Borderlands

So yesterday my copy finally arrived from Play-Asia, which at least means SAPO are just slow and not the thieving bastards I thought them to be.

What a game!

Tanith and I played split-screen well into the night, and for the first time in a while the split is of the good, old fashioned variety with no silly aspect ratio tricks or any such nonsense. Also it splits straight down the middle, which on a Widescreen LCD gives each person pretty much a full screen, and you never feel at a loss for sharing.

Initially the scrolling menu does seem strange, but it works very well, and I would much rather scroll around my half of the screen that get a super-tiny version of the menu which I can't read. So for a change a design decision was made that actually works, and doesn't shaft the player in the process.

I haven't even seen the fullscreen game, but the splitscreen looks pretty damn tasty and the most ridiculous part of that is I haven't seen a single loadtime in the main areas, yet the landscape is absolutely massive. You can even go your separate ways, and you never get teleported closer to the other player, or start lagging.

Art style wise the cell-shading isn't overbearing, as is the case with a couple of other games. It seems rather than the usual flat textures, they've gone for a normal textured feel, but with the flat outlines, giving it a cartoony yet realistic look all at the same time.

And lag...what lag? We probably put in about six hours last night, and there was never a spot of framedrop or stutter, which is quite often the case for splitscreen.

As for the game itself, you all know that I don't really like grinding games much, but this one is quite different.

Sure there's plenty of grinding, and the same enemies come at you again and again and again. But unlike Ass Creed which I've been playing this week, the maps and missions are constructed in such a fashion that you only really visit the entry point twice, and then the rest of the map is different on every mission with only minor overlaps at times.

Quests it seems are also setup in such a way, that you'll never need to run around killing stuff pointlessly just to level up. You can literally just play the quests, and level up accordingly, either through the quest or travelling towards it. None of that running around in a random field for three hours, just to gain two levels, just to be killed by the boss anyway, and then doing it all over again.

It starts off very slowly though, and you can't distribute skill points before you hit Lv 5. Sort of a pseudo-n00b-island, where your guns are also absolutely pathetic, but once you hit Lv5 things start to really get fun.

We only played up to Lv11, where you also just about get vehicles which could add a whole other dimension to the game, but I'll need to report back on that later.

Overall I'm very glad Strife put this one on my radar, and for the price I paid it was a real bargain, but in retrospect I would actually pay R600 for this.

And on this one we won't even argue about SP vs COP, I think it will be absolutely rubbish to play alone, but should be awesome with four people. Now I'm just wondering if you can go online in splitscreen mode, because then I might just buy madam a sub for Live.

Killzone 2

After spending just about a month with the Playstation3, I now feel genuinely sorry for the PS3-only console owners who consider this game one of their flagship titles. For all the fanboy rubbish I have had to read about this game, and how it is better than basically every other FPS title out there, I now question the intelligence of PS3-fanboys more than ever.

The core problem with Killzone is that it tries so hard to be everything else, that it has no identity of it's own. Throughout playing the game you get remnants of other games like Halo, Gears of War, Bioshock and even some Half-Life and Unreal thrown in for good measure. And in trying to cover all those bases, it manages not to be epic in the slightest of proportions. The entire sequence is a mediocre, repetitive affair, and my little boy brain is left without anyone notable to put on a pedestal. Unlike most other modern titles where you are left wanting to be Master Chief, Marcus Phoenix or Solid Snake...nobody wants to be Tomas "Sev" Sevchenko.

More than half way through, I was still trying to figure out if I was fighting against Alien Nazi's or Alien Brits, or just Alien Europe in general until I could have sworn I heard an Ozzie in the mix as well. So it seemed much like any other Modern Warfare title, where the Americans fight everyone else, except this time it is supposedly in the future although you could have fooled me, because take the odd looking, vertically flying aircraft carriers out of the picture and this is Call of Duty 4...only that game is better.

Sure let's give some credit, Killzone is pretty. But then by the same token it's almost too pretty, with so much over the top unrealistic lens flare, and motion blurring effects to obscure the dodgy aliasing, that most of the time it feels like you are playing an overly extended techdemo, which if I recall is in fact the case, as Killzone was the original poster-child for pushing the Playstation3 hardware, back in the days when they used fake CG scenes and tried to push them onto us as the real deal. And when Sony fanboys are moaning on and on about Full HD and 1080p, I'll just have to remind them that two of their biggest games, MGS4 and KZ2 are in fact 720p titles.

