The Hottest Game Announcements Of 2012. It Only Gets Better.

April 25, 2012 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

The year 2012 is gearing up to best 2011, as one of the best years for gaming ever. 2011 served up some great feasts for gamers with games such as Portal 2, Uncharted 3, Skyrim, all taking the gaming world by storm. Now we have an even better line up this year, and the announcements just keep on coming. So, lets talk about some of the hottest announcements of this year.

Crysis 3

Crysis 2 was a good game. But still the fans weren’t convinced of its greatness, especially given how much of a hit the first game was. The diversion of focus to consoles, loss of the open ended environment, and the loss of emphasis on game-play didn’t bode too well with the fans. And the sales testified to this. And now Crytek seems to have learnt a lesson, and are trying to woo fans again by promising a PC focused game which will take more from the original game than its successor. And if it’s even as good as the first game, if not better, then we will gladly put our social lives on halt to play it. Color us excited!

God of War : Ascension

Well well well! We did not see this one coming. Actually we did, but not the direction it would be taking. Instead of continuing from the mess that was God of War 3’s ending, we’re now being taken through an entirely new chapter in the life of the almighty Kratos, the most bad-ass God of War out there. I’m a hopeless God of War fan-boy, so i’ll accept it in whatever shape or form it arrives, so long as it arrives.

Medal of Honor : Warfighter

Expected release date – October 23, 2012

EA’s reboot of the Medal of Honor series last year was a love or hate affair for many. It had an excellent and compelling multiplayer component, but the single player lacked the quality of previous Medal of Honor titles. Now EA is having another go at its beloved franchise, and this time around, they seem to be focused on doing it right. Rather than describing a single conflict, Warfighter will be based on a multitude of issues spanning the entire globe. It’s a formula the Call of duty series has used since the beginning, and if done right, it cannot go terribly wrong.

Halo 4

Halo 3 was considered by many to be the end of Master Chief’s journey. But how could Microsoft ever sell even more copies of their beloved console without of constant barrage of the big sellers. And so we have Halo 4. The obvious difference between this Halo title and all the previous games in the series is the change of development studios. While Bungie developed the first three games, it is 343 industries who will carry the torch from here. And if they don’t deliver, a one Mr. Gordon Freeman will be waiting to strike the definite blow on the whole HL vs Halo debate. And while that may sound enticing from a sadist’s perspective, I just don’t want to play a Halo game and feel bad about it. So here’s hoping it will be another classic I will be talking for years about.

Resident Evil 6

This for me is the hottest game announcement of the year. And it topples Halo 4 mainly for one reason: I loved RE4, but I also loved the action oriented approach of RE5. So, to have a game which switches between survival horror and action definitely sounds like a good prospect. As long as they can maintain the balance, and still keep the game horror friendly, i’ll be happy. And you cannot possibly match a zombified president scaring the hell out of Leon Kennedy. Bring it on Capcom. I’m ready!

That’s it folks. These are my picks for the hottest game announcements for the year. This is not a most anticipated 2012 list, or the list would have been drastically different. The city of Columbia intrigues me more than anything else, and it’s number one on my wishlist. So lets see how that goes. So what are your most exciting announcements of the year? They may take time to be actually playable, but the hype meter does not need to be alien to their existence.

Where Ubisoft Got It Wrong With The PC

December 17, 2011 by Raj Agrawal 2 Comments

Ubisoft has been one of the prominent game publishers in the market for years. With franchises such as Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, and the new but popular Assassins Creed, they have made a name for themselves as one of the biggest names in the publishing industry. They have always been able to showcase their games well, with great quality and a good sense of marketing, but one area of the industry they haven’t been able to penetrate is the PC.

Brand Logo

Almost all of Ubisoft’s games have always been available for the PC. Those that haven’t released alongside the consoles have made it to the PC eventually. But off late there seems to be a change in their strategy regarding the platform. As time passes by, they seem to be getting more hostile towards it. Just recently they revealed Ghost Recon online for the PC. A good prospect, but it comes at the price of the cancellation of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. Also I am Alive is being averted on the platform. And this just seems like a sign of things to come in the near future. I’m pretty sure that the other Ubisoft properties such as Rainbow six and Assassins Creed will follow the same route.

The main reason why Ubisoft seem to hate the platform is piracy. And its not entirely untrue that piracy does hurt the gaming industry. The Witcher 2 was downloaded over 4.5 million times according to the developer CDprojekt. Other games such as the Call of Duty series, Starcraft 2, Crysis have all experienced humongous rates of piracy and have been affected by the losses incurred. The developer for I am Alive said that ” If only 50,000 people buy the game, then it’s not worth it”. In today’s world, where game development is becoming more and more expensive, piracy is becoming a major problem. And with the state of the economy being so whimsical, it puts further pressure on game companies to make games that they know will sell. So when you make an excellent game, and it gets downloaded for free, it can be a huge kick in the n&*s. So then is Ubisofts stand justified???

