GRID Review

This is my latest review, written today in celebration of me actually creating a blog.



Now, I have played many racing games in the Need for Speed series. Some that are gold (Hot Pursuit 2, Underground 2, Most Wanted), some that are lemons (Carbon, Prostreet and Undercover on PC), but I have to admit I have not played many other racing games that have been as good as the gold nuggets in Need for Speed. Then along came GRID, which would is the blonde bikini model of the racing game genre.

It looks fantastic! I couldn’t believe how pretty all the cars looked, the car physics are the best I have experienced. Being able to do burnouts in the middle of the track left you in a fantastic smoke cloud. Now I have played burnout, and have always thought they have done the best visual crash damage in a game. GRID rips the badge off burnout for this as the crashes are more realistic, probably because you are not going down the street at mac10. The damage system in GRID also deserves a mention, as you gain damage as you smash into things. This means most NFS fans will not be able to drive in at full speed into rival racers as you will inevitably crash and fail.

This brings me to my next point. This game gives you flashbacks. I don’t know how many times I have been in a race and coming to corner or obstacle and crashing, just to end up loosing the race because of a simple mistake, leading to doing the race all over again. GRID gives you a certain amount of flashbacks depending on the difficulty to rewind time and correct mistakes. It something I was happy to have as I went into this game NFS style. There is also a optional Pro Mode which allows the racer to compete more realistically by disabling the restart race button. This not only gives you more racing rep points, but also adds a more realistic touch to the game.

Now, a lot of racing games miss is a variety in race types, and GRID provides a wide variety of car racing ranging from crash car derby to formula 3, Japanese Drifting to the 24 hour Le Mans. This means enthusiasts can enjoy doing what they love. This is also good as not all events are compulsory, giving a mixed experience for all.

And as with all games there are bugs… yes not even this gem is free from faults. One thing I found particularly annoying was accelerating in first gear, both while turning and going straight. The default settings are what caused your front wheels to skid, and this became really annoying while trying to turn around, only to end up spinning or fishtailing. My other bug, yet rare and not major, and is rather amusing, is where I was reversing along a wall and was thrown into the air. You know what, just watch it.



So is GRID worth getting? HECK YES! If you love, or even like racing games, GRID is really for you. For those who don’t, I reckon that GRID is worth trying as I had so much fun with it, and there is definitely enough stuff in the game. One of my favorites was the derby, especially when I turn stability control off!

Need for Speed: Undercover Review

AU$60...why did I pay that much for this game...
Personally I think this game is worth $10 at most. I started the game with good thoughts about Most Wanted, it being the best NFS game in the EA franchise. I was yet to discover that this game was atrocious! The game was severely buggy, with long loading times while driving, therefore making it hard to drive, and with this came bad resource management. I had all setting on low and it running in 800x600 and my computer still couldn’t cope, and this in on my new 3.2GHz Quad Core with a 3870X2. Now with these settings, the cars looked like they were from Need for Speed High Stakes, the world was shadowless, the lines on the road were pixelated, and everything was a huge, unpolished mess, like my room at the moment.

I did some reading and many other reviewers have thought the exact same thing. Most complaining about the poor fps performance, loading while within a race, and number of bugs within the game (an example they mentioned which I saw as soon as I got into the game was cars that only had the wheels, the body was invisible)

It was not until I went onto the EA NFS website that I found a patch. This fixed a few bugs, and the fps issue for me. Now don’t think I thought this was ok, because why the hell would you release such a poor game, with so many bugs, and poor system resources management (e.g. epic LAG!!!) into the market. Why should people pay $60+ for a game that doesn’t function? It’s just not fair to the consumer! What made them release this game so quickly, did EA give black box studios a restricted time frame for the game, did it reach its time limit and then whatever they had they just threw it onto a disc and stamped a price tag onto it? EA, have you heard about giving the developer an extra month for beta testing, I mean, common! The game had a Performance issue, I would have dreaded running this on your minimum system requirements.

Ending my rant...

