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Category: Impressions

Dust 514 Beta Impressions

Dust 514 Beta Impressions

I have had the pleasure of taking part in the beta for Dust 514 over the past couple of weeks, the PlayStation 3 shooter which is tied in with the EVE Online universe and which will one day see co-operation between players from both titles. It is a very exciting idea, but one that is clearly going to take a while to come to completion. The beta for Dust is very much that, an early version of the game which is undergoing many changes and updates as it progresses. As such, these are just some early impressions of a still relatively low-level grunt.

The idea behind Dust is brilliant in that whatever happens in Eve impacts on Dust as they share the same universe. I can only assume this means that all the Alliances and Corps found in the PC title will eventually be found in Dust, and that the economies of both will be interlinked with chaos in one game causing chaos in the other. If everything works out, developers CCP could be onto a major winner. Though I do wonder what will happen when the PlayStation 4 eventually gets announced and released, will Dust just transfer over there leaving the PS3 version behind? These are questions for another time though.

Carrier Command – Hands On Preview

Carrier Command – Hands On Preview

One of the first games I ever laid my hands on as a child was Rainbird Software’s Carrier Command. It came bundled with our state-of-the-art Atari ST and from the very first time I loaded it up I was hooked. Providing a futuristic naval simulation, it took place in a beautifully rendered 3D environment, in which you commanded a technologically advanced naval carrier in attacks on gorgeous tropical islands.

Ok, perhaps my memories of the original’s graphical prowess might be a little out of touch with reality, but despite its dated looks, much of what made Carrier Command unique stands out even today. A fully open world with hundreds of miles of ocean to explore. Customisable units, open-ended objectives and a challenging AI to defeat. It was up to you to craft your plan of attack, and defeat could easily come to the unprepared.

Ship Simulator Extremes – The Verdict

Ship Simulator Extremes – The Verdict

The wind in your hair, the spray in your eyes. The taste of salt in the air. It would have been nice if Ship Simulator brought any of these things to the table. Instead we’re left with a middle-of-the-range attempt to satisfy all comers, which as a result ends up disappointing pretty much everyone. A caveat first of all. I know very little about ship-driving, or ‘sailing’ as some people call it. I can just about tell the difference between…

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Mod Spotlight – The Stanley Parable

Mod Spotlight – The Stanley Parable

This is a story about a man named Nick. Every week, Nick accesses the Reticule’s WordPress account and thinks about what he’s going to write. After sitting there blankly for a few hours, hoping in vain that some words will appear on the page in front of him, he generally gives up and goes to make a coffee. About five cups later, some words would generally emerge, at which point Nick will post them on the Reticule for the world to…

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Richard and Alice – Preview

Richard and Alice – Preview

Games journalists are a funny breed. They spend so much of their time judging and critiquing those lovely little bits of art and code, that the inevitable happens. The thought streaks across the mind, “I could do better”, and sometimes, they do. Richard & Alice is such an attempt, from the journalistic minds of Lewis Denby and Ashton Raze, and is shaping up to be something rather special.

The snow is deep in the future. Set in a world of massive climate-change, R&A is a point-and-click story of a story, told through two sets of prison bars. Ex-military man-of-decency Richard, caged for an undisclosed breach of rules, suddenly finds the opposite cell occupied for the first time in a long time by the mysterious and distant Alice. Caged for murder, what follows is a series of flashbacks into Alice’s past – surviving the eternal winter plaguing the world, the evil and desperation that has become the norm, and protecting her slightly hyperactive 5 year old son from all of the above.

Aliens: Colonial Marines – Multiplayer Hands On

Aliens: Colonial Marines – Multiplayer Hands On

“You’re the marines, the key to survival is to work together.” It sounds simple but when Xenomorphs are leaping all around, composure and teamwork make way for terror and unfortunately damp trousers.

Playing two 6 vs 6 LAN games at Rezzed we demoed the online deathmatch gameplay of Aliens: Colonial Marines. As aliens the games is most similar to a hack-n-slash. The small warehouse we played offered aliens chances to ambush and annihilate individual marines, but the narrow hallways made it easy for the marines to stick together.

Unlike most other online games tactics played as much a deciding factor in which team won as skill. Charging head first into a group of marines will just end in a bunch of smug marines high-fiving each other and acidic blood splattering the walls.

A co-ordinated attack is needed. Either isolating and picking off individual marines or attacking with an all-out assault from all directions. And it really is possible to attack from all directions as the aliens have the ability to cling to walls and ceilings. Dropping down on a marine while decapitating him with your tail is immensely fun as well as a great tactic to terrify the opposition.

Far Cry 3 – Hands On Preview

Far Cry 3 – Hands On Preview

Beginning a demo with a cut-scene of a half naked woman is a risky manoeuvre. It can put people off the game instantly, making people think that it is shallow, attention seeking and even misogynistic. Yet this is how the demo to Far Cry 3 opened, a game which could possibly be the most intelligent and abstract FPSs of the past few years.

The demo was available to play at Rezzed where I got a hands-on preview. The first thing that was noticeable was how beautiful the game looked running on a high-end PC. After the opening cut-scene the demo started out in a thicket of jungle, every leaf on every tree stunningly rendered. A path led to a cliff overlooking the island and the pristine blue sea that surrounded it, showing off the game’s impressive draw distance. On a dock on the island a man was casually tipping corpses into the sea.

After a dive into the lagoon and a brief swim the game really began. The jungle’s thick foliage and the default weapon, the bow and arrow, made stealth the most obvious tactic. Picking off enemies with the bow gave a satisfying sense of power. The tension of being seen while drawing back the string countered by the elation of an enemy dropping to the ground, bolt protruding from his body.

This feeling was somewhat lessened though by the relatively quick drawback speed of the bow and its one hit kill effectiveness, regardless of where you shoot an enemy. However, it’s possible that both these issues were due to the difficulty settings of the demo.

Faster Than Light – First Impressions

Faster Than Light – First Impressions

Emily has had a rather bad year. After finding herself stranded on an isolated planet for months, she thought her luck had finally changed when a passing ship came to her rescue. Now that same ship is on fire, oxygen is slowly venting into space via a number of worryingly large cracks in the hull, and the rest of the crew is rather inconveniently dead. All Emily has to do is fix the ship by herself, get the heavily damaged…

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Oh, Cock It! Receiver Impressions

Oh, Cock It! Receiver Impressions

Wolfire Games, creators of Lugaru and Overgrowth, experimented in first person shooter mechanics and storytelling for the 7 Day FPS challenge. The result is Receiver, a game of highly detailed firearm mechanics and fighting ‘poisonous media’.