I’ve sampled two recent real-time strategy games on the 360, Tom Clancy’s EndWar (also available on the PS3) and the demo to Halo Wars.

RTS is a genre born on PCs that rarely works on consoles, despite many noble attempts. The key problem is control. There simply aren’t enough buttons on a console controller, and something designed with rapid mouse movements in mind doesn’t necessarily translate to analog sticks.

EndWar presents a possible solution to the control problem: voice control. Using a simple subject-verb-object palette of grammatical chunks – “unit one attack hostile two” – it’s possible to fight a battle without using the controller at all. I played through the bulk of the single-player campaign this way, and it works surprisingly well, with maybe 90% accuracy. Sometimes, you wind up using the controller because it’s quicker. But voice control is not only more graceful, it’s actually more true to what the game is simulating.

Unfortunately, EndWar has little else to offer. The missions are all the same and the difficulty curve leaves a lot to be desired. If there’s ever a sequel, it could theoretically kick ass, though.

The Halo Wars demo has only two levels, so it’s hard to judge the game at this point. But what you are presented with is a slick, carefully packaged narrative experience with simple, almost casualized gameplay. The control is traditional for console RTS – the left stick controls your cursor, and so press one face button to select units, another to give them a target. The levels required very little actual strategy. You could beat them without anything other than ‘select all units’, and so the feel was more like an action game with a little base-building than an actual strategy game.

Not to get all Sun Tzu here, but that’s a problem with console RTSes. Because the control is a lot harder and slower, the developers can never assume you’ve figured out how to command more than one group at a time, and so the combat never requires much in the way of strategy. A certain level of difficulty is required for strategy games to make sense. It’s not just the usual rock-paper-scissors system of unit strengths and weaknesses, it’s feinting, luring, splitting the defence, etc. Select all and attack isn’t really a strategy.

After watching an “Inside Xbox” video about Halo Wars (which seems to be a console exclusive, so I can’t share it with you) I can say that the potential for more advanced control is certainly there. The developers seemed to have thrown a bunch of possible control schemes at the wall in hopes that one or more actually sticks. Problem with that is the controls can get confusing. I think that Lord of the Rings RTS (Battle For Middle Earth? MiddleWar? Lord of the Wars? EndFrodo? can’t remember what it was called) had a much touted control scheme, and you could in theory assign groups and send them this way and that, but in the heat of fake battle I could never remember how to do it.

Time will tell. I’ll almost certainly buy Halo Wars, if only go get a fresh dose of Halo story action. Let’s hope the controls work out.

What’s up with the PSP? Is it riding the boxcars, bindle on shoulder, swilling rat whisky? Recently an article cropped up titled Ubisoft Urges Sony to Act on Directionless PSP, claiming publishers are abandoning the platform since Sony can’t provide a clear direction. Sky is falling! Except the quote comes from Ubi’s UK managing director, and yes, sales are weak in Europe. But they are far from weak in Japan, where the PSP regularly outsells the Wii. In April in North America, the PSP sold more than the PS3 and Xbox 360 (although they all lagged far behind both Nintendo platforms).

More interesting, perhaps, is this article, which spells out Sony’s, er, direction for the platform, while also filling in some of its background:

When Sony first launched the PSP it had targeted mostly professionals, 28 to 40 years old, who would take it to work every day on subways, trains and taxis. Since then, the purchase demographics have slowly evolved, getting younger and younger, said John Koller, Sony Computer Entertainment PSP senior marketing manager.

The audience has also become more multi-ethnic, with heavy use among urban teens, 15 to 16 years old, from Hispanic, African-American and Asian communities.

That said, Sony seems to have trouble making up their mind about what direction to take. At one point “Sony’s forthcoming marketing efforts will start to put more emphasis on women,” but then the big marketing pushes will include the God of War bundle, a NFL film bundle and a GPS add-on, which are hardly things women are clamouring for. It does seem that emphasizing the system’s non-game functions distinguishes it from the DS, but then that’s hardly the sort of thing that will make game industry folk like Mr. Ubisoft very happy. Oh well.

Bottom line: the system is doing well, so nobody panic.