Ok, so I installed the patch and found that the loading bug had been fixed, and the performance issues had been somewhat fixed.

And WALLA! I was actually having fun, I was able to play the game without getting frustrated. But a terrible sense of da ja vu was in the air. Am I playing Most Wanted again??? People who play this game will find it to be Most Wanted, with quite similar graphics, a larger world map, bot cars with car damage, and maybe 2 new types of racing that are very similar indeed (Highway race where you have to get 300m in front of your opponent, and what seems to be getaway where you flee from the other car and have to stay in front for 1.5 mins). Now this is a good game, but it could have been better. As I said before, I believe Most Wanted is the best game in the series so far. It did everything Undercover does and it did it better. It seems that the developers where in such a hurry to get the game out that they forgot to do anything new and exciting with it, hence it being such a failure compared to its predecessors. The world map is huge, which is what Most Wanted needed as I played the game so much that I memorised the whole map because the game was soooooooo good and so immersive. But Undercover doesn’t know what to do with it. This is really the only positive I can give it, except for the fact that Undercover has the Bugatti Veyron in it, but game play isn’t very challenging, the graphics are meh for this day and age, considering I have the boxes of both Most Wanted and Undercover sitting on my desk and the screenshots look like they came from the same engine.

Actually the game is challenging, but that because there is a bug with the collision detection in this mode, where you have to smash the crap out of other cars. Let me tell you how frustrating this part was. The first guy I took out was fine, I rammed into him 5-6 times and he died and finished within 3 minutes, then the second guy came along right after, had to smash him a billion times because my hits refused to register, leading onto a really long smashing sequence which went on for literally 40 minutes, not to mention that I had 2 thugs on my tail trying to stop me. But this is when the game makes the worst mistake in the world! Because there where 2 thugs chasing you, they now know who you are, so in another 2 chase things you have to take each one down. So two more 30 minute chases came about. Think I am done? OH NO I’M NOT!! During one chase with the final Thug, which this was 20 mins into the chase, finally dies...BUT my game does not register that he has been defeated, goes into third person camera, and follows the other car, therefore i cannot see my car, and the camera follows the thug while I crash into a wall, mission failed, I lose, I rage, closing the game and dying a little inside knowing that I just wasted 30 minutes of my life, knowing that I will have to waste another 30 trying to do it again. I did however manage to do it again in 5 mins due to some lucky hits that did register.
Now one thing this game, like Most Wanted again, does is the cinematic things in between missions. They are ok, the acting is crap! But amusing. It gives the game some sort of meaning, but falls flat on its face due to crap game play, and the way of progressing is just continuing to race. They become an annoyance because it breaks up game play and leads to those stupid chase and destroy things. There isn’t much positive about this game, as it does thing exactly the same as Most Wanted and fails miserably.

I’ll sum up my thoughts of this game.
This game makes me cranky! As you can tell. I do not recommend this game to anyone! This is due to it being incomplete, and Most Wanted is probably available in a game bin somewhere for like $10, and would recommend that as you will have a much better experience with Most Wanted than you will with Need for Speed Undercover. Most Wanted just did everything better, and runs on almost every pc. The performance issues may be better on a console, so if you need to get this game, make sure you get it on Xbox or Playstation.

Now I need to get hit by a car, assuming it isnt lagging due to performance issues and doesnt glitch through me.

I am sure I'll be fine though cause if it does hit me I will be fine because it probably won't register

Killing Floor Review

First off, thanks Jim for giving me this game, greatly appreciated.

Now, Killing Floor is a FPS about zombies, which is pretty obvious through the title and is about as original as any other zombie game. I have played a bit of this game and found it fun, but missing something. It is a mix of counter strike (where there is a team of you trying to wipe out a team of zombies, as well as having to buy weapons), Left 4 Dead with the zombies, BF2 with the enemy tickets, and finally Oblivion and probably Fallout with the stupid weight system.

Here’s the deal, you and 5 other unlucky soldiers battle it out against a large amount of zombies, using teamwork until the end where you get your butt kick, swiftly moving your gonads towards your lungs by the final boss. That’s about all I can tell you about the game as that is pretty much it. I am making this my first review, but cannot really go on about the game as it has given me very little to go on about it.

