Backlog Review: Homefront

Like Call of Duty, but less entertaining and with more Koreans.

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Homefront
THQ, Kaos Studios, Digital Extremes
March 15th, 2011

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Since its release in early 2011, Homefront has been known as "that mediocre shooter with the really short campaign." Hearing this over and over again made me a sad panda.

The game originally piqued my interest after I saw the trailer depicting a "future history" (albeit an unlikely one) that served as a backdrop for the title. Given that this was early 2011, with Call of Duty becoming stale (and alienating PC gamers) and Battlefield 3 not yet having seen the light of day, I was ready for something new and exciting to come along. Homefront was supposed to be that breath of fresh air.

Freebie Review: Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Call of Duty. I've got a complicated relationship with this one.

My first introduction to the series was Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 (I like to pretend Call of Duty 3 for the Wii never happened). CoD 4 was and still is one of the best multiplayer FPS games I've ever played. Gunplay was tight, maps were balanced and not overly-complex, and it was pretty damn fun to play. Given that it's right up there on the all-time list of highest-rated PC games on Metacritic, it's clear that I'm not alone in this opinion.

Unfortunately, CoD 4 was when the Call of Duty franchise peaked. I enjoyed Treyarch's World at War, but it didn't have the same draw of CoD 4 - though it did have zombies. Modern Warfare 2 pulled the plug on dedicated servers and brought an end to Infinity Ward as we knew it. 2010's Black Ops did a pretty decent job of saving face but ultimately fell a bit short.

That brings us to Modern Warfare 3, originally released last fall. Last Thursday, Steam announced a 50% off sale coupled with a free play weekend; I took advantage of the offer to reacquaint myself with the series.

Game Reviews: A Scoring Retrospective

Last night I got to thinking about the way I've been scoring games during reviews. I set up a page the other day with a listing of reviews and in doing so I noticed that a lot of games were receiving scores of 4.0 out of 5.0.

This thing popped up way too often.

My original intention was to keep things simple and not use some sort of arbitrary scoring system. Someone's overall impressions and enjoyment of a game are ultimately subjective; it's a little like your English teacher in high school assigning a number to a 10-page paper after making a random number of comments in red pen. What's the difference between an 80 and an 84, or a 92 and a 93?

In going with a simple scoring system of zero to five in half-point increments I attempted to solve this problem by throwing games into bins. A game that scored a 3.0 or 3.5 might be fun but flawed or buggy, while a game that scores a 4.0 could be enjoyable but not something I'd rush out and buy for $60. A game that scores 4.5 out of 5.0 might receive something in the 87-93 range in a more traditional system, so this eliminates the need to differentiate between an 87 and an 88.

Freebie Review: Saints Row The Third (slightly NSFW?)

Not your average GTA clone.

Saints Row: The Third was free to play this past weekend courtesy of Steam. I installed the game on Thursday and thanks to a marathon session Saturday evening I managed to see the ending credits before the game deactivated.

What follows is a tale of bad language, bad-assery, and Burt Reynolds.

Backlog Review: Driver San Francisco

Ridiculous arcade driving insanity.

I picked up Driver: San Francisco during Ubisoft's $1 Gamescom promotion about a month ago. I've been itching to play a decent driving game for a while now, and for a buck the decision to pick up Driver SF was a no-brainer. Obviously the price more than justified the purchase, but was the playthrough enjoyable?

Mini-Review: A Brief Return to Azeroth

Last week I discovered that Blizzard was handing out 7 days of free time for past WoW subscribers. Being the cheap, curious bastard that I am, I took advantage of the offer to both play for free and to check out the most recent patch. WoW recently underwent a major overhaul in preparation for the Mists of Pandaria expansion which goes live on September 25th.

A profound feeling of "holy crap there's nothing to do" pervades WoW right now, and as a result I didn't really spend a lot of time actively playing. I spent a few hours dueling other players and PvPing in battlegrounds; I also did a little bit of brushing up on my classes via Elitist Jerks and Arena Junkies since I haven't played in months.

System Requirements and Performance

World of Warcraft was originally released in 2004. This is obviously not a super-demanding game by today's standards. Still, Blizzard has continued to make subtle tweaks to the game engine to keep things looking pretty. You've gotta admit, WoW is probably the best-looking eight-year-old-game around. I wasn't able to find a specific list of performance tweaks and visual improvements, but I did find this "blue post" from a Blizzard employee:

There are actually quite a lot of graphic engine improvements in Mists of Pandaria, however for the most part they are subtle. For example, improved shadowing, blending and enhancements to the fog effect.

Amongst the large list of information we hope to share with you is included a list of the new graphic engine improvements with some before and after screenshots to highlight what each one brings to the game.

Each one might be subtle but as a whole they bring an improved visual appearance to the game. :)
(source)

In-Depth Review: Major League Baseball 2K12

It's not the PC baseball title we deserve, but the one we need right now.

