Killing Floor

Sometime last week, my friend (Draenoth) and I, picked up Killing Floor on Steam. Killing Floor is a co-op zombie survival game that was originally a mod for UT2004. It's now a standalone game still using the UT2004 engine. As you'd expect for a mod turning full game, it isn't the most amazing piece of software. However, for what it is, it's surprisingly enjoyable.

The game play quite strongly reminds me of Nazi Zombies from World at War. Basically, you play through a set number of waves where each wave has a set number of zombies. Unlike Nazi Zombies, there are a variety of zombies in Killing Floor -- some of which are absolutely brutal. In the early waves, you see nothing but Clots (your basic plodding, melee zombie), Bloats (VERY similar to Boomer's from L4D in that they spray you with bile), and Goreclaws (zombies that plod along, get close, then rush at you with some nasty blades). As the levels progress, you eventually encounter Crawlers (spider looking zombies who jump on you), Sirens (slow moving but have a stunning "scream" ability), Stalkers (mostly invisible right up until they start swiping at you), Scrakes (similar to Goreclaws but instead of blades, they wield very mean chainsaws), and finally Gorepounds (very tough zombies who chase you down and have the ability to kill you VERY fast). The variety of zombies makes for some ridiculously fast paced matches that are often quite frantic.

Also different from Nazi Zombies is the fact that there are a set number of waves. Survive them all and you enter a final wave where you must take down a Patriarch (big, tough and has a chaingun, rocket launcher, and a serious melee attack). He's definitely nasty and requires some actual strategy to defeat. The patriarch battle is a good capstone to the rounds and has satisfying feel to it that Nazi Zombies lacks, even when you go through 20+ rounds.

As far as weapons go, Killing Floor has a pretty decent variety. There are a handful of melee weapons including an axe, a katana, and chainsaw. The guns include dual wielded Desert Eagles Hand Cannons, machine guns, shotguns, rifles, and even a crossbow, rocket launcher, flame thrower. Additionally, you have the ability to pull out a syringe and heal yourself (or teammates) and even a welder to seal doors to slow the flow of zombies. I'm pretty pleased with the gun selection in Killing Floor and find it to be substantially better than either Left 4 Dead or the Nazi Zombie mode.

The thing I most like about Killing Floor, however, is its perk system. You can choose from one of 6 (I think) different perks. Each of these boosts a specific weapon class. There is one for healing, one for the shotgun, one for melee, one for pistols/rifles, one for machine guns, and one for the flamethrower. They provide a boost to your damage, your reload speed, and even provide weapon discounts (you buy weapons from a trader between waves). Each perk levels from 0 to 5. To level them up, you merely use the related skill/weapon. The best part is that you don't need to be that class to level up the perk, e.g. if you are a Firebug, you still level up your medic perk by healing your teammates. The perks level up in a matter resembling a quadratic curve, i.e. they level a LOT slower after the first few levels. So far, they've started to get really amazing at just level 2, so we're pretty anxious to see how they end up.

My biggest beef with the game so far is definitely how buggy the graphics are. While Draenoth reports that things seem okay for him, I have some really annoying problems with textures that seem to disappear. I even filed a bug on the official forums (it's still in moderation, I'll link it when it's up).

The final, most interesting thing we noticed about the game is just how challenging it is. We started playing on Normal (2 difficulties above it, 1 below) and found ourselves dying quite consistently in only the second round. After spending some time in Beginner, with a mutator turned on that only spawns Clots, we managed to level up our perks enough so that we were able to finally get through a game on Normal. I think it's actually pretty cool that the game has such a wide range of difficulty options.

I'm going to wait until we play the game more to write up final thoughts, but so far I'm relatively pleased. It's not amazing, it probably won't be something I'll play for a really long time, but it was easily worth the $20 I paid for it. Oh, and if any of you pick it up, let me know as it supports up to 6 people.

The Path Review

The other game I played through this last weekend was The Path. It's a creepy adventure game based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Basically, you select from one of 6 different "Red" sisters. Each of them sport a unique personality: little Robin is young and naive, Scarlet is the responsible "mom" type, Ruby is the rebellious goth, etc. Regardless of your choice, you are dumped at the start of the path with two instructions:

1. Go to Grandmother's house
2. Don't stray from the path

Like any good little gamer, I walked straight down the path, entered Grandmother's house, navigated to her room (you just press a button and watch the girl automatically move through the house), and was promptly informed that I had failed.

I immediately started again and decided to carefully make my way off of the path. At first I was hesitant and kept the path in sight, fearing that I would be attacked by a wolf if I strayed too far. After I continued to encounter nothing, I decided I would just run directly away and see what I could find.

Before long, I came to a graveyard. I looked around and saw some objects I could "interact" with: a skull, a dead bird, and even a mysterious girl in white. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I spent the next hour or so wandering aimlessly through the forest. I found various things strewn about, some of which I could "collect" and some I could not -- there was an obvious indicator on some that I would need to visit it with another girl. Eventually, I had an encounter with the "wolf," who was some sort of water entity or something. When I awoke, I was lying on the ground just outside of Grandmother's house. I limped inside and quickly discovered that the interior was quite different. Instead of walking peacefully to Grandmother's room, I went from room to room, each of which was like some sort of personal Hell for my "sister." Instead of arriving safely at the end, I eventually encountered a final room and I think I was killed somehow. I don't really know.