No, it’s not. And I won’t be giving personal opinions on why they’ve got their strategy wrong. Rather, lets just look at the facts. I talked about how the Witcher 2 was pirated over 5 million times. But at the same time, it sold more than a million copies in three months; the same feat took its predecessor over two years to achieve. Now I don’t know how many more copies it would have sold had it not been pirated. But what I do know is that I know a lot of people, who would rather just play something else if they can’t play a particular game for free. And the developers themselves were happy with these numbers. Other games such as the Call of Duty series, Starcraft 2, and Crysis have all sold handsomely on the PC despite having high piracy rates. Crytek, which whined a lot about the PC platform, managed to sell over 3 million copies of Crysis. 2011 was an especially good year for the pc. Battlefield 3 and Skyrim have both penetrated the million mark on the PC at retail, and are supposedly selling very well digitally. Why then has Ubisoft not been able to capitalize on the PC market? Do their games not appeal to the PC crowd?

The answer again is no. There is a very simple rule to life when it comes to interactions – If you treat others well, then they will treat you well as well. This is something Ubisoft just haven’t learnt. Constant disregard for the platform, delayed releases, buggy ports, hefty use of DRM have all created a dislike for their games in the minds of the PC gamers. Games released by companies like Blizzard and Bioware are called “labors of love”, but you cannot say the same about Ubisoft games from a PC gamers perspective. Skyrim was released with a shitload of bugs, but it still sold well, because Bethesda care for their PC fanbase, and have been constantly trying to address every problem out there. It just takes a little bit of dedication and trust in your fanbase, and they will support you. And the one difference about games released on the PC and those released on the consoles is that PC games may be poor starters when it comes to sales, but they have great legs; they keep selling at a steady pace. You just need a good understanding of the platform to achieve success.

Where then does this bitter relationship go from here? My money is on Ubisoft abandoning the platform entirely in the near future, and then jumping the bandwagon again after a few years. But, if they actually understand their mistakes and try to make amends with their diminishing PC fanbase, then maybe they will see some positive results. And then finally we won’t need to do things like “go to settings.ini and change the values of consolification and pc explosion to zero to go from 5 FPS to 6 FPS” to rectify a buggy port for a game released 10 months after its release on the consoles.

Four Reasons Why Crysis Is Better Than Crysis 2

July 24, 2011 by Raj Agrawal 2 Comments

The former had set a new bar for spectacular graphics, the other featured a tight story. They attracted a significant number of lovers and haters. While Crysis introduced the nanosuit and the tools that came along with it, Crysis 2 defined its relevance with the world. Both are great games, but the prequel brought something new and fresh on the table. The direction taken by the sequel to expand the story instead of the gameplay left me completely disappointed.

In a many ways, Crysis (released in 2007) was a much needed game for the PC platform. It was much less of a software seller, and much more of a hardware seller. I know many people who upgraded their PC’s just to play this game. When the first gameplay videos and screens for the game were released, people were blown away. It displayed a level of quality that was far ahead of its time. Even 4 years later, it can still compete with the best looking games out there. And it was not just a looker, but a player at the same time. Crysis was packed with some exhilarating gameplay which kept changing with the way the user approached a situation. You could either go rambo on the koreans, or be a ghost of the jungle and clear them out one by one. You could even be a “humanitarian” and let most of them be. This added a lot of replayability to the game which demanded multiple playthroughs. This also resulted in vastly different experiences for many people, which led to the game getting polarized reviews, ranging from great to abysmal. But, the choice was always there. Those who tried different things were thoroughly rewarded with some exciting gameplay. This is what made the game unique and great in my opinion. The sales reflected this, and the game went on to sell more than 3 million copies.

Crysis 2 was released in march of 2011 to generally favorable reviews. The events in the game took place sometime after the events of the first game. This time, the focus was shifted from the jungle to New York city. The aliens were starting their invasion, and the state of the city reflected that. The humans were on the defensive side, with you being their only hope for survival. As a game, Crysis 2 was a great addition to the FPS genre. You could actually feel the city in ruins. Buildings being destroyed, bridges collapsing, rubble everywhere; all of this added to the sense of scale. Even the aliens were more ruthless this time around, with very aggressive AI which could kill you in an instant if you were not careful. It laid a vision of a city under siege, and executed it to great effect.