Haze, the latest release from Ubisoft and developer Free Radical Design and exclusive PS3 title, was a game I thought I would really enjoy since I’m such a sci-fi shooter lover. I played the demo, I decided to play more. Do I regret that decision? Read on, dear friends, read on…

Alright, I can’t fake it here, this was a major disappointment. The thing that really bothers me though is how easily this game could have been better, well, the story anyway. The premise is this: you’re a Mantel soldier born into a world where “things aren’t right…until you make them right.” Sigh. Moving on, so you are in a propaganda pumping organization that enhances their soldiers with “Nectar”, a super drug that gives you Far Cry: Instincts like powers. It’s fun hitting a button and getting all super vision, but seriously why not just use infrared goggles…Silly. So you and your team have to go into the jungles of “Boa” to retrieve a lost shipment of Nectar, and en route you get into weird philosophical arguments with your fellow sergeant about why you are in this country, why the natives don’t know what’s good for them, and why Nectar is so great. You pretty much feel weird about the whole Nectar thing, and if the shitty bad writing didn’t tell you, your character’s over-top-voice acting sure will.

After you lose the shipment and get all creeped that your reality is starting to get a bit less black and white than you had thought, your team is sent in to capture the leader of the resistance: Skin Coat. Yeah…he is said to wear the skins of his enemies…in coat form…buttons and all…Social commentary in science fiction is oh so much more effective when it’s not ridiculous. Skin Coat. Skin Coat. What kind of evil rebel leader name is that? Not much of one…

Anyway, you know where the game is headed before the game even really starts so I don’t even have to tell you what happens next but yes, you go over to the other side: The Promised Hand. Fighting against your crazy Nectar pumping buddies! And this time you can use what you know about them to your advantage, like overdosing them on Nectar and fun things like that. Well, they would be fun if the game wasn’t so boring that you wanted to stop playing it as soon as you possibly could.

Yeah, the dumbness (that’s not even a word) of the heavy-handed plot just smacks you in the face so much, you can’t enjoy yourself. Why did this game have to be so damn obvious? Why couldn’t they just pull it back a little, take their time, and really pace and place the story so that you didn’t know what side you were on, what good or bad was, and really frak with your perceptions! Because…the story/single player campaign is just a weak, brittle vehicle to get people on the multiplayer. Up to 4 player co-op, lots of online multiplayer action, but guess what, you either have to have an exceptional FPS experience that forces people on their hands and needs to play it online (Call of Duty 4) or you have a game that gives a great campaign experience and its multiplayer awesomeness is a delightful side effect (Halo 1). Not a half-assed Far Cry knock off with a shitty story that makes you so mad you don’t even want to play multiplayer! You want to spit on the disc for wasting your time. See how the anger just bubbles up when you have to play a game like this for too long?

Then there’s this beast:

When I saw it I was so excited, I thought “Oh joy, Warthogerry!” but…nay nay…nay nay…This thing sucks, not because it’s clunky, but because boarding the damn thing is so difficult! Press square it says, seemingly fifteen presses later I finally mount up. Maybe it was just my controller being laggy, wireless and all, but I doubt it. I says glitch! Also, the AI was so lame they wouldn’t drive it for me and took forever to get in the damned thing after I did. I was perturbed…

There were some weird load times too, and silly checkpoint dialogue that just made the whole experience so distorted, I mean I don’t mind knowing when I hit a checkpoint or two, but make it seamless, make it flow! Especially on a PS3!

Okay basic gameplay was fine, guns were fine, I really liked the grenades (my biggest gripe in shooters are when the ‘nades suck, I hate that) but with no story to really grip or drive me, what’s the point?

This game failed on the primary levels a game needs in order for me to adore it. I wasn’t thrust into awesome never-before-seen action immediately, I was given a sermon (a short one) with over-the top voice acting on all sides. I hated my character and wished I could punch his face. I just felt let down as soon as I heard the name Skin Coat. I mean really…Can developers read some Philip K. Dick or something? Can we get some subtle storytelling, some kick ass pacing, some gods damned unique energy here! So I stopped playing this game and I don’t want to play it again. It makes me tired thinking of playing this game.