The sound processing of the game is phenomenal, and interestingly I noted that it uses Yamaha DTS instead of the standard Dolby Digital format. Not sure if that is what makes the difference, but sound positioning is clearly a cut above the rest, with very detailed and very realistic sound effects. Sadly the same can't be said for the music, sure it has your usual orchestral war tunes going on, but again there is nothing that makes this title feel epic. Nothing gets stuck in your head, that makes you want to go to war when you hear it again in the future.

I both loved and hated the very forced bits of motion control. Loved planting bombs with the motion system, because it feels like you are actually planting the bloody thing, but hated it because it simply didn't fit into the rest of the game, and broke the action packed pace by basically stopping time. The concept of having the controller's motion influence your sniping ability is also clever, but at the same time redundant because it's not sensitive enough and nobody jumps around like a kangaroo while playing games, so it has zero effect on the gameplay mechanic.

Gameplay itself is quite slow, and I'm guessing it runs at the usual 30fps. The cover system tries a little too hard, and only works half the time, not to mention that in most cases when you are supposedly in cover you still get shot in the head. Odd that a game with a cover system, has no prone mode, meaning that playing sniper from the hills isn't exactly going to happen. While on the topic of crouching, I felt like a midget throughout the game, especially around other characters which I would view squarely at torso level.

Quite possibly the gameplay would have been much improved, had it not been for the terrible controls. Now I have said many times before that I despise the Dualshock3 controller, especially for FPS games, but in this case the layout make the problem even worse. Usual analog sticks for moving and aiming, L2 for cover, L1 for melee, R2 for grenades and R1 for fire. The tricky ones are L3 for sprint, which you fortunately just need to click once and then it locks, and then R3 for zoom/crosshair aim which unfortunately also locks when clicked.

Now apart from the fact that L3/R3 are the worst "buttons" on the entire controller, the locking of the zoom button is a catch 22. When you are sniping it is awesome, because you click the button once, it stays zoomed in, and you can then adjust zoom level with the D-pad. When you are using medium or short range weapons however, it can be a mighty pain in the ass to manually zoom in and out of crosshair view so that you can actually shoot someone in close proximity. Fortunately, even with the irritation, the less I needed to click those silly buttons the better, because they just don't work.

In a perfect world they would have mapped the aim key to the L2 "trigger" as is the case on most Xbox360 games, but then again those don't work either. The standard controller doesn't even have triggers to speak of, and even with Strifehart's plastic "extensions" the situation isn't much improved. To top it all the analog sticks themselves are the same old slow and floppy imprecise units, and the only time they are really useful is when doing very minor precise adjustments as is the case when taking fully zoomed in sniper shots, and in this regard I would rate it ever so slightly better than the Xbox360 analog sticks because they require somewhat more resistance from dead centre.

I wish I could compare Call of Duty 4, on PS3 and Xbox360 for a more direct FPS comparison. As things are however, my conclusion is that the PS3 is absolutely rubbish if FPS is your genre of choice, mostly because the controller sucks, but also because the games leave a lot to be desired. If there are PC-gamers out there who have discredited consoles as an FPS option, because they've only ever tried it with a Playstation controller, I implore you to give it a go on the Xbox360. Especially considering the recent news that iD can't get Rage to run at 60fps on the Playstation3, as they did on the Xbox360 the latter seems to be the FPS console of choice.

Ultimately Killzone 2 wasn't a terrible experience, and I enjoyed it thoroughly considering I finished it in two days, and I was playing it for free. Had I however spent money on the game, especially if I had bought the Playstation 3 specifically for this exclusive, I would be seriously pissed off right now!

Some further comment on the PS3...

Well so far I've figured out that the Playstation Network is a complete shambles, and cannot even remotely compare to the Xbox side of things.

And I'm not talking about the gaming even, just the system in general.

Firstly the often touted supposed "local support" seems to go no further than a built-in currency converter.

There isn't even a link to PSN on the local website, I had to search for it on Google and then login on the UK site.

The trophies system is a major cop out, and there's no listing of games that you actually own or have played, so anyone else who wants to research your profile will only see the games that you have received trophies for.