However, in comparison with the first game, it still felt lacking. There were some very subtle differences, and some very obvious ones, which made the first game so great. They did not deter from the experience; the game by its own is a true gem. But, as a sequel, it left me a bit disappointed.

Here is my analysis to why Crysis is better than Crysis 2:

Variety

Even the new shiny suit doesn’t help it to topple its ancestor

Crysis had a lot of variety in the environments and gameplay. The first half of the game had you playing in a jungle fighting the Korens. The second half had you fighting on the same island, but covered entirely in snow. Now you were fighting the aliens, which gave a game a very different feel. In between, you had these unique levels like the alien ship and the plane level, which added another level of variety to the game. Crysis 2, on the other hand, had the ‘city in ruins’ feel going throughout the game. None of the levels were that different from each other, and even the gameplay style remained mostly the same. Maybe this was intentional due to the heavy focus on the story, but it did not add to the sense of uniqueness like the first game did, and certainly wasn’t as memorable.

Choices

Crysis tried to give gamers a chance to play the game in their own unique way. You had the map with the enemies laid in front of you; how you would go about exploring through the world was your own choice. There were many ways of fighting enemies, some pretty straight forward, while others very interesting. I once threw a barrel at a helicopter using super strength, and then shot the barrel which damaged the heli, leading to a wonderful crash. Another time, i went invisible using the cloak mode, entered a hut which had a buggy parked inside, and started shooting at the soldiers outside. Then i went invisible again, went outside, waited for the soldiers to go inside to look for me, and then shot the fuel tank of the buggy. The explosion that followed is one of my most satisfying moments in gaming. The fact that you could play around with all the tools at your disposal really sold me on the game the minute i started playing. Crysis 2 on the other hand was focused mainly on the tight story. The environments and enemies were great, but these choices were absent. It gave the feeling that i was just playing another one of those shooters which you could breeze through in a fortnight without caring for it. And this totally ruined the game for me.

Graphics

Crysis 4 — That’s what you call a “right” affinity

To this day, Crysis is still considered one of the best looking games ever made. And its not just the technology behind the game that wowed the masses; the brilliant environment designs coupled with the beautiful jungle vistas made the game a sight to behold. Plus the varied environments and the subtle nuances in each of them only added to the sense of wonder. Crysis 2 was just more of the same. The difference between the engines was not reflected very well in the implementation, and for two games released almost four years apart, they looked mostly similar. The city environments fade in comparison to the jungle which only makes it worse. Also, the lack of variety of environments in the sequel marks the final blow to this argument. Although the DX 11 patch has helped curb some of the skepticism, still technology was never my only complaint, and i would still side with the predecessor when it comes to graphics.

Replayability and Multiplayer

Crytek has always branded Crysis as a game which should be played multiple times. Depending of the style of fighting you choose, you’re almost guaranteed to have a unique experience. Going into a fight all guns blazing or in stealth mode weren’t the only choices you had. You could also use the environment and your suit powers to great effect. Running up to the koreans with super speed only to find them scared of being run over, shooting a tree only to watch it fall on an enemy’s head, shooting some logs on top of a cliff to see them run over a group of soldiers, confusing the aliens by not letting them track your position; these were some of the few things that gave a great level of replayability to the game. Sadly, most of these were absent in the sequel. Sure you could blow up a barrel in front of an enemy, but you can do that in almost any fps game these days; there is nothing unique about that. Plus, with the map sizes being smaller, it leaves very little room for multiple strategies.

The multiplayer in Crysis had a very battlefield-like feel to it. Although not fleshed out as well, it still provided for a decent experience. There were mainly two modes in multiplayer. One was the standard deathmatch mode, which was fun because of the ability to use your suit powers, and the other was power struggle. This was an objective based mode which was mapped across multiple areas. Basically, it was capture the flag with a twist. And the ability to use the nanosuit abilities gave it a unique touch. It wasn’t the best multiplayer out there, but it was enjoyable. The multiplayer is Crysis 2 spanned many modes. There is access to Death-match, Team death-match, extraction, assault and capture the flag. It was well varied and highly accessible for any gamer, but lost its unique selling point. It wasn’t bad at all, but it wasn’t anything that wasn’t done before. And with the dominance that COD has on the multiplayer market, its no wonder that its not as popular as Crytek expected.

Concluding words

Overall, Crysis 2 is a fantastic game. The effort and polish that has gone into it clearly warrants an AAA rating, one which it has got from many websites. But many of those who played and loved the first game will be slightly disappointed with the direction Crytek has taken with the sequel. In my opinion, Crysis is the best game Crytek have made, and unless they get things right, that might end up being the case for a long long time.