Instead of Haze, I’m playing darkSector.

And that game, my dear friends, is a game that went above and beyond on every level to satisfy me and boy do I adore it. But I’ll save that for another day.

Til then…Don’t play Haze.

What do I think of Haze thus far from my limited exposure with the demo? I’m intrigued! I want to play more. Yeah, the story is totally obvious and everything, the whole big evil corporation makes a drug that enhances you in battle and a rebel force fights against it. Good times!

The reviews for Haze have been less than awesome with the major sites saying things like weak plot, stripped down multiplayer (which doesn’t matter to me because none of my friends own a PS3, I’m in it strictly for campaign), and meh graphics. I think that they’re being a wee bit picky. I guess when you have an exclusive title for the PS3 one would expect something truly awesome. And yeah, from the demo the graphics were nothing special, typical Ubisoft jungle, we’ve all been there before. But I hesitate to hate the game so quickly, I really do want to play the whole thing.

Seeing the bodies disappear after I shot some rebels down was nifty, and then walking through a bombed out site and hearing these strange sounds when my super drug “Nectar” flow was interrupted was also nifty. I liked feeling all “oooh I think I’m a good guy but really I’m a bad guy oooh”. It actually reminded me of Shadowrun for a bit…if Shadowrun had a campaign mode…Or maybe it was because rebels were speaking Spanish…I’m getting tired of hearing Spanish yelled at me while being pelted by bullets. Can we get a new language up-ins for shooters please?

So why am I being so lenient with this game? Well, I only played the demo for one, and I just don’t think every shooter has to be revolutionary. I think of first person shooters kinda like action movies. Some are Rambos, some are Alien vs Predators, all are full of crazy unrealistic action and events. Sometimes I like a good crappy movie, and sometimes I like a little crappy game.

The really odd thing though…While I was playing my hands really craved a 360 controller! My fingers were itching to play on familiar shooter controls…it was actually kinda freaky and disconcerting. I’m like programmed for 360 shooters now…

I’ll do a full test on this beast next week, but as it stands now I’m not hating it, which is nice.

On Easter weekend my young cousin and I settled in for a long haul of gaming. We cast aside Smash Bros. in favour of a game we both were curious about but hadn’t yet played, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements. This game came out last year on the PC, but we played the recently released Xbox 360 version. Now, when I spoke of this earlier there was not a little concern for the voice acting and overall writing of the game. That concern has not left me, instead, it has been thoroughly affirmed. Yet, all was not lost in the playing of this game and I did enjoy playing it, for the most part anyway.

Classes!

You have the option of playing as a warrior, assassin, archer, or a mage. We chose archer and were fairly happy with the choice until about two hours in and we tried starting over again to change the class to warrior. Then a mishap with the save feature caused a loss of data so we reverted back to archer status after a waste of another hour. We soon found out, however, that being an archer wasn’t bad at all as our need for close combat diminished and our range of special bows increased. Also, further into the game you pick up hammers and can forge new weapons, including ones from different classes. We made ourselves a long sword and were set for good melee times after that.

In regards to that save mishap I mentioned, you’ve got the option to save at any point. I made the mistake of saving right after we were told to go a certain point in the city and I was on like a timer or something so I couldn’t get to that point before it would say I had failed the mission. Very annoying. We stopped saving after that and would save only at the beginning of each new chapter (this made for long sittings) and we would save in a different slot each time. Open saving has pluses sometimes, but not in this game. Too dangerous with the way they engineered the missions and you can totally screw up your game.

Fighting!

The combat in the game is intuitive and realistic. You block blows and wait for opponents to drop their guard to parry. It’s not all hack and slash with no precision, which I was very glad to see. Also, I was happily surprised when I beheaded a goblin with blood spraying and everything! For the most part though we stuck to long range shooting. A few good hits to the throat or head and most enemies drop. It was especially nice when fighting the undead since in close combat you have to impale them to keep them from coming back up, but a well aimed shot pops the head off and no more resurrecting undead menace! Necromancers are screechy lil’buggers, but aren’t they always?