Clearly this is an Offline console, with online extensions, and it's no bloody wonder it's free.

I would gladly pay my Xbox Live membership for the SILVER benefits, which still amounts to a whole lot more than I've seen of PSN so far.

Really not very impressed, and the fact that it's free actually shows off exactly why it's rubbish.

Further comment when I've actually done some multiplayer, but I doubt it would make any difference, since the sense of "community" is completely absent on this platform.

***

And then while I was typing the above I left the console to update Little Big Planet, which I initially thought was quite clever, since it actually told me what size it was (which the Xbox doesn't) and it also appeared that it download it in four chunks, which I presume would mean I could resume my download from which chunk finished last.

A nice touch, until I just went to check up on it after posting the above, to find out that now it was on chunk 3/4 but the size had now gone up to 80Mb, which leads me to believe the first chunk was 26Mb, not the entire update.

So what the hell is that all about? I knew the firmware updates basically re-downloads the entire software every time, but is it necessary for games as well?

Xbox360 seems a whole lot more friendly for us bandwidth starved South Africans in comparison.

First Contact

So I have an 80Gb Playstation3 on loan for a couple of weeks, mostly to play Metal Gear Solid 4 amongst other things, and I figured I would jot down my impressions as I go along.

***DISCLAIMER*** The comments below are based on a couple of hours of messing around with the device, WITHOUT reading the manual. A lot of what I say here will be completely based on assumptions I have made, and thus might be completely incorrect so don't take anything for a fact, and please do correct me if I go astray.


Well the first thing you notice when opening the box, would be the horrible...no ghastly packaging. Unlike Microsoft who knew they manufactured the device quite badly and thus need to protect it properly, Sony figured they did a decent enough job to just skip all protection all together. How these units get shipped across the world and make it out alive on the other end I have no idea. Not only doesn't it offer much protection, with no foamalite (spl?) anywhere in sight, but it looks terrible and very very cheap. There's no branding on the inside of the box, nothing nice to look at, it's all just good old brown cardboard everywhere. Now I bet many of you are saying, what the hell difference does packaging make to games? Well it's got nothing to do with games, and everything to do with the fact that if I just spent R5000 on a product I want to feel like it was worth the money. So, in this regard the Xbox360 and the Wii even more so,are light-years ahead, which you would expect to be the exact opposite considering the PS3 is the most expensive.

Taking it out of it's bleak plastic wrapping, the immediate size of the thing isn't so apparent, that is until you put it down on the shelf above the Xbox360 and realise that it is in fact Godzilla. Being a pre-owned console the fact that it won't stay shiny forever is very clear, with dust and finger marks all over it, already convincing me that buying a non-glossy version or a white one would be a much better option down the line. Plugging in is straight forward, especially since the power supply is integrated and it takes nothing more than a good old PC kettle cord to get things on the go. Initially figure it was broken, because nothing switched on but then of course I found a secondary power switch on the back.

Initially I rolled with HDMI since I used that for the Xbox which I had just plugged out. Of course the Optical Out jack sits right on the back of the console, instead of on the cable as is the case with the Xbox360, which means no hack-job or massively expensive cables required, and a straight forward installation. Immediately when switching on the console it asked me if I would like to use the HDMI for Audio & Video, which is really a mistake if you want to use the Optical Out, since saying yes disables it and saying no takes you nowhere. A bit silly really as I would expect it to detect that the Optical port is in use, and thus just go with that. I remember when they first came out, many people on forums all over asking how they can use Optical instead of transporting audio over HDMI. It's a simple menu item change really, but still something unnecessary which should just work out of the box, and typically shows Sony's HDMI-uber-alles stance.

Strangely the interface, which is much the same of that found on the PSP, is very PC-like especially with the wording. You "Log in" for instance, but in general I found it PC-ish just because there are so many options to go through, many of which don't really explain themselves all too well, and could be quite overwhelming for anyone who isn't a geek. A nice thing about the system is that it shares all media on the hard drive across profiles, so basically anyone can see anything everywhere than anyone else uploaded to the console or downloaded from the web. Demos, Music, Videos etc etc...which might only be a problem if you plan on storing your porn collection on the HDD and you have minors in the house, but I'm sure there would be a parental or user lockdown feature somewhere.

