The Review - Hawken (Open Beta)

Game Name:    Hawken (Open Beta)

Developer:    Adhesive Games
      Engine:              Unreal Engine 3

Platform:     Windows

Genre: FPS, Free to Play

Release Date: December 12, 2012 (Open Beta)

The Quick

Short description: Open beta, free-to-play, multiplayer mech based FPS set in a dystopian human-colonized world that has been heavily industrialized. Four game types: FFA, Team Deathmatch, Assault, and Siege (beta).

The Good:

• Graphics and general aesthetic are a beautiful sight to behold.
• No automatic HP regen! You have to strategically use your ‘repair’ ability in order to last more than a fight or two.
• As far as micro transaction models go, Hawken’s is pretty good, and while not ideal, it is not a blatant pay to win system.
• Dodge mechanic adds a nice change of pace to the cookie cutter FPS format.

The Bad:

• Very little customization with the mechs. When you think about mech games, customization is the first thing that comes to mind, and Hawken misses the mark by a sizable margin unfortunately.
• Very few maps available. They get old pretty fast.
• Seems to have a small player base right now. More often than not the teams are unbalanced or you are alone with one other person in the game.
• While the micro transaction system doesn’t use a pay to win model, it could be improved. Everything can be attained without paying, but you will definitely be doing some grinding.

All in all, should you play this?

• If you’re a fan of the FPS genre, and you like the idea of a mecha style FPS, there is really no reason not to give this game a go. It’s by no means a bad game, and any fan of the genre will be able to appreciate what it does right. Also, it’s free!

The Long

I think 100% of the reviews I’ve posted so far on this blog have been regarding single player games, which is a bit misleading, because I really do love multiplayer games, both co-op and competitive. With this in mind, I thought it was high time I write about some of the multiplayer games I’ve been playing, whether it be reviews as I’ve done before, or more informal thoughts about the games, which is what this post will consist of.

I’m going to get the ball rolling with Hawken. This is a game I’ve been super excited about since I saw the first gameplay video a number of years ago. At PAX Prime 2012, I was able to get my hands on the game and play around a bit, and it seemed extremely promising. There was a ton of hype about the game at PAX, the excitement was palpable among the attendees.

For this reason, I was expecting this game to make a huge splash in the PC FPS multiplayer space upon release to the public. Strangely, and maybe it’s still too early to say, but it doesn’t seem to be nearly as popular as I had imagined it’d be.

To be fair, the game is still in open beta, but come on, where’s the hype?! I didn’t hear a peep from anyone when Hawken opened up their beta servers to the public on December 12, 2012. Even to this day, I have seen very little press on this game, and I like to think I keep my ear pretty close to the ground in the gaming space.

This, of course, didn’t stop me from downloading the game and giving it a go. Initially, I was more or less doing a test run, as I couldn’t find any friends to really dive into the game with me. After putting a few hours in, I thought the game had some value to it, and after enough badgering, I eventually got some buddies to agree to give it an honest go with me.

Since then, after putting 8 or 10 more hours into the game, I’ve put it to rest, at least for now. So, I will take this opportunity to give some thoughts about what I thought the strengths and weaknesses of the game are, what I think the developers should do by the go live date to bring me back, and other general opinions.

  The Model

The developers, early on, made the claim that Hawken would not be a pay to win game. This is something I was fairly skeptical of since I was tricked into thinking the same thing with Tribes: Ascend, and ended up being sorely disappointed with that outcome. Much to my surprise, Adhesive Games has done a pretty good job in straying away from the pay to win model.

Looking through the micro-transaction shop, you’ll find that the model is very similar to that of League of Legends. You have two types of currency, one that is only available by purchase, and the other attained through play. The only enhancements that are exclusively available using real dollars are all cosmetic. You can buy new mechs and some of the equippable items using real money, but these are also available for free, using the currency gained by playing.

If you do plan to go the "pay" route, you'll be pleased to know that it's only $5 to unlock a mech class.

While the game still feels a little grindy due to the fairly steep prices to unlock mechs, it’s not unreasonable. Again, I think it can be best likened to League of Legends free to play model, which in my opinion, isn't too bad.