The variety of foes is well balanced. You do take on one type of enemy in each area usually, like you don’t fight undead and goblins in the same room, but it doesn’t get annoying. Except when fighting spiders! I think the only spiders I’ve ever been able to tolerate in a game were the ones in EA’s LOTR games. The spiders here are so aggravating! They poison you for one thing, are a bitch to kill, and just keep coming! I hate spiders in games.

Chapter bosses vary from straight on kill them with your might or use your wit to turn the environment against them. Puzzles are littered throughout the game, especially when you’re deep in the heart of an island temple, but are basic and more akin to Zelda rather than Prince of Persia. One of the annoying things about the hints from your guides is that you’re already in a room pulling a lever when they say “Sareth, you should pull that lever on the far wall”. The timing is slightly off and this happened more than once. I guess the developers thought people would be looking around more or something, or just really need directions.

As any adventuring gamer can tell you though, looking for levers to pull and boxes to jump up on is second frakking nature! Alot of the more basic principles of dungeon crawling do not have to be spelled out so, but this brings me to an important point. I feel as though Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements is an excellent primer for young gamers who haven’t had much experience with swords and sorcery. It’s like baby steps for a game such as Oblivion. Learning the tricks of the trade in a fairly short, linear adventure is important. If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, this game captures the feeling of a grand adventure in a nice, tight package that gives lots of gameplay variety but does not overwhelm.

As you progress through the chapters you level up and gain more skills. There are set skills for each class and common skills the higher you go. I was so pleased when we finally got Healing magic, because up to that point relying on potions alone was frustrating. Those damn spiders! Healing yourself is a much better alternative. And since archer class barely uses magic we had lots of mana to spare! You do pick up one time use spells as a non-mage, but we barely used them. The only spells we used were Heal and Trap, which is like a land mine you set up on certain types of flooring.

Environments!

You do use your environment alot in terms of climbing, jumping, and combat. You have a rope bow, across all classes, that has unlimited arrows that will drop ropes if they are shot into wood. Fun times! You can also light your arrows on fire if there is a nearby flame, which is always appreciated. If you light something on fire it doesn’t burn up though unless it’s a goblin or monster. I was disappointed in the first level when I couldn’t burn a shabby hut down. It you can light an arrow you should be able to burn any thing. At least that’s my pyromaniac logic. There are also lots of spiked walls and open flames that you can kick your enemies into. Again with your guide telling you the obvious though. Sometimes I didn’t want to kick a goblin into a spiked wall but the guide won’t stop reminding me I can do it. Tsk tsk on that flaw. Tell me once and ne’er again!

The story! Some spoilers below!

The game opens with an impressive cinematic of a heavily armed warrior standing over a well holding what appears to be a glowing blue dragon’s skull. He throws it down the hole and suddenly the floor and the well give way until he is left standing on a outcropping precipice, ala LOTR:RoTK. A horned demon lady thing leaps up and goes into the warrior and then a huge, fiery super big daddy evil demon leaps up and touches the head of the warrior. Yeah, if you’re already thinking what I was thinking when I saw that you’d be right. The plot of this game is fairly predictable, but we’ll get to that, because it’s not negative by any means. It’s just predictable.

You play Sareth, a young apprentice to the Wizard Phenrig. Phenrig wants you to go retrieve a crystal for him but he’ll guide you through the how to of it while talking in your head. That’s where all my troubles with the writing and voice acting began. Phenrig is kinda…creepy. Not in a scary way but like in a creepy guy at the grocery store who’s petting lettuce kind of way. When you’re learning how to throw and move objects Phenrig goes on about “In life objects can be conquered”. Then when you throw a box he’s all like “You’re beginning to like this aren’t you” in a very suggestive and odd tone. So that was the tip off to me that this was going to be an odd sort of ride voice-acting wise. Sareth himself has a typically bland hero voice.