I then quickly played around with TV settings, and also switched to the Component cable just for a non-scientific comparison. Oddly enough I found that HDMI and Component look pretty much identical, which wasn't the case at all with the Xbox360 on the same TV, where VGA & HDMI were identical but Component was absolutely rubbish and the colours were over the top. Scouring the internet I couldn't find any specifically calibrated settings for Component, so I went with HDMI for the time being. The settings I got from my good old Samsung R81 link at AVForums made for a very yellowish image, especially on text in the Dashboard (XMB or whatever you want to call it), so I tried some settings from my olf friend Flatulentcow which resulted in a much less yellow picture yet still slightly tainted, but a massive improvement overall.

Now on that note I just have to mention that the Playstation3 doesn't support ANY resolution other than the TV-standard ones, which means 480i/480p/576p/720p/1080i and 1080p only. Which means you won't be so lucky as to run your screen's native resolution using this console as you would with the Xbox360, ultimately meaning that you will also suffer a bit of a quality loss due to the scaling process, unless your TV/Monitor's native resolution is either 1280x720 or 1920x1080 or support 1:1 Pixel mapping. A bit of a bummer for me since my display has a 1366x768 native resolution, but ultimately I must say the result is still pretty damn good and of course since I can't switch to the native resolution to see what it could potentially look like, it doesn't bother too much.

There was no need to configure any network settings, I just plugged in the cable and started her up and immediately in the top right corner appeared something like an RSS feed from Sony with all sorts of information on new and upcoming games. Sure this is non-intrusive compared to the massive ads found on the Xbox Dashboard, but at the same time it's so non-intrusive that I would never read it or notice it, and on top of that I still haven't figured out how to actually go to it to see more, and thus I don't know if that's even an option. Which brings me to the online component of the console. It appears to be a completely separate entity, not incorporated into the core of the system in the slightest. Anything Online is listed in a separate tab, where you have to go Sign-in separately since your online and offline profiles appear to be completely independent of each other. Here you can access the Playstation Store and what not to download games, add-ons, themes etc etc. It doesn't seem like there is anything that will jump out to tell you there is special content for a game when you pop it in, but rather than it's up to find it, or I'm guessing up to the individual game to tell you about it.

Somehow this has made me appreciate the advertising on the Xbox360/Live Dashboard, especially of course the game related advertising since I'm always kept in the loop about new content that is either on the way, or has already been made available. On the PS3 it seems there's no "community" integration as such, everyone fends for themselves, whereas on the Xbox they have regular Live events like Double XP weekends, or Family Game Nights or whatever. I've only spent one night with it sure, but already I've sensed what everyone means when they say the PS3's online component simply can't compared to Xbox Live, whether free or not. And I haven't even played any games online yet...which says it all.

A minor irritation in the layout of the XMB is the way that depending on what kind of disc you insert, you need to go find it in the relevant Music, Video or Game tab. I know it sounds silly, and surely one should know what you slotted into drive (ooh and I love that slot loading drive) and thus know exactly where to find it, but I just feel that a centrally managed system with one place to look for the drive content, would be so much simpler. Just put in the disc and play, surely the PS3 can figure out what to do with it then.

Well enough nonsense about the console...let's get to the games.

Considering the prime reason I have the black behemoth sitting on my counter top is Metal Gear Solid 4, I just couldn't hold out anymore so into the Blu-Ray Drive she went. Initial impressions were familiar, with much the same menu system as they've used across all the previous titles in the series. Naturally I had seen the start of the game before, but never in 5.1 Digital Sound so it was refreshing to have the good old soundtrack maybe sweet war sounds in my ears.

Sadly MGS4 just doesn't have the epic introduction that both MGS2 and MGS3 had, so it's a bit of a let down on the initial front. Also having been away from Playstation for so long I had a bit of a difficult time with the controller, especially since MGS is a pretty complex game and uses every button available in various combinations. So progress was pretty damn slow, and by the end of my session and only gotten to the first meeting with Deben. The game is beautiful however, although very bland with the camo and desert colours everywhere, but the textures are top notch and facial detail absolutely astonishing. Of course being a japanese game with voice overs the lip syncing isn't quite there, but it's not something you really complain about since you know why it's a bit off.

