Call of Juarez 3 - Modern Cowboys

For months I've been trying to find some time to write something about the great Call of Juarez games, but I've failed. Just this: play them. Start with the second game (Bound in Blood) and then continue with the first one, which has the best story and design; it's better this way in terms of story (even if the first game is technically inferior).

Now we learn that there will be a third game, but... it has a modern setting. The only thing I can say is... WTF? I don't think it's a change justified by the story, but who knows... I'm afraid maybe Ubisoft asked Techland to do something "more like Call of Duty", and this weird concept is the result. We'll see. But it really looks weird.

The Call of Duty school of writing

Call of Duty: Black Ops was released last week. Many streets here in Frankfurt are filled with ads showing a guy with two guns, one of them called Sally. I'm not going to play it yet because I don't have too much money right now and the UK release is a bit overpriced, so I'll have to wait until it's cheaper. But I realized that I never played Treyarch's 2006 game Call of Duty III because then I was only a PC gamer and this was a console exclusive. So now it's a good time for me to catch up...



A few days ago, Jeffrey Yohalem (an Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood writer) said in a Spanish interview that "the game mechanics are always more important than the script". Then, amazingly, he mentioned Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as the main influence for his work. But as Ben Croshaw cleverly observed, PoP: TSoT is one of the best games ever made and is miles beyond its sequels even when the second and the third game have substantially better combat and overall gameplay. Why is that? Because TSoT has an amazing script.

So I've been playing for a couple of days the infamous Call of Duty III, who earned Treyarch the unfair reputation for doing the "bad" Call of Duty games. It has -*sigh*- decent mechanics, but no script whatsoever. Just "go there and shoot the bad guys" all the time, with the odd vehicle section here and there for a change of pace.

I guess after making this game somebody realized that they needed scripts for the Call of Duty games to make them less boring. So, starting with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, it looks like they decided that they had to blow our minds. I mean, literally. So then it was like this (total SPOILERS follow):


CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE:


"At the beginning of the game, you go in a car with the bad guys, they take you to a main villain and he shoots you in the head."


"So, how can we top that?"


"Then you go in a helicopter with the good guys, you run away from the same main villain, and then he... er, he throws an atomic bomb on you."


"That's so f***ing cool! After this, nobody will want to play a Medal of Honor game ever again..."



WORLD AT WAR:

"So, you've seen Call of Duty 4... Any ideas?"

"Nazi zombies?"





MODERN WARFARE 2:

"They really loved the atomic bomb bit. Now, give me something really shocking."

"You go and... shoot civilians with the bad guys, but then they shoot you in the head."


"That's so clever. And so original! So, how can we top that?"


"Er... Well, the good guy is... a main villain... and he shoots you... and then he pours gasoline on you..."


"You are a f***ing genius! We have GOTY material in our hands!"



BLACK OPS:


"So we have to top Modern Warfare or we are dead... Ideas?"


"Well, you go and shoot Fidel Castro in the head."


(Silence.)


"Only that... it wasn't him."


"That's... genius! Amazing! Modern Warfare, you are so screwed after this! So, how can we top that?"


"Well, after that, you... shoot... Kennedy."


(Silence.)


"Only that... well, you don't really shoot him. But they make you think that you shot him."


"Polish those Oscars! I mean, maybe there are no video game Oscars, but we're all going to be rich!"





So, here's the Call of Duty school of writing. Here's a good lesson for game designers all around the globe.

Pest Patrol - Shellshock 2: Blood Trails

So I had a weekend to spare and I decided to play this fine mess of a game. I had bought Shellshock 2: Blood Trails dirt-cheap, and I wanted to be sure that it was as bad as they say.

Well, it's not as bad, but almost. I get that old feeling you get from some cheap games, when you feel "oh, this would be a decent game... five years ago". So this is not exactly bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, but "it used to be fun when we didn't know better" material.

