Monday Night is right for fighting...

Monday Night Combat is a bit of a play on Monday Night Football. It is a third person FPS/Tower Defense game with some aspects of a MOBA game.

MNC is set in a game show style. You are part of a team of contestants that are fighting for cash prizes. This can be either against another team of "pros" where you attempt to destroy the other teams "moneyball" or in a co-op mode where you fight waves of mobs culminating in a battle with a final"jackbot" boss wave. There are a couple of commentators who now and again have some fantastic funny lines too.

The concept of the game is very good, there has never really been a game like this before. The nice thing about it is depending on what type of game you prefer you can play differently. If you are an FPS fan you can just go around using your weapons and ignoring the other elements and the same applies to the Tower Defense aspect.

However there are some issues, as this is supposed to be played primarily as a multi-player game
the single-player aspect is severely lacking. There is no option to use "bots" so you can't play the team vs team maps or get support in the co-op mode. The same issues apply to multi-player, often times teams will be unbalanced until enough people join to fill all the slots. There is also no match making system so you can find that highly skilled players will be facing new players lessening the enjoyment of both. There are also a couple of maps where if you can reach a certain spot you are untouchable while still being able to kill the opposing team.

Despite these few issues I really enjoyed playing MNC and I liked the concept. The game can be picked up for a fairly cheap price and would be worth the cost. However the developers are currently working on a new title called Super Monday Night Combat which will be a more well developed game and should hopefully iron out any of the issues from the first. In my opinion at this stage it would probably be more worthwhile waiting for SMNC to come out.

On the edge...

A game that received very little notice when it first came out is Brink. It is an objective based FPS.

The game is set around a militaristic/utopian city known as The Ark and there are two factions fighting within. One group The Security are attempting to maintain control and keep everyone within, while the other faction The Resistance are attempting to escape the city and live in freedom.

There is a loose storyline tying all of the missions and objectives together but it has no real impact upon the game itself. The game never changes much from one of two endings, one for each faction.

There are four class sets that you can play, Medic, Engineer, Operative and Soldier, as well as a general set of skills. Each class can perform specific tasks to complete objectives as well as helping the team in certain ways, such as healing and boosting damage.

The unique aspect to this game is the parkour. Depending on what body type you choose, you can leap over obstacles, climb walls and sprint. You would think it would be fairly clunky and un-usable but it actually flows quite well. With a combination of three key presses you can slide beneath enemies and then leap up onto a wall or rail and take them out from behind, the one problem being you have to be fast enough to press them at the right time...

The AI is quite intelligent, and by "quite intelligent" I mean it will kill you very easily if you don't watch out but most likely won't heal you... When your AI partners aren't spazzing out in the corner getting shot they usually do a fairly good job of assisting you but there are always issues when it comes to AI.

Overall this is yet another entertaining title under Bethesda's flag and with the sales right now well worth the purchase in my books. However if you don't like to play as part of a team or would rather be a one man army I'd say you won't enjoy it much, if at all...

The floor will kill you!

A fantastic coop game that I started playing is Killing Floor. It is a stand-alone game that is based on a mod of Unreal Tournament 04.

The player is set against waves of increasingly difficult and more numerous enemies culminating in a type of Boss wave. The more players in the game the more difficult the waves. Enemies can start spawning from pretty much anywhere and provides for a very tense environment while playing as you constantly have to watch your back.

Each player earns cash for a kill and this cash can be spent between waves at a shop that appears randomly on the map. That is provided you can reach it before the next wave starts.

There is also a sort of class system, you choose a "perk" at the beginning of the game which gives you specific benefits. You can level up these "perks" while using any of the other ones but you can only receive the benefits of one at a time.

The atmosphere is very tense and can be somewhat claustrophobic with the narrow tunnels and entrances and it is definitely best played with a few friends. There is also an active modding/map-making scene and a very active community. I think this is one well worth the purchase and you will get plenty of hours of enjoyment (or terror) out of it.

The tunnels are a dangerous place...

Metro 2033 does what Hellgate: London set out to do. It is a fantastic combination of FPS and Survival Horror.

The game is set in post-apocalyptic Russia, mostly within the metro tunnels. You, playing a character names Artyom, must make your way across Russia travelling through the metro tunnels and sometimes on the irradiated surface.

The game is very immersive by reducing the HUD elements and with some fantastic sound assets it really makes you feel like you are in the world. I found myself at times crouched down in real-life, while waiting for an enemy to pass in-game. The lack of a HUD is immersive without being a hindrance, in most cases, all the information you need is pretty much visual. You can see on your gun when ammo is running low and your flash light starts to get dimmer when the battery is running low.