A worrying occurrence at this point in time already was the aliasing issues I had already seen everywhere in the demos I had played quickly while setting up, and then also in Metal Gear Solid 4. I had seen this at Strifehart's place before, but always figured it was the TV causing it, but now it seems to be completely game (and development) dependent. Strange that a console touted to be superior to all and everything else, struggles to smooth out simple things like rough edges, where the supposedly inferior Xbox360 I can't even recall a game that had any bad aliasing trouble.

Back to MGS4 I can't really comment all that much as the game starts off quite slowly, and thus I can't really say too much about it just yet.

After my taste of Solid Snake I must admit that the controller was starting to feel a bit more natural in my hands again. Sure I've always despised the analog sticks, not because of their location but more so because of their "floppiness" and the very little to no resistance that they offer, making it difficult to control compared to the analog sticks of both Xboxxes and the Dreamcast before that. The soft touch face buttons do feel less accurate than the hard plastic buttons of the Xbox360 controllers, but I do think your fingers will love you more after extended hours of gameplay. I still dislike the L2/R2 buttons, and much prefer the analog triggers found on other controllers, even with the extensions fitted to these controllers, Sony still dropped the ball. The L1/R1 buttons aren't too bad though, and again also a bit softer on the hands maybe explaining why they are the "primary" buttons in a game like MGS.

Next I popped in Little Big Planet, just to see some colour after the camouflage everywhere. I remember this game looking quite crappy on Strifehart's system something to do with it's native output being 720p and his TV not liking it or whatever I can't remember now. Needless to say I wasn't expecting much, but was then marvelously surprised to find that it looked pretty damn fine, actually more like astonishing, on my system.

So much rich detail, and beautiful colour everywhere. Sure it's not all in the high resolution textures, but largely also the artistic approach to the game's design, but you can't help but be overwhelmed by the beauty of it all, and I found myself stopping every now and then, especially once into the actual game itself, to just look around and appreciate the details. The game makes use of fabric everywhere, with everything being stitched together, something you don't see when running around, but the moment you stop you see things that you'll find all over your house, and yet here they are used in a completely artistic fashion instead.

LBP actually got me more involved than MGS4, which I've almost to scared to admit. Also it was the first taste I got of the motion sensors in the PS3 controllers, which appear to remarkably well. I don't see how they'll really use it, for full motion based games since there isn't really enough of it to go around, but I can see it offering a few nice additions to "normal" games, as is the case with LBP where you simply use the motion controls to have your sackboy look around the screen, which I hope will explain itself through the game because I don't see the relevance just yet.

And then it was 1:00 and time to get in bed, so I can come to work today, so I can make money, so I can buy my own PS3.

At the end of the day I found many niggles, and nothing that I could really say "well this is clever" about, but I was thoroughly entertained and I expect to be more entertained in the next few weeks while I have the machine. That being said, the games I've played so far could be done equally well on any other platform, and there's nothing here that pushes me to buy a Playstation3 other than the fact that the games in question can't be found elsewhere. I figure I've already made my mind up to wait for a price drop...and maybe a new SKU so that I can buy the thing primarily for the Blu-Ray drive, with the added benefit of the odd Playstation Exclusive.

The way I see it now, the Playstation3 will be sitting under the TV as a glorified DVD player, and will most certainly remain the offline console in the house.


*** Which might all change next year when both Microsoft and Sony get their motion sensing projects on the market.

*** UPDATE ***

Forgot to mention that I had a quick look at the Internet Browser and found it quite easy to use, and it could be potentially useful in the future especially if websites made easy to access PS3-specific webpages with relevant information. Flash worked out of the box, Gmail worked just fine although in "basic" mode, which wouldn't bother me especially since I won't be sending messages on it, but someone who plugs a full keyboard and mouse into the thing (you can do that can't you?) might be disappointed.

It works well enough that I could actually see people using it as their primary machine at home, if they don't have a computer, and need nothing more than online functionality to check emails and create documents and such, then the Google solution of online services would be perfect for them.

