you’re a huge star then you wake up to reality and you’re really just a ordinary bloke with a shitty job” in this case it’s a valet driver and you end up joining this big racing championship for rich people which is the basis of the singleplayer mode. The different events coincide with the car and class types so there’s a C4 event and A6 event etc and for each type of car and about 5-6 events inside that inc normal race, time trial, eliminator (last man standing), speed limit which is basically:“keep above this speed without crashing for about 2 minutes” and checkpoint where you have to basically break the law by going through the speed cameras as fast as possible (hey, we’re rich and drive hugely expensive cars who gives a stuff?). Additionally to this there is a Championship every so often where you drive cars from various classes and types and all this is accompanied by various cutscenes of you and all the drivers and your‘rival’ for this particular event. In my opinion this storyline and cutscenes are basically fun to watch for all the wrong reasons. I usually go easy on cutscenes in games, unless they happen to cheesily replace them with a picture and text explanation of what’s happening (I’m looking at you Tenchu 3) but the cutscenes are made laughable at best due to the terrible and cheesy voice acting and the outdated and animatronic look of the human models, I enjoy a good storyline to break up the usual race-o-rama etc but frankly most people would not have the required attention span. Also there is all your usual random events such as giving attractive ladies a lift and some new ones including seeing how fast and crazy you can drive and tailing someone’s girlfriend to eventually find they are cheating on them, this always seems to be the same guy who gets you to do this, and judging by the amount of times this type of challenge appears he kind of has a serious woman problem.
This is about as animated as the character models get.
One of my favorite features of the first Test Drive was the huge amount of wealth you seemed to accumulate while doing nothing but racing cars (and bikes) and spending it on nothing but cars, bikes, clothes and houses of which were of no real use other than to store your increasingly large car collection. This is what makes Test Drive different from other racing games, in TDU2 you aspire to be some sort of cashed up celebrity racer with pretty much no regard for the safety of others or Hawaiian residents for that matter, with your incredulous wealth you can buy cars and upgrades, houses, clothes and even things like haircuts and cosmetic surgery (yep, it’s truly celebrity). One thing I have noticed however, is that through the Test Drive games the clothes have been somewhat ridiculous looking, and in TDU2 this is no exception for example, would you wear a blazer with a hoodie underneath? would you also wear a blazer with no shirt? would you wear bright shiny red tracksuit pants with the same colour high top shoes? Most (normal) people would not, so I suppose that the idea is to dress outlandishly like the crazy celeb you are supposed to be. Your house (or houses) is now slightly more interactive as you can now walk around inside them and access various things such as the TV or your laptop which give you access to various info including stats and game announcements, you can also now modify the interior of your house with different floor and walls, couches, dining tables and chairs which is a nice touch, not that you can actually sit in them (or the pool for that matter), but at least you can walk around and outside not to mention your cavernous garage where you can ogle your cars from every angle, even the interior. The actual customization of the cars is minimal, as this is no Need for Speed Underground, it is limited to tuner stores which have a pretty over-simplified way of upgrading your car for money and also a “sticker shop” where you can apply new car paint in various styles and/or decorate your car with a very limited graphics system.
Mah house, I like the 'island' feel
There has been one DLC (Downloadable Content Pack) so far for the game, this was the Exploration Pack which gave access to both new challenges and new “car wrecks” to find to acquire new cars as well as a few other much needed tweaks. To be honest though what I am waiting for is bikes, I very much enjoyed the motorcycles in the first test drive and now (halfway through my second attempt at the game) I find that they are going to be released in the next DLC packthat has been announced for release around February 2012. Though this isn’t all flowers and roses, there appears to only be 3 bikes two Ducati’s and one Harley Davidson, and there will only be new multiplayer not singleplayer challenges added for bikes. So whoop dee doo 3 bikes, though at least we actually do get a Harley style one I suppose, it seems that bikes were a thing that Eden Gamesnever meant to put in and are just giving bike fans (like me) something to make us shut up. So in retrospect I really shouldn’t complain, I can at least ride bikes soon, but due to all the restrictions on the singleplayer races (and the removal of the no class requirement races) it doesn’t look like I’ll be using the bikes in the singleplayer races at all. Also I sincerely hope the new cars that come with the pack will fill up the A classes with not many cars too choose from, though I doubt it as they look to be mostly superfast A1/A2 style machines and I also hope that the new clothing stores have less freakin silly looking clothes.