There are some points in the game where you are involved in cut scenes. Usually these really pull you out of the game and are rather jarring but in Metro2033 they are done really well slipping easily from cut scene to gameplay and back again with no loading screens or sudden cuts from the action.
The only loading screens are between levels or missions and are all very short with a diary type entry, from Artyom, at each one.

One major aspect of the game is the fact that "military grade ammo" is currency, while also still being usable ammo. This means that if you find yourself running low on ammo you can "shoot money". This all helps to build the sense that scavenging is a necessity in this world and again helps with the immersion.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game with its dark atmosphere and terrifying sequences and while being scared to continue on at some points, really wanting to progress through the story. The world is fantastically immersive and well thought out and in my opinion well worth a play.

28 Weeks Later...

A game that I absolutely love is Left4Dead and I completed an achievement that I am massively proud of.

It is a multiplayer co-op game set in the near future soon after a zombie apocalypse has occurred. You play one of four "survivors" that have been brought together due to circumstance and have to work together in order to stay safe and reach freedom. Each of the survivors has a distinct personality (and sometimes they clash) and a back story telling how they arrived in the situation they are in.

You use a range of guns, your standard weapon being a pistol, medkits and pills. The items spawn depending on how well or how badly you are doing and have a number of places in which they can spawn. Rarely in the same place twice.

There are five levels in each campaign, the last one usually being a "survive until rescue arrives" objective, while the first four involve fighting your way through the map. There are certain areas in the game where you have to do a specific task which will alert the "horde" and you will have to fight off or fight your way through several waves.

There are several difficulty levels from Easy to Expert, Easy you can play through solo with barely any effort, while expert is nearly impossible without having 3 (good) human players.

While I was originally a little bit annoyed at how quickly Left4Dead2 was released after the first game when I played it the first time I realised that it was a brand new game and completely worth my money.

Left4Dead2 is a continuation of the first game but following a different group of people. Each of the characters have brand new back stories and personalities.

You start off again with a pistol but you have a choice of melee weapons you can exchange it for. The item list was expanded in the second game as well as the amount of areas where the items could spawn.

There are five new campaigns in the second game and the major difference to the first is that some of the maps are set during the day, creating a brand new atmosphere as you normally wouldn't expect such a horror setting in the daytime.

Again there are difficulty levels from Easy to Expert, But this time a new difficulty is included called Realism. Realism is expert mode but it has no UI help tips or character outlines. This makes it harder to see when an ally is in trouble or spot where an item is in a room.

My proudest moment (to date) was when I completed all of the campaigns on expert by myself.

I have gotten over 200 hours of fun out of these two games, a lot of this by myself, but with a few friends you could get a lot more enjoyment out of them. You can usually find one or other of these games on sale on Steam, it is more worthwhile (at the moment) to just get the second game as it is getting backdated with the maps from the first game.

The second Shock of Bio

I feel Bioshock 2 is a major improvement upon the first for several reasons as you start off as a Big Daddy, including attached drill, meaning you are not defenceless from the beginning like you were in the first.

This gives you a feeling of security that makes you want to progress on further, whereas in the first I found because I had no way to defend myself I had no incentive to progress into "darker" or "out of the way" areas.

There is also a morality type system with several choices throughout the game that can affect the outcome of the game. Not in any major way but it does feel like your actions are affecting the universe around you.

The good thing about the game is that it is genuinely scary, there is a constant ominous feeling as you traverse the levels. In the original it was not done in the same way, to its detriment. Due to the fact you were pretty much defenceless, monsters would often pop out of hiding and this was supposed to be scary, whereas it was actually just annoying. It is a lot harder to scare someone in a game when they are wielding a shotgun and the fact that Bioshock 2 does this is rather impressive.

The other part of the game that I didn't try out all that much was the multi-player. I felt that the universe just did not quite suit for a multi-player game (unless it was co-op) and had no interest to play it all that much.

The Devil Lives in London?

A game that is overlooked and often spoken ill of is Hellgate: London. It unfortunately fell flat mainly due to the lack of coverage and bad reviews, and the company folded along with the entire multiplayer section of the game.

It is a unique take on a Hack and Slash game as it is an FPS set in the post-apocalyptic future london. You can choose between six different classes, two melee (dual wield and tank) two casters (dps and summoner) and two ranged (gunner and gunner summoner). In my opinion the classes are not particularly varied or unique enough to have warranted so many but despite that they do play fairly differently.

The levels are randomly generated in five or six different environments well populated but all rather similar. The progression is balanced but fairly monotonous. You fight wave after wave of really similar enemies in these environments that after twenty or thirty iterations get rather boring. Unfortunately the game is very grindy, as is the case of most Hack and Slash games.