I do love and hate the onscreen keyboard all at the same time though. They did so many good things that Microsoft need to pay attention to, like the predictive text input and the fact that the keyboard is generally more compact and thus faster to access. It is overly complicated though, and it took me a good few minutes to figure out how exactly to capitalize a letter mostly because it doesn't have a Shift button as you would expect but rather a cellphone-esque A/a button. Instead I would have much preferred something more like the PSP system, where you can hold down the button and it capitalizes the letter, or hold down an available shoulder button and do it with a combo as per a normal keyboard. It's such a waste to go press another button for a function like that, and then to go press it again to switch it off. It's no bloody wonder language is degenerating on the internet, because it could have been so much simpler if someone just thought it through properly.

And I'm guessing I just need to learn a shortcut here, but predictive text would be so much more useful if I could just straight to it, instead of needing to scroll across the entire keyboard to get there.

1 vs 100 : My thoughts after playing the Beta.

Strictly speaking I won't call 1vs100 an Arcade game, firstly because you don't actually pay for it, it's included with your Gold subscription, and secondly because you don't actually find it under the Arcade Games section.

Instead it appears under the Spotlight section of the Dashboard, where the latest episodes are announced. Essentially there is a schedule much like on regular Television, and you log into the Live game at those specified times.

I made use of the reminder feature, but this oddly enough didn't appear to work. Being an American Beta program, and considering I have a US account, I had to be up at 2:00 this morning to play with the Americans at midday their side of the pond.

Initially I had some trouble getting in, mostly because you download each episode just before it starts, and my 384k line wasn't exactly up to the task of doing this quickly enough. When the episode was downloaded, I was told repeatedly that the game was full, this being a Beta and all, but eventually I managed to get in.

Now bear with me, as this won't make sense from the start, but this is exactly how I had experienced it, not knowing what to expect.

Upon first connecting you are asked whether you want to take part in a Public or Private game. Essentially Public means that you will partake completely, and thus can be selected to form part of the crowd, the mob and even be selected to become the One. Of course you can also win prizes in this game mode, which is of course the incentive for playing in the first place.

Private on the other hand I think makes you basically invisible, and thus you can only be part of the crowd, by answering the questions and such, but you can't win any prizes.

So I chose public and on we went. Basically how it seems to work is that a 100 people from the pool of public gamers are selected as part of what they call the "Mob", one is then selected to become the "One" and the rest remain as part of the crowd.

Then in the usual gameshow trivial pursuit fashion a general knowledge question is asked, with three possible answers. The X, A and B buttons are used to choose answers from left to right, while the Y button is used to cheer with your Avatar.

Quite cool is the fact that questions are of recent events, and none that I can remember are based on events in history. Pretty much everything is applicable to the modern day. Of course a lot of the questions are biased towards the American public, considering this is only available to North American Live subscribers at this point in time.

So everyone in the game is asked the same set of questions, and everyone has the same amount of time to answer, the difference being that people in the crowd can't be eliminated.

The purpose of the One is to continue answering questions correctly, and in the process eliminating all members of the Mob who get it wrong. As members of the Mob are knocked out the One levels up to the higher prize bracket. Before every new question is asked the One has the chance to either take the money, or to face the Mob again hoping to up his or her winnings.

Now this is where it gets interesting. For the Beta, winnings are essentially broken down into Microsoft Points, and on higher levels free Xbox Live Arcade games. Highest winning I recall was when the mob was down to 50, and the going stakes were at 3000 MS Points. Finally I start seeing the point of Microsoft's silly online currency, and it works really well here. I'm guessing here that these winnings are added directly to your Live account, and thus shouldn't be a problem for non-US residents, however you also score sweepstakes entries for participating, I think I got about 63, which of course as South Africans we won't be eligible for.

The great thing about this game is that everyone can be a winner. The One obviously wins whatever he cashes out, but I have yet to see the One actually win. When the One loses, the remaining members of the Mob split the winnings, which this morning amounted to everyone getting a Free Arcade game, and some MS Points. On top of this, the Top 3 members of the crowd also win an Arcade game for each round. The only reason I didn't get top 3 was because of what I figure is a wee bit of a button lag on answering, as I had streaks just as long as the Top3's.