The Game

Okay, so it’s not pay to win. Good! But how’s the actual game? To generalize, Hawken is mech game that employs the mechanics of an FPS. It takes place in a dystopian human-colonized world that has been heavily industrialized. I will say that the aesthetic of the world, and the mechs, is really beautiful. The graphics are top notch and do a great job of making you feel immersed in a gritty, fix-er-upper, mech inhabited world.

There are 10 different mechs available right now, each of which have their own strengths and weaknesses. The mech classes range from slow and tanky to quick and light, varying with both short range and long range weapons. Each mech has 2 primary weapons unlocks, one of which you get very early on (around level 5), and the other you unlock at max level (currently level 25). You’ll also unlock an Offensive item slot (e.g. turrets, EMP, explosives) and a Support item slot (e.g. shield, repair booster, radar jammer). Some of these slots can be filled by default when you purchase the mech, otherwise you have to either spend real money, or a sizable amount of your in game currency to get the items. One thing that is fairly obnoxious about this is that you can’t share items between your mechs, so if you want a rocket turret for all your mechs, you have to unlock that item for each mech separately, making the cost add up fast.

The prices on equippable items like these are a little steep for my taste.

Running and gunning is quite slow and clunky... probably pretty accurate to what it would feel like in a real battle mech. There is a dodge mechanic to speed things up a bit, which allows you to quickly strafe from side to side, using up some of your booster fuel. This is a really nice addition, making fights far more interesting than they would be without this feature. Timing your dodges correctly will almost always decide whether or not you win a battle. Overall, I thought the combat felt very good, even if a little slow.

Another mechanic that I found to be very worthwhile in Hawken is repairing. It’s become almost commonplace for multiplayer games to enable automatic life regeneration when not in combat. This can be infuriating, as you can get an enemy down to 5% life, and if they can stay away from you for X amount of time, their life will fill back up. Not in Hawken! Each mech has a repair ability that can be used to refill your life points, but this ability will take you out of combat completely, and you’ll be left defenseless while repairing. This adds a nice bit of strategy to deciding when and where to retreat to repair.

By now, you’re probably asking yourself why I stopped playing this game, as almost all of this review has been positive. Well, unfortunately, the fun is... fleeting. One of the big reasons for this is the lack of customization on the mechs. Aside from the few unlocks I mentioned in the first paragraph, there’s really nothing else to play around with. You’re limited to those 3 primary weapons (starting + 2 unlocks), and the fairly general offensive and utility items. So after you get to level 5, you’ve really seen most of what your mech can do, and the way that it will handle (at least until max level). Because of this, and maybe it’s just my short attention span, but it gets boring.

The game does utilize a general tech tree system (basically identical to League of Legends’ Mastery system). This tree is the same for everyone, and offers very basic, exclusively passive benefits. These are divvied up into 3 categories (offense, defense, and movement) and are made up of miniscule attribute perks (e.g. 0.33% movement speed). This element of the game seemed extremely generic and, to me, didn’t feel like it added any depth or sense of progression.

Lastly, the map selection is quite bleak at the moment. There are only 3 or 4 maps spread across the 4 game types, and while they’re fairly large, they get old pretty quickly. I assume that this is an issue distinct to beta, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Overall, Hawken is fun, but lacks depth. The absence of truly worthwhile mech customization is probably my biggest complaint. The customization level tops out way too early to keep me engaged for a long period of time. Couple this with the weak map diversity, and you have a fun core gameplay experience that eventually leaves you feeling sort of bored. These are the core elements that I feel need work before the game is pulled out of beta. I’m optimistic that they will make some changes to remedy this, but alas, only time will tell.

The Vids

Quick Review - The Journey Down: Chapter 1

Game Name:    The Journey Down: Chapter 1

Developer:    SkyGoblin
      Engine:              Adventure Game Studio

Platform:     Windows (Reviewed), OS X, Linux, iOS, Android

Genre: Adventure

Release Date: May 12, 2012 (January 9th, 2013 - Steam)

Short description: First chapter of an episodic point and click adventure game where you play as Bwani, part owner of Gas ‘n Charter, a waterfront gas station. The adventure begins with Lina, who wants your assistance in finding an old book that has some highly sought after information on a place called the Underland. We don’t learn too much about the Underland in Chapter 1, except that the government and some large corporations are trying to keep the public in the dark about what is there.