This is also one of those "in name only" sequels, like Far Cry 2. The original title was a third-person shooter made by the Killzone developers which tried hard to be disturbing by showing the toughness of the Vietnam war (even if many think they failed). Rebellion, your go-to guys for cheap shooters (ask Sega or Bethesda), said to Eidos, "OK, we'll do a sequel", they started developing a Vietnam-themed FPS, and then they filled it... with zombies.

So this is just an excuse to create a Resident Evil rip-off. Of course, they don't come even close to the great original, but still, the best part in Shellshock 2 is the part when you are in a mansion (in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle?!) and the realization sinks in... "This is just like the first Resident Evil game!". And later I saw a hooded guy with machetes, and you remember the scary chainsaw guys from the recent RE games. The game is then not a complete waste, just as the mediocre Wii reality-based FPS Red Steel, which included a truly great level in which you had to fight your way through an insane amusement park-like maze where weird stuff happened. It was worth to play that game just to experience that.

Apart from that, there's not much to recommend. Lots of scripted scares that aren't scary anymore after the third repeat. A worthless, cliched story. The old-fashioned "all the people you meet die almost immediately", which seems a left-over from the old "we don't know how to program decent squad AI" times.

Still, the mansion level is fun to play, if you don't mind suffering horrible graphics with too few character models and ugly textures. You don't have much ammo and you suddenly realize that those slow (but deadly) zombies won't go down unless you shoot them in the right place (not just the head: you can stop them blowing off one of their legs with a well-placed shotgun blast). That is a good "survival horror" feeling, but sadly it doesn't last too long because of the repetition and overall lack of quality. So I guess the game is acceptable, but not much more, if you are a horror fan and you are not sick of zombie games yet.

Don't be fooled, though. It still is a bad game.

Modern Warfare 3? "Too soon!!!"

Atomic Horizons, the recently-formed company created by former Infinity Ward heads Zampella & West, has just announced their first game, which will be published by EA in 2012. Code of Valor: The Future of War is a FPS title which will allow players to control a rogue team of three soldiers, from England, Scotland and Russia, who have been betrayed by an evil general so they have to lose their names and go underground, performing mercenary jobs to survive. More details will be announced soon, but Zampella has already advanced: "this time the PC version will have dedicated servers". Let's keep our fingers crossed!

(OK, guys, this is our April Fools' joke! Sorry!)

We must get better!

According to the reviews, Painkiller: Resurrection really sucks. And not in the "this kind of game gets old really fast" way like Dreamkiller, but in the "this game isn't even finished!" way.

Today, a major update has been released on Steam. It's good to know that the developers haven't just let the game die already, but is it even fixable? The list of changes is presented in a way that makes clear that the developers know how badly the game sucks:

-New AI System blending the direct approach used now and a sophisticated way-point system. In most areas, Monsters can not only chase you through complex architecture, you`ll also see them taking different ways in order to outrun you, and sometimes even retreat and trying to get into your back. (They basically admit that the enemies are dumb idiots that charge against you following a straight line and then get stuck in any object they find.)
-Better Char models / animations: Our 3D Artist gave another shots at the new monsters and improved some of them. (This sounds like "We are so sorry he didn't know what he was doing, but he'll do better next time, we promise!" Any other company would just fire the guy.)
-In-game MP hosting reactivated (dedicated server not needed anymore) (So they realized NOBODY would set up a dedicated server for this!)
-Competitive MP crash-fixed and tweaked (Dropped weapons look, jumping walls, etc.) (Bug fixes! Great!)
-Co-op for up to 8 (if you like madness, even 16) players (although 2-4 is the best number to try) and with up to 50 monsters at once to fight them as team (Co-op! Yay!)
-New maps and some new surprises in the levels themselves are on their way too. (The game is better now, we promise!)

So here you are. I don't know if I'm going to try the game now, but it's good to know that at least they are trying.

Dreamkiller cañí

Atchon Burike!

I finished the game in one afternoon. It's a decent Doom-inspired FPS if you'd like to play a budget game from 2004. Yes, I know it came out this year.