On the topic of lag, I was very surprised to find the game running flawlessly on my connection, which shouldn't even be eligible for Xbox Live, never mind working properly. The game immediately detected low bandwidth and warned me that some features might not be available. Now this game is supposed to work like a proper live TV show, and thus you are supposed to have Voice communications throughout, at least that's what I gathered from the trailer. In my case however the announcer asking the questions seemed to be pre-recorded, possibly part of the small 30Mb download for each episode, but I did get some live transmissions in between rounds, or during breaks, so I'm guessing the bandwidth constraints were the problem. Still it's fantastic that the game caters for everyone, and I can't say that the gameplay itself was influenced in any way by my slower connection from the other side of the world. And from what I read on the stats pages, there were almost a 100 000 people playing the game all at the same time, which makes it even more insane.

Sadly I never made it to the Mob, or being chosen as the One, so I can't comment on that experience. The game does however keep the competitive nature going, because the scores of three people closest to you are listed at the top of your screen, including the answers they give after the timer runs out, and their current streak of correct answers. Thus you almost forget about the One and the Mob, and you just want to beat the other guys next to you. I'm guessing these four slots would be used if you were playing the game with four local players, such as in a family setup or at a party.

At the end of the day this is a massive amount of fun, I really can't believe how much I enjoyed partaking in it, completely forgetting that it was in fact 4:00 in the morning when the session ended. Episodes are basically two hours long, after which you have to join the next scheduled event if you want to play again.

Catering for American time it is of course completely unrealistic for us locals to partake, but then I have to ask why the hell isn't anyone jumping up and down to bring this to South Africa? This is the perfect reason to finally bring Xbox Live to South Africa, and even more so considering the owners 1vs100 Endemol already have a massive South African presence. I mean this could change South African gameshows forever, with people leaving Noot vir Noot and the like to become participants rather than just viewers.

Halo Wars Review

Look, I'll be honest and say that I've never been much of a Real-time Strategy fan. Sure I played them in my years as a PC-gamer, but I was never fanatical about them and can't remember ever finishing any of them.

So you would think I'm the world kind of person to write a review about a RTS title then, and that's where you would be wrong. You see the problem in the past is that RTS titles were the holy grail of PC gaming, since everyone has always falsely believed that they simply can't work on console, or at least can't work properly. In the past year I've made the mistake of buying numerous RTS titles for my Xbox360, each time telling myself that this will be the one to turn things around, only to teach some point where I would admit "this is simply another PC port". As much as you try to convince yourself that it works, you eventually hit a brick wall with "I was built on a PC, for a PC, and never meant to be played with your silly console controller".

At least that was the case before Halo Wars arrived.

I almost gave this game a skip, purely because I thought buying a 5th console RTS would simply lead to another dissapointment. I already own Battle for Middle Earth II which was terrible and laggy, Command and Conquer 3 and Kane's Wrath which although not a bad try still suffers from the "I am a PC game" problem. Tom Clancy's End War is a fantastic game, but doesn't quite fit in with the rest of these so we'll just ignore that one.

Fortunately Kalahari.net were kind enough to start their Deal of the Day promotions, and thus I picked up the Collector's Edition for dirt cheap, just so it can look nice next to my Halo3 CE...yes I'm that vain. What a great package! Plastic slip case which for once is closed at one end, with a metal game cover much like the Bioshock collector's version inside, and then a separate with a Halo patch, graphic novel and some other goodies.

Halo Wars was never meant to be played on a PC, thus it was never designed to be played on a PC, and thus it works fantastically well on a console, because that's where it was born from. Sure your die hard PC gamers will say it's toned down, and this and that is better on PC, but if that were the case it would have never worked properly, and we would have found ourselves at the same old crossroads. Throughout the entire game, and yes I actually finished this one, which says a hell of a lot, you never have that niggling sense at the back of your head that you should have been sitting upright at a desk with a mouse in your hand...not even once.

Controls are simple, yet effective. A-button selects singular units, B-button releases, X-button is move or attack and Y-button is for using the special ability of each unit. Analog sticks are used to control the camera as is the norm, with the D-pad assigned to various shortcuts that allow for jumping around the map to points of interest, as well as accessing special abilities. Left trigger accelerates camera movement for fast navigation, Left bumper selects all units while Right bumper select only the local units on screen, and then Right trigger changes selection between unit types. Ultimately you don't feel any lack of control, but unit selection is a wee bit of a Chaos theory system and will probably be one of the things PC-gamers get up in arms over. Basically the tactic is select all units, and then sub-select the specific unit types you want to move out by pulling Right trigger repeatedly. There is no option to manually select a specific set of units, unless you only want to select a single unit. Initially coming from a normal RTS background it seems a bit strange, but you soon settle into it and then it works really well, and makes for quick response times. New players to the genre will be the most pleased with the system, and ultimately that's the market Ensemble is aiming for.