Sports gaming on the PC has been more or less universally terrible for the last three to five years. EA Sports all but abandoned PC gamers after Madden 08, NHL 09, and MVP 05. The latest Tiger Woods PGA Tour game is basically an extension of the F2P Tiger Woods Online and has a fantastic score of 43/100 on Metacritic. The only universally-acclaimed titles available for PC today are EA Sports' FIFA series and 2K Sports' NBA2K series, both of which will be releasing 2013 versions in the next 3-4 weeks.

In 2005, Take Two Interactive signed an agreement with the MLB Players Association that gave them exclusive third-party rights to MLB games and effectively shutting out EA Sports. 2K Sports didn't bring a baseball game to the PC until 2009's Major League Baseball 2K9, but since then they've released a followup on PC every year.

2K's latest offering in the series is Major League Baseball 2K12. I've put a ton of time into the game over the past six months, and with baseball's actual pennant races heating up I figured there's no better time than the present to talk about MLB 2K12.

Release Info, System Requirements, and Installation

MLB 2K12 was released on March 6th, 2012 for just about every platform available: PC, all of the current consoles, the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, and even the Playstation 2 for some reason. From that list it should be pretty obvious that the PC version is a console port.

	Minimum	Recommended	My System
CPU	Single-core P4 2.4 GHz (2.8 GHz for Vista)	Dual-core 3.0 GHz CPU	4.0 GHz i5-2500K
GPU	128 MB DX9.0c	512 MB DX9.0c	1 GB 560 Ti DX11
RAM	512 MB, 1 GB for Vista	2 GB	8 GB
HDD	9.5 GB	--	--

The game's installation folder currently weighs in at just under 8 GB, though there is some modding in play with my version of the game which I'll address in a bit.

Backlog Review: Assassin's Creed

Time to party like it's 1191.

I've somehow managed to avoid the Assassin's Creed franchise for the last five years. Towards the end of 2007 and beginning of '08, when the first AC game was released, my gaming time was being dominated by World of Warcraft and Call of Duty 4. Leading WoW raids 4-5 nights per week for 4+ hours a night has a way of cutting into your free time, and there are a bunch of universally-acclaimed titles that I've just never played.

I picked up Assassin's Creed from Amazon last year during the holidays. I was aware that it was a successful series about a guy in a hood who sneaks around and dispatches bad guys, but that was pretty much the extent of my familiarity with the games. As it turns out, that's only half of the story.

The Setup

Warren Vidic, aka Dr. Douchebag

The game's protagonist is a bartender named Desmond Miles and it's apparent from the start that he's a prisoner in a high-tech facility. We quickly learn that he's being held hostage by a doctor who's after something in his head - information stored in memories, though not his own. Warren Vidic, some sort of doctor and a member of the group holding you hostage, explains that human DNA is an archive that contains the past memories of our ancestors. He claims that Desmond's ancestors were assassins; in order to access the memories of one of those assassins Desmond jumps into a machine called the "Animus." It kinda reminds me of The Matrix: hop onto a table, strap in, and enter a different world.

Once inside the Animus, Desmond starts reliving the memories of an assassin named Altair, a distant ancestor, in the year 1191. This is the part of the game that everyone's familiar with from the commercials and trailers - a guy in a hood running around like a parkour champion stabbing people.

Desmond sitting on the Animus. They need an interior decorator.

My Game Review Philosophy

User game reviews carry a lot of weight in my mind. With professional review sites it sometimes feels like publishers have an influence on scores, whether through site advertising dollars or threatening to withhold advance review copies of games in the future. Don't get me wrong, there are some quality sites out there, but if you're trying to avoid stepping on the toes of a major player in the industry it's hard to remain completely objective. Let's not forget the whole Gamespot Kane and Lynch thing from a few years ago.

With that in mind, I want to be as objective as possible when approaching a game on the site. Every review I post will be of a game that I own and have played extensively, whether that involves completing a campaign mode or playing plenty of multiplayer. I plan to discuss the usual stuff about each game - gameplay, graphics, value, etc - and give my overall impression along with a score at the end.

A score of 4/5. Behold my amazing GIMP editing skills.

TweakTown GTX660 Ti "Review"

Nvidia is probably going to release the GTX660 Ti some time in August, and the rumor mill is actively trying to nail down the final specs. TweakTown supposedly got their hands on a 2GB reference model and put it through its paces. The review can be found here:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4869/nvidia_geforce_gtx_660_ti_2gb_reference_video_card_review/index1.html

Obviously we won't know the truth for another week or two, so take those results with a grain of salt. I'm currently running a 1GB 560 Ti, so the prospect of flipping my old card and upgrading to a 660 Ti for ~$100 seems pretty tempting if these benchmarks are accurate. Performance in the 7950/7970 range for $250-300? Yes please.