The holiday season is upon us, and what a time it is to be a gamer. I can't recall a year with so many amazing games. My gaming backlog is growing rapidly. Recently I've added a few Unreal Engine games to my playlist and am trying to get in enough time with each of them to write up a review. For now though, I thought a quick recap of each would be in order.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad wound up on my desktop in beta form and, frankly, I found it hard to keep up with the many updates due to constant business travel. As a result, I really only spent meaningful time in the game upon release and it was definitely going through some growing pains. A myriad of troublesome bugs and network issues were being ironed out and Tripwire, to its credit, released quite a few additional patches and eventually ended up resetting stats and progress tracking. So, finally, with a little help from their generous double XP period, I once again reach the levels I'd obtained previously and began to really get the game. Red Orchestra developed a follwing around more realistic gameplay touches and there are many concessions to more mainstream military shooters this time around. Just understand that, going in, you are getting neither a military fps sim, nor a pure action game, and also that despite being set up for 64 player servers, woefully few can actually handle such a load. The maps themselves are mostly riveting and the selection of weapons is impressive. There's work to be done to polish this title to a shine and Tripwire Interactive has shown with the level of support they've given previous title that they can do just that.
The Haunted: Hell's Reach was definitely a game on my radar just because action games that showcase killing things evil or undead are right up my alley, but also because it won the last Make Something Unreal Contest as a modification. I was very curious to see what they could do with it. Four player co-op is another strong selling point but I have yet to venture outside of singleplayer mode. With its lovely and varied levels I can see why it made such a strong showing in the MSUC, but what I wasn't prepared for was the level of melee combat that The Haunted would offer. It looked to me like a survival mode for Resident Evil 5 and playing it purely as a shooter I found myself making an early exit from the round. It wasn't until I dug into it a bit and actually watched a few gameplay videos I realized how important it was to keep your rotting foes at bay with your formidable melee moves. One nice touch is that if you don't reach random objectives in time, each level is equipped with a natural disaster that will make your life even more of a living hell. You think fending off the evil spawn isn't work enough? Try doing it in a thich fog or with meteors dropping all around you. This game has a lot of potential for action fans looking for a change of pace in their quest to rid the earth of the undead, especially those that enjoy co-op.
InMomentum was recently released on Steam and on first impression I figured it to be a very slick trials-type of game. On second impression I realized my first one was correct. This game is a parkour fan's dream come true. If navigating the levels in Mirror's Edge gave you a woody then listen up: you've found your second-coming. It doesn't look like Mirror's Edge, other than the clean - some may say sparse - levels and you don't have any of that head bobbing motion that made everyone get sick. Nor do you shoot anything other than switches to doors that block your way. Imagine a complex series of platforms and your sole objective was to use your leaping and wall-jumping ability to make it from point A to point B as quickly as possible, then you get the gist. It's certainly well done in most respects and there appears to be a fair amount of content. Leaderboards and Steam achievements round up the fun.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad wound up on my desktop in beta form and, frankly, I found it hard to keep up with the many updates due to constant business travel. As a result, I really only spent meaningful time in the game upon release and it was definitely going through some growing pains. A myriad of troublesome bugs and network issues were being ironed out and Tripwire, to its credit, released quite a few additional patches and eventually ended up resetting stats and progress tracking. So, finally, with a little help from their generous double XP period, I once again reach the levels I'd obtained previously and began to really get the game. Red Orchestra developed a follwing around more realistic gameplay touches and there are many concessions to more mainstream military shooters this time around. Just understand that, going in, you are getting neither a military fps sim, nor a pure action game, and also that despite being set up for 64 player servers, woefully few can actually handle such a load. The maps themselves are mostly riveting and the selection of weapons is impressive. There's work to be done to polish this title to a shine and Tripwire Interactive has shown with the level of support they've given previous title that they can do just that.
The Haunted: Hell's Reach was definitely a game on my radar just because action games that showcase killing things evil or undead are right up my alley, but also because it won the last Make Something Unreal Contest as a modification. I was very curious to see what they could do with it. Four player co-op is another strong selling point but I have yet to venture outside of singleplayer mode. With its lovely and varied levels I can see why it made such a strong showing in the MSUC, but what I wasn't prepared for was the level of melee combat that The Haunted would offer. It looked to me like a survival mode for Resident Evil 5 and playing it purely as a shooter I found myself making an early exit from the round. It wasn't until I dug into it a bit and actually watched a few gameplay videos I realized how important it was to keep your rotting foes at bay with your formidable melee moves. One nice touch is that if you don't reach random objectives in time, each level is equipped with a natural disaster that will make your life even more of a living hell. You think fending off the evil spawn isn't work enough? Try doing it in a thich fog or with meteors dropping all around you. This game has a lot of potential for action fans looking for a change of pace in their quest to rid the earth of the undead, especially those that enjoy co-op.
InMomentum was recently released on Steam and on first impression I figured it to be a very slick trials-type of game. On second impression I realized my first one was correct. This game is a parkour fan's dream come true. If navigating the levels in Mirror's Edge gave you a woody then listen up: you've found your second-coming. It doesn't look like Mirror's Edge, other than the clean - some may say sparse - levels and you don't have any of that head bobbing motion that made everyone get sick. Nor do you shoot anything other than switches to doors that block your way. Imagine a complex series of platforms and your sole objective was to use your leaping and wall-jumping ability to make it from point A to point B as quickly as possible, then you get the gist. It's certainly well done in most respects and there appears to be a fair amount of content. Leaderboards and Steam achievements round up the fun.