The Good:

• Episodic. Since I played through Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, I’ve become a fan of the episodic strategy of releasing games. The short, 2-3 hour episodic experiences seem to lend themselves quite nicely to the adventure game genre.
• Every character has a voice actor! I always finds this gives the characters more personality, for better or worse, and thankfully in this case, it's better.
• The dialogue, in addition to being well voiced, is also exceptionally well written. It’s whimsical, funny, and even sort of dark. I laughed out loud on numerous occasions.
• The art is creative and unique. The character's faces are all modeled from various African masks which supplies a unique visual aesthetic.
• While the puzzles aren't terribly difficult, there are some unexpected solutions to puzzles, many of which result in some pretty comical events.

The Bad:

• The game is touted to have full HD graphics, and while the art and visuals are nice, on a 1920x1080 display, things look pretty stretched out. I imagine something like this would be best played on a tablet.
• The game sticks to the standard point and click adventure game format, there’s very little done in the way of creative mechanics.

All in all, should you play this?

• If you’re a fan of point and click adventure games, and in the market for a new and unique story, with odd, whimsical dialogue and voice acting, I’d give it a go. I'm certainly going to pick up Chapter 2 when it releases.

No video this time, but here's a few screenshots to let you know what it looks like...

Quick Review - Antichamber

Game Name:    Antichamber

Developer:    Alexander Bruce
      Engine:              Unreal Engine 3

Platform:     Windows (Steam)

Genre: Puzzle, First person, Platformer

Release Date: January 31, 2013

Disclaimer: As of now, I’m about 95% through the game. I’ve solved nearly all of the puzzles, but there a few still lingering around unsolved. It’s very possible that I will never completely finish this game, but I feel I’ve progressed through enough of it to give an ample quick review.

Short description:  After 4 years of development, Antichamber has arrived! Extremely creative and mind bending exploratory, first person puzzle game set in a seemingly simplistic series of interconnected chambers.

The Good:

• Extremely original, non-euclidean, Escher-like puzzles make for a truly unique gaming experience.
• Graphically appealing. Plain white walls with the occasional splash of color is a surprisingly fitting aesthetic for this type of game. The designer is able to pull your brain in all different directions playing with the color schemes.
• A sufficient challenge! For those that are complaining that games are getting too easy, you'll be happy for a change of pace with this one.
• Philosophical twist. The puzzles are accompanied by small philosophical phrases and cartoon diagrams to loosely guide you along. They oddly taunt you in the midst of a puzzle, but are all the more meaningful once you solve it.

The Bad:

• Little to no direction. Aside from small diagrams you find on the wall, the player is left up to their own devices to figure out what to do and where to go.
• Lack of direction can make some of the puzzles pretty frustrating until you have that “Aha!” moment.
• While sound does play a factor in the game, it's not overly prevalent. I would have liked to see a bit more done with the sound.

All in all, should you play this?

• If you’re looking for an original puzzle game that will twist your brain in very odd directions, I would recommend picking this up. It’s by far the most interesting game I’ve played so far this year, and rivals Portal for one of the most original puzzle games I’ve ever come across.

Here's a glimpse of what this game is like...

Review - Strike Suit Zero

Game Name:    Strike Suit Zero

Developer:    Born Ready Games

Platform:     Windows (Steam)

Genre: Space Combat Sim

Engine: Xed

Release Date: January 23, 2013

The first thing I should probably mention before I go too deep into my opinion of this game, is my background and history with space fighter simulation games. This is a genre I’m hugely fond of, not because I played FreeSpace 2 or X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, I hear these are excellent games that helped shape the genre, but I never played these. I played Freelancer, and I played it A LOT. Since Freelancer, it has been incredibly difficult to find good space sims. I think the only other space sim I’ve played since Freelancer was a Xbox 360 exclusive called DarkStar One: Broken Alliance,  a port of an older PC space sim, DarkStar One, and it was painfully mediocre. So of course, with the long drought of these types of games, and the announcement of Star Citizen bringing that itch back in a huge way, I was feverishly excited for Strike Suit Zero (SSZ).