You get the relic and bring it back to your master who praises you and says your father would be proud. Apparently, you have no idea who your father is but as the game progresses hints are dropped and you get the distinct impression your daddy is a big bad. Really the whole point of the game is that your daddy is a big bad frakking demon and there are certain forces who want him free and certain forces who want him imprisoned for eternity. Phenrig sends you off on your journey with the sorcerous Xana as your guide, she travels in your head and there is seemingly no end to her jabbering. I really wouldn’t mind her so much if, again, the voice acting was better. Then the great “let’s go get the relic” chase begins!

Rival wizards, a pretty young lady, a crazy demon lady, and lots o’baddies await you as you follow orders dutifully while having nightmarish recollections of past events when you sleep. You also have visions of future events, all nasty and uncomfortable. The game does have different endings depending on choices you make in the last few chapters of the game. Unfortunately, save from a few variations on the ending cinematic and script each ending looks the same and doesn’t really pack that much emotional impact. Meh, what can you do? At least it’s not just plain ol’good and evil.

In Summation!

I compare this game to Red Sonja vs. Conan, the films not books. Red Sonja is Dark Messiah_ and Conan is Oblivion. I loved both films, both were attempting to take the audience into a world filled with adventure and wonder. Where Conan and Oblivion delivered classic moments that stay in the mind and heart for a lifetime, Red Sonja and Dark Messiah tried very hard to deliver a few good times. And both do succeed. In Red Sonja the budget was smaller, the story was shorter, but oh the battle with the mechanical monster in the reservoir was awesome! Dark Messiah is a shorter game, with a predictable but eventful story with solid action and pace.

I hated the spiders, the voices rubbed me the wrong way, but beheading orcs and sniping with arrows was a great experience. I dislike shooting from afar in most games so this was a change up for me that I enjoyed. It’s not a great game, no it is not, but it’s a good game. Gamespot had given a rating of 3.5 and I just do not agree at all. It may not be the best thing, in fact, it fits more with games from a few years ago, but there’s a story there and it’s quick and easy to play through. The environments are nice and bigger than at first glance. You really do feel like you’re exploring a temple when you’re searching for that relic.

As for my dislike of the voice acting. The script isn’t that bad, but when a line is delivered poorly it just pulls you out of the game so fast it’s like severe lag. The Deutsche version sounds way_ better, way more natural. I don’t know why the English version doesn’t work for me but again, Red Sonja had wooden acting as well. My B-movie comparison holds fast!

All in all this is a good game for beginners in the realm of swords and action adventure. It’s not complex, and I know that is the main criticism coming from elsewhere, but not every game gas to be complex and in-depth role playing wise. Sometimes you just want a watered down version, sometimes that is just what the doctor ordered.

Well, I hope everyone had a relaxing long weekend, some had Friday off, some had Monday, most had Saturday and Sunday. Whatever your mix, I hope it was spent in happiness.

Mine was spent in abject fascination with Ubisoft’s Dark Messiah Might and Magic: Elements. You know it only occurs to me now that irony of playing this game on Easter…

My cousin Dom and I (went to a family event on the weekend and ate so much food) played this bugger for the entire weekend and I have oh so much to tell! It’s five parts hilarious, two parts horrible, and three parts we’re still playing it, so if that tells you anything…then, well, you are an alchemist.

Here’s the trailer again to refresh those memory engrams.

But good gods people the script is so funny sometimes! And the voice acting! Oh man, Dom and I were at once creeped out beyond measure and tickled pink at the sheer comedic gold of the line delivery. The game should almost be played purely for the dialogue alone. It’s like watching a “so bad it’s good movie” but in game terms. For serials.

I’ll have the full tested article later in the the week after we’ve finished the game, but I think you can tell which way I’m leaning…

Wonderful news! Well, I think so anyway.

Luc Besson’s wonderful world of tiny wee creatures Arthur and the Minimoys has two sequels coming up and Ubisoft will be handling the game verions. Yay! I love Ubisoft! I like Luc Besson! Yeah, I actually do. The Fifth Element made me like him for life.

The sequels, which will be released along with the films over the next two years, are Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard and Arthur and the Two Worlds War.

As long as movies keep turning into videogames then Ubisoft should handle all of them. I mean Beowulf had that crap singing, so much crap singing, but still it looked really good and the blood effects were awesome.

How did I go from talking cute wee children’s stories to blood effects?