Just a quick post here regarding Settlers 7 and windowed mode. Although the in game UI doesn’t say the game supports running the game in a window, you can be changing your settings file. You can find the file in the Settlers7 folder under the “My Documents” folder. Open the “Options.ini” file and change the following.

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[Quality]
FullScreen = 0
ScreenHeight = 960
ScreenWidth = 1280

Now, if only someone could tell me why the game still thinks DoF is on when the options file reads it as being set to zero! Happy settling.

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Borderlands has been out for a week now but I have played a lot of it… a lot. Here is my point by point review of the game that has been in development for what seems like forever.

The Good
I See Diablo Influence – The millions of guns statements are true and the system that creates them is fantastic because you don’t notice it doing work. It is as if you are playing Diablo II all over again – wait what? More than any other game out there, Borderlands resembles Diablo II the most with its drop system that attempts to truly randomize what weapons drop. For anyone who hasn’t played and subsequently didn’t get hooked on Diablo II, this is a good thing becase it means that the repetition of fighting the same enemies in the same area over and over can be forgotten in light of the hunt for better loot. No other (non-Blizzard) game seems to understand this and so Borderlands gets an A+ for this.

I Feel Call Of Duty – Short and to the point: there is nothing quite as sweet as jumping into a game and feeling right at home instantly. Borderlands makes perfect use of the basics of the Call of Duy: Modern Warfare control scheme rather than going all Halo on us players.

I Hate Half Life – Fighting two legged enemies that simply shoot back can get boring very quickly. Fortunately Borderlands ups the chaos by including enemies like four legged spiders and you guessed it – head crabs… erm, I mean scythids. These things will jump at you while there bretheren float and then jump at you. Fighting gigantic alien insects freaks me out and for this I got to give Borderlands for not flatlining on enemy types.

Of Art & Jokes – Many were skeptical of the art; it is fantastic. It fits and works perfectly for the game while setting it very far apart from Fallout 3 and Rage. After a few minutes of play I forgot all about it being a “copy of Fallout 3″ and started enjoying it independently. And oh how the humor kept me on my floor holding my stomach. The redneck/hick/western humor is a welcomed departure from every single other game on the market today. Seriously, Scooter is the funniest in-game character in a long time.

The Bad
Early Plot Peak – Back in highschool I learned about how plotlines ascend, peak and then descend towards the conclusion. While this theme really isn’t necessary in games (Halo 3 builds until the final cutscene) to be successful, it is important not to flatten out within the first few hours of gameplay. This is a big problem for Borderlands. Scooter is about the only funny character in the game, the claptraps have about 10 lines and character development is non-existent.

The Enemies – I can name them: Bandits, Skags, Scythids, Spiderants. There. You will see all of them within a few hours of playing the game. The rest are insignificant (Rakk, Scorpioncrabs) or modifications on those core four. Again Borderlands crescendos way too early and fails to introduce new enemy types (in a large way) until the last hour or two of gameplay. In fact, Scythids were only included because you run over them a lot in the one vehicle. Really you don’t ever have to worry about them. In fact all you ever have to worry about is Skags an Bandits. Spiderants are easily disposed of with a clean shot to the sac.

Too Many Other Games – It is too obvious what games the inspiration for Borderlands was drawn from: Diablo, Fallout, Call of Duty, Half Life, Halo. Really this game is more of a mixture of features of other games rather than a game of its own. I mean really Gearbox, an AI look alike woman that talks to you through your HUD? Enemies that jump for your head? This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but once the honeymoon period is over it means the game gets boring fast.

Oh The Bugs – I can’t count the bugs anymore. I literally lost count. Did Gearbox even test this game? Things like getting stuck in the terrain are somewhat excusable in such a large game. But hitbox detection for the one vehicle is absolutely horrid. There is no excuse for running into an invisible area around a rock and being stopped immediately. Other bugs are just as annoying – no way to come out of Berserk except hitting the back button which has a chance of not bringing back your weapons until Berserk actually runs out. Another favorite is how it seems that every boss can be “glitched” into an enemy that can’t cause any harm to the player (not that they could in the first place).

The “Bosses” – These bosses are a joke. As a person who sucks at boss fights I can tell you that the bosses in Borderlands are horribly designed, do no damage to the player and can be easily beaten without any tricks. Pro tip: aim, fire, reload, repeat.

Verdict
The game has a lot of problems and numerous shortcomings, but should you buy it? Yes. Even with the flaws it is a great game that should be experienced by all. Hopefully we can inspire some developer to take the ideas to the next step and add a few buckets of polish.