The game consists of 13 missions which the player fights through as a UNE (United Nations of Earth) fighter pilot to unravel a narrative of war between Earth and the culmination of forces from distant colonized planets. I’ll just say it, Strike Suit Zero is not a next-gen Freelancer (I’ll have to wait for Star Citizen, I guess). The game focuses on one particular facet of games like Freelancer, and that’s the space combat. Everything else, and I mean everything (exploration, ship customization, ship diversity, player choices, breadth of content) is all tossed to the wayside. That being said, if the space combat itself if your favorite part of space sims, you will likely enjoy this game a lot.

Each mission has a special objective that you can complete to unlock a new upgrade in the wholly unexplained and ambiguous tech trees that each of the ships possess. While the tech trees are an awesome idea, one that I would normally love, there’s virtually no information given about them. Before you start the mission, where the special objective is given, there’s a tiny, vague description of what completing the objective will give you (“unlock Energy upgrade for your ship”), but when you actually get to ship selection where the tech tree is shown, there’s just a picture of what you’ve unlocked, and no explanation whatsoever. Considering how absurdly difficult some of these extra objectives are (there were a couple missions I retried probably 20 times to unlock them), it comes across as feeling pointless and not very satisfying to get these unlocks as you really have no idea what the hell they even do.
As you complete missions you’ll also unlock new weapons that you can equip in your ship’s weapon slots. This is literally the only thing you can customize in the game, and it’s not exciting. Throughout the entire game, I think there is one new primary weapon unlock,  and only a handful of missile weapon unlocks, which are generally just more advanced versions your starting missiles.

The rigidness of ship customization and unlocks wouldn’t be so horrible if we had some options within the missions to play around a bit, but alas, you don’t. The missions are typically split up between 2 or 3 checkpoints. There’s a pretty clear way to get from checkpoint to checkpoint, you won’t be blazing your own trail by any means. The fact that your mission usually takes place within a much larger AI battle means there are chances for odd things to happen (almost never in your favor). This mixes things up between retries a minimal amount, but overall the mission design is painfully straightforward. Combine this with the lack of customizations and upgrades, and SSZ makes for a very linear game experience.

Okay, I’m going to give you a fair warning, you’re going to die in this game... a lot. There’s been a lot of buzz, and a lot of negative feedback regarding this game, based on its difficulty curve. The gist of it is that the checkpoint placements blow. Many of the missions are fine, the checkpoints are well spaced out, and you can get through them without too much issue. But there are a few missions that make some mighty big expectations as to what you can accomplish without a checkpoint. This results in replaying the same grueling 10 or 15 minutes of combat, in which any number of things can go wrong, to try to beat that last part before the next checkpoint. This is sort of typical for space sim games, I remember going through similar stints in Freelancer, but holy shit; the rage induced by the poor checkpoint placement in these missions is only comparable to the nearly untouchable League of Legends rage that one inevitably endures if they play that game.

You'll be seeing this screen a lot.

As I said, not all the missions are so bad. Unfortunately, it only takes a couple of instances to get you fired up to the point of not wanting to play the game anymore. In order to finish the game, I ended up having to limit myself to one hour sessions, most of which ended in fury. If I had not planned to review the game, there’s a good chance I would have quit.

So I’ve given this game a pretty hard time so far, let me explain what the game does well, because it’s not all bad. Throughout your journey, you are treated to the sounds of Paul Ruskay who supplies a strange electronic, ambient, sci-fi sound to the game. I’m not sure if this is for everybody, but I enjoyed it; at the very least, it made for a unique sound. The combat sound is also well done. Things can get pretty intense at times, and the sound adds to that feeling in a big way.

I think I’ve made it clear that the game primarily focuses on the space combat, as opposed to an open-ended, interactive, space sim experience. You can tell the emphasis was put on combat, because it’s actually really good! Most missions consist of fulfilling some number of objectives throughout a large scale battle between Earth and Colonial forces, though there are several missions in which you do the stereotypical escort or small squad sneak attack.

The big difference between this game and other space combat sims out there is the presence of a special ship you eventually get your hands on called the (you guessed it!) Strike Suit. This ship has two forms, one normal space fighter ship form, and a less-mobile, but far more powerful and stationary, mecha form. Everyone knows that normal space combat can become monotonous at times and this ship eliminates that for the most part. Being able to effortlessly change between these two archetypes takes a bit of the monotony out of the combat. Instead of clumsily chasing after five different interceptors that are all using evasive maneuvers, you can pop into Strike Suit mode and take them down with ease

Adios Corvettes!

