Violent Video Games
Posted by Mike - September 3, 2007 at 04:09:01 pmWith the new computer setup I’ve been playing a lot of video games. After the late night I previously wrote about, I continued the trend and stayed up again until 2:30am the following night. The night after that I stayed up until 4:30am and last night I think I stayed up until 1 or 2 again. I’ve been focusing on three games mainly, BioShock, World in Conflict and Supreme Commander.
BioShock
I got a bit of a late start with this one. I had to wait for the new PC before I could dive in, but I’m glad I waited. The environments are the best part of this game. A lot of people have been raving about the graphics.
…the environments you find throughout the game look amazing and practically beg to be explored… In addition to a terrific artistic design that ties the visuals together, the game has a very strong technical side, provided you have a machine that’s built enough to handle it. Unreal Engine 3 is under the hood, and all the requisite bells and whistles are along for the ride. - GameSpot Review
The art style, animations, and special effects create an unparalleled sense of mood and believability. - IGN Review
However, it’s the sound that’s really impressed me. After playing the demo on the 360 I started inquiring about surround sound, but I ended up going for the PC version and I don’t have the desire for surround sound in the bedroom.
I still haven’t made it very far through the story yet but geez those big daddy’s are brutal. I went through all of my first aid kits fighting the last one I ran into. It was pretty brutal. I know it doesn’t really matter if you die as there is no penalty, but I still try to avoid it. I’ve also been ‘rescuing’ the little sisters. I would imagine it makes the game slightly harder maybe since you don’t get as much ADAM, but I don’t really know the difference at the this point. I just know it feels good to ‘rescue’ little girls. Their eyes get so big and watery and they say “thank you mister.” Now how can you ‘harvest’ them after seeing that?
World in Conflict
What haven’t I already said about this game? I’ve played it at every stage so far: alpha, beta and now the demo. It looks gorgeous and runs smooth on my system now. Jules asked me if there was anything interesting about the gameplay today over some pizza. I rambled off a bunch of things but I thought I’d highlight the cooperative nature of the multiplayer component.
When you begin a game, you pick a role: infantry, armor, support or air. You get the rock paper scissors thing going with all the units. A tank is weak against helicopters which are weak against anti-air vehicles which are weak against infantry and so on and so forth. With built it VOIP it is easy to communicate with other players when you need assistance from another class. In addition to the VOIP there is a way to indicate on the screen where you need help and what action you need taken. For instance, if I’m playing support, I can see artillary indicators on my screen when my teammates want a building or area barraged.
If you have a decent computer and enjoy RTS games, I strongly urge you to download the demo and try it out yourself.
Supreme Commander
Last but not least is a game that I have been playing off and on since its release back in February. I wanted to try it out again with the boost to my CPU power. It played well before up until I got hundreds of units on the screen all doing their own thing. It seems to be handling the load much better now.
Also exciting is the expansion Forged Alliance (which is where the above image is from) due to come out in Novemeber.
Yahoo!
And for those of you who don’t know, I started working for Yahoo! two weeks ago. I’ll have to write another post soon about how that is. 
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