Looks like we have a platformer contest starting up here… any other entrants? This is the start of a game by ElementCy which apparently go for more of a Conker feel than the fast paced style of Tears.

Check out Zedox’s new platformer, Tears, in this video. I have been wanting a good, fast platformer for many months now. Remember kiddies, Sonic is always better than Mario.

Age of Empires III
For those installing Age of Empires III remember that the expansion, War Chiefs, requires you to add a folder to the start menu because that is how it checks to make sure you can install it (stupid). Please note that in Windows 7 the directory for doing this is “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\” which is NOT how it is in Vista. I had to create the directory elsewhere (I used my Desktop) and copy/move it in to avoid UAC problems.

Also be sure to update the game before running it. You can search for the patches on GameSpot or other sites. You may also wish to run it in compatibility mode.

Civilization IV
Civ IV wasn’t nearly as hard. It installed without any problems but after an update said it was missing a DLL. Go to the DirectX page and download the web installer. I know it seems backwards but it will do the trick. After installing have fun crushing enemy nations into oblivion! Update: After playing the game for about eight hours today it has suffered no less than three crashes. If you are playing Civ IV on Se7en save early and save often.

Sim City 4
Sim City 4 (I have the Deluxe Edition) installed without a single problem and even ran immediately without any problems. After nuking the region to start with a flat area I started my city and ran into a wall. It seems as though SC4 runs horridly on Windows 7. While it was not the smoothest game on Vista, I could at least run it with the settings maxed in Windowed mode with relatively few hitches. In Windows 7 with the same settings the game just skips all over the place. While turning down the settings fixes the issue, the reason is mind boggling. The major question producing factor was that when I first ran the game with my favorite settings the slowness started affecting other windows. Dragging XChat around became slow, rendering in IE8 was incredibly slow and overall responsiveness dropped like a boulder out of a plane. Hopefully it is just a driver issue and not a deep rooted problem.

As this article states, Call of Duty: World at War has passed GoW2 for number of units sold on the 360. A feat made more impressive because of its multi-platform status. I think what is most interesting is that WaW beat GoW2 after a pretty bad Beta that seemed to most to be “just another WWII game” and not some blockbuster hit.

I think what actually happened was that people who have played Call of Duty 4 slowly migrated onto CoD:WaW realizing that it has very much the same hook. While CoD4 wasn’t revolutionary, it was unbeatable in terms of playability, taking me back to the days when I first picked up an [Original] Xbox controller to play Halo. In essence, the game just works and works well in the hands of any player. On the other side, GoW2 has somewhat of a niche following due to its duck and cover system. While the new gameplay style of GoW is definately a welcomed change in the community, it just isn’t as playable as Call of Duty’s Counter-Strike philosophy.

Back in the day of Counter Strike (pre-1.6 especially) games were trying to come up with new ways to play with the same coin (shooting other people). Games like Oni certainly did wonders for the genre with its fantastic combination of martial arts and gun combat but fell short because it was also somewhat hard(er) to play. Counter Strike, on the other hand, just felt right the second you started playing it. While it wasn’t the perfect game in any category and wasn’t as polished as other games it was simple and addictive. Two components that persist in Call of Duty throughout its lifetime.

GRAW2 was a game I was always sort of seeing how it turned out because I was such a huge fan of Ghost Recon 1 and 2. But after the first GRAW came out and playing it I just didn’t feel like giving it the time of day. Well recently I was in Best Buy and saw GRAW2 on sale for mega cheap so I picked it up. WOW! Boy did I miss a lot of fun gaming! It is essentially the same game as Ghost Recon 2 in terms of game modes with the added bonus of cover system, aggressive (albeit stupid) AI, and more explosings. Furthermore, they recreated my favorite map, Embassy, for GRAW2!!!! HORRAY!

FIFA 09 was also a game on my watch list but it soon fell off after the bigger names of the season came out. I have been on an FPS rage for a year or two now, hell even Fallout 3 is an FPS (RPG). Anyways, I was playing my brother in NHL09 and getting my rear end handed to me on a silver platter so we decided to play some FIFA 09. Boy is this game fun! The best part about FIFA is its depth. With hockey I have always felt the action was too mucky and quick to be able to inject any strategy (games, not real hockey) whereas Football games have always been about the passing and setting up that one beautiful lob or pass that gets you in perfect position for striking. Well FIFA is no different. It is fast and somewhate easy to pick up but deep enough that mastering it will take awhile. Unfortunately I only have the demo because the game is still $60. Maybe Santa will be uber nice this year?