Resources aren't mined or harvested. Instead you simply build a supply platform at your base, and the resources are delivered in a timely fashion, which is pretty much exactly how it would work in the FPS Halo games. Base construction is straight forward, with base "plates" preset on the map which you simply select and convert. Part of what makes this work so well for console is that you simply select a slot in the base plate, and choose the type of building. No need to position or rotate buildings, one of things that irritated me no end in the past with Xbox360 controller. Also you don't have individual waypoints for each type of building, instead there's a global base waypoint where units pop out, and although you can change this I never bothered.

Being the Halo universe anyone who has played any of the other games should have a fair idea what to expect in the pictorial department. Everything is typical Humans vs Aliens science fiction, in glorious multitudes of colour. Sometimes a little bit too much colour if you ask me, as the somewhat realistic visuals can appear very cartoonlike due to the extravagant use of bright unrealistic colours. The game runs at a consistent pace, and the only lag I ever experienced was in multiplayer over Xbox Live which might have been a connection issue, or the increased number of units over the normal campaign mode.

Speaking of the campaign mode, it's only 15 levels, but this is a good thing. Normally I get quite fed up with RTS games long before I'm even close to the ending, because the norml is to play the same bloody missions three or four times over with different factions, to complete an already thin story. In this case however you only play with the Humans, at least in the campaign anyway, which is a refreshing change. Halo Wars ties in with the main Halo story 20 years before the other games, but the great thing is that you are constantly reminded of the story as there is a cinematic before and after each and every level, pushing you to go on and play the next one. Average time to complete each level is about 30min, which amounts to about 8 hours of total game time, which doesn't sound like a lot except for the fact that this game screams "play me again, play me again". Each mission has a par time, and is scored accordingly combined with multipliers for combat damage and other attributes. The four difficulties namely Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary will have you coming back to replay missions over and over to score gold medals, and in the process earn achievements. Having only 15 levels encourages replay value in my opinion, as the end is always near, pushing you to move forward.

The Soundtrack has always made the Halo games for me, and this one is no different. Many of the musical pieces will sound quite familiar as I think most of it has been remixed from the previous games. I'm not sure about this, but I think the game also uses some dynamic sound system which adds music as the scene intensifies. Nothing gets you as pumped up to kick Covenant ass as this soundtrack does. Sound effects are the usual Halo affair of gunfire and lasers, nothing bad, nothing amazing.

Cinematics are top quality in texture, but sometimes lack a little in the animation department. This also carries over to the in game avatar of talking commanders, which is often so oddly lip-synced that it seems like a foreign movie with subtitles, not a deal breaker but it does lack some polish.

Being Halo, you can't not have Co-Op. Now I figured the campaign would just be slightly modified to allow each of the two players to have their own base and carry on as per usual, but instead this is a genuine co-op experience. Resources, bases and everything else is shared between the two players, thus you need to plan together on use of facilities and who is going to do what and so on. At any time you can hand over control of a unit to your partner via a D-pad menu, and anyone can build or change buildings on a base. Nothing "belongs" to any of the two players, and thus it is quite a refreshing change which some players will love and others will hate.

I haven't done much with the multiplayer mode, but I tried a few Skirmish missions offline. You can either have the usual versus mode where both players start with nothing and work their way up, or try the Deathmatch where you start with everything fully upgraded and a bucket full of resources, making the game more about strategy and quick action than who manages resources the best. Great fun to be had, and the game supports 3vs3 multiplayer mayhem.

Halo Wars saw me playing through the entire campaign in a single week, which I can tell you doesn't happen very often with any game. If you are a die hard PC strategy fan you might not like this one. If you are however a Halo fan, you will absolutely love it, RTS fan or not. It ties in so well with the Halo universe, and it's awesome to see little details carried over that makes this seem so instantly familiar.

I think this is a game every Xbox360 owner simply must have!

Graphics : 8/10

Sound : 9/10

Controls : 9/10

Story : 8/10

Overall : 8.5/10

Xbox360Gamer - Halo Wars Review