So here are the positives, the teamwork works well. This is mainly because if you play the game by yourself you will be struggling to get past the first level. You have to work as a team to reach the last level anyway, other wise zombies will be eating you to the point where you will just a skeleton running around.

There is some variety in the guns, with weapons ranging from your standard counter strike standard pistol and knife, to rocket launches and chainsaws. This is where Killing Floor beats Left 4 Dead by a mile as you can choose any weapon to take on the horde, my personal favourite being the double barrel hunting shotgun, which fires two large shots which quickly reduces whole zombies into meat salads.

The level design is good and it is challenging, most things that you'd expect in this day and age of gaming. I have an issue with the lighting, as everything is so dark that you cannot see anything coming towards you. But, it wouldn’t be a zombie game without it, so I guess that is ok.

My final positive is the enemies. Yes, another +1 to Killing Floor over Left 4 Dead with the zombie designs. This is one thing I have to say I like about this game is the enemy design, even though not original in anyway (those who have played The Suffering will know what I mean), but I like the Variety, especially the Flesh Pound which has two mace’s for arms, and has lights all over his body (so he is the only one you can really see while on a dark level)

And now the negative points, I am not going to list them all as you'll find them in most games.

My first is the bloody final boss, where I haven't been able to defeat him on normal, and haven't tried on easy cause I refuse to be lowered to that level. This is not the only enemy I have a problem with. The Screamer is another where this zombie, yes you guessed it, screams and damages you. Not only does it take down half of your health, but also wobbles your screen so you can shoot her to shut her up. Further more, I do not like enemies which take thousands of bullets, as well as being lit on fire, to die. I swear even though the flesh pound is by far the best zombie design I have seen, it is also nearly impossible, let alone the final boss but I cannot be bothered to complain about that anymore so I’ll complain about the protagonist characters.

The characters stupid one liner’s which all the soldiers on the team are happy to yell out every time they perform an action are bloody annoying and turn this zombie survival game, into a pub with a really bad English comedian. Every soldier seems to be voiced by the same British bloke. I don't want to hear the same thing over and over again when I’m trying to heal someone, or reload, or pull out my knife and so on. When healing a group of people, expect to hear the same 2 lines over and over about 20+ times after a round.

Thirdly, it is very repetitive like counter strike, like L4D in the way it only has 4 campaigns, but unlike L4D where the AI Director mixes game play up a bit. Also, unlike L4D, the games only way to ramp up the difficulty is to introduce harder and harder enemies (hence why I hate the final boss), and changing the difficulty means you get less money to buy weapons.

Finally, and anyone who has played the game will probably agree with me here, is the stupid flashlight. Now you may think what a stupid thing to go on about in a game, but let me validate my point. This is one of those games where a flash light is needed most of the time. It is about as dark a Doom 3, minus the wet-your-pants atmosphere, and it is hard to see enemies in the dark. When you turn your flashlight on it makes it harder to see the enemy, as it lights up the entire right side of your screen so you can't see anything. When in the odd occasion it actually helps, it has the same problem as in HL one where it locks onto targets and highlights them like a spotlight. This is not something that I think is bad, just i though flashlights did not lock onto enemies like anti-air missile launchers.

Well its now 2:40am and I was writing this to make me tired, but here are my final thoughts.
Its repetitive, Its a good game, but not as fun as I found L4D, its repetitive, too much like Zombie Horde mod, it has a weird difficulty curve, its repetitive, but it is functional and fun as long as you do not play it to death.

So is it worth US$20? I would say if you like L4D, be ready for the B Grade version of it, but it is different and it's fun when you play with friends, but I have to say you might as well wait for a special on it... or get someone to buy it for you for your Bday XD

Welcome

Welcome to The Secret of Monty Island game reviews. I have had these reviews on Facebook and Steam and now I have set up a blog. Hope you enjoy!!!

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Monty