One of the biggest problems I have with the video game industry is the lack of innovation. Time and time again I see games getting awards for something that is a cheap trick, a reinvisioning of an old tactic to fool the player into thinking something deeper is happening. This happens because someone in the company, or perhaps the collective, decides that it would be cheaper and cost effective to go the simple route. Rather than drive innovation, companies employ plays from a 30 year old playbook.

For this rant I need a target to examplify my point and for many reasons I am choosing Left 4 Dead. It urks my nerves the amount of people that think this game is a divine representation of what games could be. They throw so many undeserving awards at the game it is as if it is because Valve had something to do with it. There are many cases being made for the game but I will only focus on two: cooperative play and randomized levels.

People are claiming that Left 4 Dead is the best and most innovative cooperative game to come ever. They are pointing fingers at the situations it imposes on the players which force teammates to come to the aid of others. For instance there is an enemy that can wrangle a player, pull them away from the relative safety of the group and put them in a state where self defense is impossible. This requires the other players to drop what they are doing and help the teammate being attacked. Another example is how the death and revival system is implemented. When “killed” a player is put into a last stand position that allows other players to revive them. If revival fails, the player is put into a closet in the map for retrieval, generally after a group of enemies has been slaughtered.

The problem? This has been done before! Left 4 Dead is forcing situations that would naturally arise if the AI should have. Ever play Ghost Recon (1) coop on the hardest difficulty? Ever been in a situation where you or squadmates are pinned down? I have countless times, after all it is the reason they call it cooperative play. Coming to the assistance of teammates is part of the formula! Forcing the issue through specific enemy abilities is a horribly cheap trick.

What about the randomization? Surely it is a innovative feature that hasn’t been done before! After all, both enemy locations and guns are randomized. Hell, even what enemies appear is randomized! Sadly, this has been done before and the randomization has a very low upper bound. What I mean by this is that with any sort of randomization like this has specific locations or enemies that may or may not exist. You know going into a level that a certain amount of objects in the game may or may not exist.

It quickly turns into a game of asking “will object A be there?” rather than “what will be next?” This “innovative mechanism” has been used many times in the past, such as in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. When you dive into the Worldstone Level 2, and 3 in Hell difficulty of D2:LoD, the enemy locations and types are randomized. The problem is the same though: there is a known set of enemy types that can or cannot exist. You will quickly run out of new, unexpected types very quickly. This isn’t innovation! This is faked non-repetitiveness, a cheap trick to make you, the player, think that the game is more than just a set of pre-defined levels.

So what is my point? Innovation should be driving new game development, not the idea of making money. Instead of the pathetic implementation of randomized objects, L4D could employ algorithms that teach the zombies to use portions of the environment as weapons. For example a tank that is spawned near metal piping learns it can use the piping as a weapon after a player accidently blows it up. It then knows that piping is a weapon and learns to rip the piping off the wall. If this is extended to a majority of the objects in the world you quickly create an environment that is completely open. Yes, the developers should be afraid of the game breaking itself but it is a risk, a necessary learning step in the name of innovation. Gamers aren’t going to care if the game originally breaks itself because they will be too frightened of what the enemies will learn next! Imagine facing a large enemy that all of a sudden sees a pile of enemies it previously disposed of, picks them up and starts chucking them at you. Now imagine facing him again; you are expecting the same thing to happen right? Except this time instead of throwing them he swings them at you because he saw you wield a bat. He has learned through example and now you are screwed. Using a gun could mean him using a gun, each tactic you use will be used against you. The world now becomes almost real…

So if you are a game developer remember immersive gameplay is created by creating deep and rich worlds, not by faking them with cheap tricks. Also remember Left 4 Dead isn’t the only case of this, I am just using it as an example because it is the perfect example. Almost every game suffers from this to a certain degree.

My friend and I decided to take a break from CoD:WaW to murder the entire town of Bowerstone in Fable II for fun. Well we ended up finding a funny glitch with the artifact quest woman. Because you can’t kill her, you just knock her down. The problem is the animation gets cut short and restarted if you keep shooting her. This is just one of the small problems of Fable II and shows the gigantic lack of polish in the game.

Oh Fallout 3, how I love thee. The game is fantastic. A must buy for anyone interested in shooting people, leveling up, causing massive destruction or any combination of the above. But oh how the main story is just one let down after another. I have mistaken this game for a game made by Bethesda; a game where your actions directly influence the story at pinnacle moments. Instead this is a game where you are built up to a high and then let down when the story takes a sudden left turn and you have no choice but to follow it. And these sudden left turns, oh how predictable they are, are so basic that it just makes you bleed with agony over what could have been.

But in the end, I am going back to start a new character and do it all over again. That is how good this game is.