The saving grace of the game however is the special missions and the boss fights. Each boss is again randomly generated from a selection of powers and enemy types and are a lot tougher than their standard brethren. As you can encounter the bosses in any area it adds some great variety to the areas and an added amount of difficulty that is often needed.

Unfortunately the best part of this game was in fact the multiplayer, it had added special enemies and equipment, the ability to share equipment between characters and several other nice little options that improved the game massively.

One thing that always really bothers me about these type of games is the sense that your character "appears". All the NPCs speak to you as if you don't know what has been going on, you start off the game in some dead-end that leads only forwards and you have no gear to speak of. Is it too much to ask that a non-rpg puts a little back story on your character. Now it isn't just this game I am talking about but all Hack and Slash games.

Now while this might seem like a rather negative review of the game, every single hack and slash carries the same issues, even a great like Diablo suffers from these. I really enjoy playing Hellgate: London and keep coming back to it time and again. It is just as much fun as any other Hack and Slash and also covers an FPS element that makes it enjoyable. The game however is not in wide circulation due to the closure of the company but if you do see it in shops it will be very cheap. My vote; if you like Diablo this one is worth a play through.

Vault 101

Fallout 3 is a game set in a post-apocalyptic 50's-esque period. The storyline is that the Cold war broke out and mankind was forced underground into fallout vaults in order to avoid the nuclear blast.

It is an open world, sandbox shooter. You are given a main storyline mission that you can complete immediately or you can completely ignore it while you traverse the wasteland in search of fame and riches.

There is a wide variety of weapons, armour and items that you can scavenge from stashes or enemies (or even from friends) providing you with many different ways to tackle each situation.

The game is very entertaining and interesting and has many ways to deal with every encounter you have but can sometimes lack direction. You can finish a quest and not pick one up and then find yourself wandering around for hours just looking for something to do. (Not to say that you do not find plenty of things all over the entirety of the wasteland but it can all be a little bit aimless with no defined quests to do things.)

As always I played through originally as a stealthy, pistol wielding character. This proved to be rather difficult as pistols don't tend to deal a huge amount of damage and the stealth isn't the greatest stealth system i have ever seen.
My second play through was more successful as i used melee and rifles, providing me with the close combat skill as well as the ability to pick off distant enemies.

The game included a "Decay" system in which weapons, armour etc begin to wear out and you can use several of the same type of weapon to repair them (similar to reality where you would use parts from one to fix another.)

My overall impressions of the game were positive, the world was in general interesting and entertaining, the combat was not clunky or unresponsive (despite being frustrating at times if you haven't repaired anything in a while.), the conversations were somewhat entertaining, and the quests, while some were rather repetitive, they generally felt immersive and entertaining.
If you are interested in RPG games and don't like the medieval/fantasy setting then this is the game for you!

Radioactivity makes me cry...

Well ive been a bit busy for a while but ive finally gotten down to playing another game, Stalker: Call of Pripyat.
If youve played any of the previous Stalker games you have an idea of the style and storyline. CoP has finally nailed down all those niggly annoying bits and made a very good game. The story in this newest one wasnt very absorbing or intrigueing but it gave enough to cover your reasons for being in the Zone.

Fast-travel, was introduced in Clear Sky a vital element that Shadow of Chernobyl lacked, and im glad to say it is in the game. You need to make contact with other people to initiate it, which deepens the sense of isolation but isnt too inconvenient to make it annoying or game-breaking.

Upgrades have been refined now in that you need to get tools for engineers for the more advanced upgrades but you can still get the more basic ones without hunting for plans as in CS. And unlike the previous games the weapons are more streamlined, eastern weapons mainly use eastern ammo and additions, while western use western, both have drawbacks and benefits and they all suit quite well with the style.

AI has been massively improved, enemies dont spam grenade, cant aim-bot you at any distance and more often than not wont kill you on sight. However they now use flanking, cover and several other tactics to catch you out.

Mutants have been both improved and made easier, which makes for a better mutant. If you encounter a lone mutant you will most likely come out with a few scratches, if you encounter a pack run for your life.

Overall the map size, missions, enemies and general improvement over the previous two makes this a very enjoyable game, with few glitches or problems. As usual in this style of game it takes a while for it to get going at a pace where your comfortable to go out on your own but youll enjoy it once you are past the initial "newb trainer". This is a good game much improved over the previous renditions and while it wont be everyones cup of irradiated tea i would say if you enjoyed Clear Sky or Shadow of Chernobyl at all its well worth a look.

Happy Hunting Stalker.