Outside of the Strike Suit, you’re unfortunately not going to find too much in ship choices. There are a total of four ships you end up unlocking, all of which are fairly uninteresting in comparison to the Strike Suit. You can tell that a lot of time was put into the design of the Strike Suit, and while looks great and is a blast to play with, it would be nice to switch it up once in awhile with some other ships that are comparably cool to the Strike Suit. Instead, we’re left with a rather drab selection that lack both graphically and mechanically compared to the Strike Suit. This was also a demerit on replay value for me, as I’m not excited at all to play with any of the other ships.

You can see here how lame this ship looks in comparison to the Strike Suit.
Thankfully, they make up for it with that badass planetscape.

I went into this game expecting Freelancer 2.0, which is my own foolish fault, but it sort of skewed my view initially. When it comes down to it, if you’re looking for an arcade space fighter game, Strike Suit Zero will be right up your alley. My only recommendation is to go into it with your eyes wide open; you’re not going to explore, you’re not going to customize, and you’re going to die a lot. When is Star Citizen coming out again?

Check out some gameplay!

Quick Review - Bastion

Game Name:    Bastion

Developer:    Supergiant Games
      Engine:              XNA

Platform:     PC (Steam), XBLA, Mac OSX, iOS, Linux, Chrome

Genre: Action RPG, Single player

Release Date: July 20, 2011

Preamble:
I was a little late to the show on this one. I had started it when it first came out, loved it, but then got pulled away from it by something else. This past week I decided to go back and play it from start to finish. Man, I am so happy I did, this game is spectacular in every respect.

Short description:  
Action RPG where you play as "The Kid" in an isometric, floating, western/fantasy setting, narrated by "Rucks", a cowboy sounding elderly fellow that helps The Kid along his journey.

The Good:

• The art style in this game is awesome. The colors are vibrant, the way the ground tiles float up to your feet as you walk in a particular direction is beautiful.
• The music is great. It's exceptionally atmospheric and fits perfectly with the setting and pace of the game. There were numerous times in the game that I just sat back and enjoyed the music.
• The voice acting is spectacular. Rucks narrates the game, describing what you, as The Kid, do, and it is incredible. Again, this is a huge factor in what makes the atmosphere of this game so awesome.
• The story is creative and interesting, and leaves you guessing to the very end.
• The gameplay is exciting and fun. There are tons of weapons and abilities to choose from, each with their own upgrade trees that provide new and interesting mechanics.
• Combat is as smooth as butter. It feels great, and there's plenty of variation in the enemies that you face.
• You’ll find Idols throughout the world which allow you to customize the level of difficulty, providing a nice amount of replay value.

The Bad:

• I cannot come up with a single gripe about this game.

All in all, should you play this?

• Easily one of the best, if not the best, independently developed video game I’ve ever played. Anyone who considers themselves even a partial gamer should play this as soon as possible. Pure gold!

Here's a little gameplay footage to whet your appetite...

Quick Review - Super Amazing Wagon Adventure

Game Name:    Super Amazing Wagon Adventure

Developer:    sparsevector

Platform:     PC (Windows - Desura), Xbox Live Indie Games

Genre: 2D, Shmup, Single player

Release Date: July 6, 2012

Short description: 2D, 8-bit, shmup, psuedo-roguelike that is a comical hommage to the old school Oregon Trail game that we all know and love.

The Good:

• This game puts forth a substantial challenge. The game is probably 10 minutes long, but good luck getting to the end of it.
• Hilarious, random references to the original Oregon Trail throughout the entire game.
• Playthroughs are rarely the same, plenty of random events/encounters in each game, all of which are bizarre and comical.
• The music is awesome! The developer of the game also created the music, and it’s fantastic.
• Bravo to the developer, sparsevector! This is his first game and it’s awesome, looking forward to see what’s coming next.

The Bad:

• You might be able to complain about the difficulty, but I find it makes the game what it is.

All in all, should you play this?

• I would highly recommend this game to all. If you have any memory of the old Oregon Trail, you will appreciate this game immensely. It's creative, fun, and hilarious; even if you haven't played Oregon Trail, go play this, it's amazing.

Extra Stuff

• Buy here!

Here's one of my many, many, many, many attempts at playing this game...