Hoodie and blazer? I blame the Rappers
Or hey just ditch underclothes altogether
Epic shoes, I just noticed she's wearing legwarmers with high heels
To be perfectly honest I would not recommend this game to a hardcore driving simulator enthusiast, nor would I recommend it to an arcade style racing enthusiast, Test Drive Unlimited 2 is for those people in between who like the other things you do (or could do) in car games without all the motorsport and car technicality or mindless pedal-to-the-metal-slamming-into-the-wall-in-order-to-turn gameplay. TDU2 is for the people who want a pleasantly realistic racer who are into cars but not toointo cars if you know what I mean, it’s a good game if you’re able to look past the flaws, The graphics do look a bit dated for this day and age and I’m not even going to mention the character models, I’m still not a fan of the way multiplayer is set up, but as I said before this is the first time I have tried a so called “Driving MMO” but I maintain the fact of the direct port from console does not help. The driving experience seems to vary, sometimes the driving feels like a chore, especially with the knockout races, other times I’m so entranced I’m paying more attention to the scenery than I am driving other times I’m having so much fun driving I’m switching camera angles like crazy as if I‘m making a movie while I’m driving.
The new island of Ibiza, the blue lines are the highways that i've traversed, zoom in further and you can see more roads
I enjoy Test Drive Unlimited 2, it lets me race classic and new cars in a great environment. If you want a semi-realistic driving game set in two and want to be a millionaire celebrity racing superstar and also be able to meet and race with other players, then this is the game for you.
JD
Caution: Multi-millionaire insensible tourists in ridiculously powerful cars ahead.
The Founding of Durotar, Campaign Menu showing Rexxar and Misha
This decision basically came from questing and exploring in World of Warcraft specifically where I was either thinking about the new areas that had come in cataclysm and/or thinking about the events that occurred between Warcraft III (WC3) and World of Warcraft (WOW). The Orc campaign in WC3 was mainly about them landing on the continent of Kalimdor in the area which would soon be known as Durotar with both their alliance with the Tauren and Darkspear trolls and continued struggle with the humans. Speaking of the Darkspear Trolls, there was a custom campaign that Blizzard made to show off that part of the WC3 Map Editor. It detailed how Thrall met Sen’jin (and Vol’jin) when the Horde reached the Broken isles on the way to Kalimdor, however this campaign although being ‘bonus’as well was only selectable from the ‘skirmish’ game screen as it was not an actual campaign .
Rexxar and Thrall in an in-game cinematic in the first chapter
The Founding of Durotar, takes a different approach from the usual WC3 RTS style, instead of commanding a whole army, you played as a small group of heroes, the most prominent being Rexxar, who is a half orc/ogre hybrid of the Moknathaal and is also a BeastMaster which in turn is one of the neutral heroes available from the Tavern. Rexxar by chance runs into the Orc Leader Thrall while he is building a new nation for his people and eventually leads the horde army against the bulk of the human Kul Tiras forces led by the staunch hero of the second war Admiral Daelin Proudmoore. During his quest he meets various other characters who are also able to be played some hero units some not. One of the purposes of this campaign was to let you play the existing predominately horde related heroes and units again as well as introduce you to the new horde hero and units as well as some new neutral heroes as well, as shown below.
Rexxar, Rokhan and Cairne Bloodhoof in the final chapter of The founding of Durotar
Playing through levels in control of a single hero is something really wanted to do pretty much throughout the whole of WC3, I even went so far as to customise multiplayer maps via the WC3 World Editor so I could play alongside the computer with a single hero unit, this idea was also picked up by the makers of the custom map Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) which became wildly popular. Basically what Blizzard were trying to do with this type of gameplay was to use the Orc Campaign in the expansion as a player introduction to the single unit questing adventure style of play in WoW as the Orcs didn’t exactly have a huge part to play in the Frozen Throne storyline anyway. Going back and finishing this campaign also answers a lot of questions and gives some insight of what actually happened between the finish of the Orc campaign in WC3 and the start of WoW, for example it explained who Rexxar was, how Durotar was claimed and Orgrimmar built and how Ogres and Tauren and many main characters appear in the WoW today, also it explains about Admiral Daelin Proudmoore and where Kul Tiras had been this whole time, though technically their island home is yet to be added to WoW.
Admiral Daelin Proudmoore, as he appeared in WC3 in the final chapter
Anyway It was a good experience, even though I got a bit impatient at the end and just wanted to see what happened, I played almost the entire Warcraft series of games from start to finish and have accumulated a broad knowledge of the Warcraft universe. I do like informing people of lore they may have missed out on especially when they may not have played any of the previous Warcraft games as it is a lot to learn by having WoW as your first ever Warcraft game. Saying that though a lot of people never bothered playing the singeplayer of many of the previous Warcraft titles, sometimes this can get annoying like for example people who ask things like where the Dark Portal goes to even after The Burning Crusade expansion had come out.
Anyhow, It was great to finally finish off this last bit of Warcraft 3 as I for one enjoy lore a lot and finding out more about the Warcraft universe is exciting to me whether it’s reading a book, the internet or playing an old game.
Until we meet again, know your lore,
JD
Rexxar, Misha and his Quillboar and Hawk as they appear in World of Warcraft