That's pretty much the whole game. I played through with each of the other 5 girls for good measure, each of which had a different feel and experiences, but were all pretty similar.

Okay, my final thoughts:

Loved

• Creepy. The game had great music and a great visual style. I also really enjoyed how the comments of the girls were written to the screen. In general, there always seemed to be some sort of danger lurking, even though there wasn't. I also thought the scenes in Grandma's house were both creepy and disturbing.

Hated

• WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?! I basically spent the whole game asking that question. I figured it would become more clear when I starting playing with other girls. Nope. Then I figured it would become more clear when I played the Epilogue. Nope. Finally, I went and read a walkthough of the game hoping that would make it more obvious. Nope. I get that the game is dripping with symbolism (the wolves represent things like rape/approval/etc.), but it was WAY too abstract for me. There was just lots of stuff (read: pretty much everything) that there was no explanation for.
• Wandering in the forest. The game expects you to find various objects throughout the forest. Each girl has a subset of the overall group of items that she can find/interact with. These subsets overlap between the various girls. Each girl also has 2-3 "special" items that she finds that unlock extra rooms at Grandma's. Finally, each girl needs to find her "wolf." The forest is a ridiculously annoying place with visibility at only a couple hundred feet, sides that wrap (think Zelda Lost Forest style), and very few landmarks of any distinction. The only map you initially get (until you finish the game once) is a 2D overlay that shows up every so often on its own, indicating the path you have taken. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the forest was different (at least slightly) for every girl. All of these things combined meant that I spent the VAST majority of my time just sort of wandering aimlessly, looking for things I could interact with. It was quite tedious and definitely sucked away from my overall enjoyment.

The Path is definitely in the "art as games" category. I'll be honest: I didn't "get it." That's not to say that somebody else wouldn't, but I'd have a really hard time recommending it. If you like weird, artsy adventure games, give it a try.

And make sure to come back and explain it to me when you're done.

Braid Review

I'm still playing through the games in that big indie games pack, and actually got through two of them this last weekend. First up: Braid.

Braid is a very interesting puzzle game, the likes of which I don't believe I've ever seen. At its core, it is little more than a simple platformer with puzzle elements. You move, jump, stomp enemies, and use keys to open doors while trying to collect puzzle pieces. In fact, the first set of stages are little more than that. However, the game has a hook that really changes its dynamic: time manipulation.

If you die somehow, instead of presenting you with a game over screen or similar, the game just shows you the rewind time button. As you hold that button down, time rewinds until you let go -- even all the way back to when you started the level. You can use the trigger buttons to speed up/slow down time, even reversing its direction and playing it forward again. While this does have a Sands of Time style usage as mentioned previously, it is a LOT more involved than that. For example, any item that has green sparkles around it is unaffected by time manipulation. You can jump down a pit, grab a "green" key, and then rewind time and watch the key come right out of the pit with you. It makes for some REALLY interesting mechanics. Furthermore, each level has a unique time related mechanic you use throughout its stages. I'll discuss those more below.

Intro done; here's the review:

Loved

• Time manipulation. I really enjoyed the time manipulation mechanic. It was very interesting and allows you to do all kinds of things you wouldn't even initially realize. The game also has some great graphical changes when you were manipulating time, with the screen becoming gray scale when reversing and oversaturated when going forward.
• Unique level mechanics. As I mentioned above, each level had a unique mechanic. There were 5 level in all (although for some reason the first one is level 2), and each played VERY different. Level 2 was merely a set of jumping puzzles. Level 3 introduces you to time manipulation and "green" items. Level 4 was probably the most unique in that as you move right on the screen time flows forward and as you move left, it flows backwards. It made for some super interesting solutions. In Level 5 you have a shadow that appears after you rewind time and carries out all the actions you yourself just did. Solutions here require you to actual work together with yourself. Finally, in level 6, you can erect a time-slowing bubble. Every level had a very different feel and it kept the game quite fresh.
• Logical solutions. With one relatively glaring exception (remember that enemies bounce up when they land on your head), all of the solutions actually made sense. There were not really any times where the solutions were ridiculous and they all generally just required some thought and a little trial and error.
  

Hated

• No "capstone" level. The game length really wasn't bad, but I felt like it could have used another level at the end that required you to use all or some of the mechanics together. Stages where you have to run your shadow through a time-slow bubble or something similar REALLY would have been cool. The final stage was actually relatively disappointing and required very little thought.

My quibbles with the game are definitely minor and I would recommend it to anybody. Even at the $10-$15 price point, I don't think you'll be disappointed. If you have even a passing interest in puzzle games, pick it up.

Like Geometry Wars… with LSD

In the last few days, I’ve been playing through more of the games in my big Indie Game pack. Most recently, I’ve spent some time with Everyday Shooter. While I haven’t quite finished the game (it’s HARD), I feel like I’ve played enough of it throw out a decent review.

Before I get to likes and dislikes, let me describe the game briefly. In a nutshell, the game is Geometry Wars. Like Geometry Wars, it’s best played with a gamepad; the left control stick moves you around and the right one shoots. That’s pretty much it.

Unlike Geometry Wars, this game is psychedelic. In a good way. Each level different… in pretty much everyway. The game only has 8 levels – although reaching the last one requires crazy skill. Let’s get on with it now.

Loved

• Unique Levels. Not only does the background and music change each level as you’d expect, but the enemies change too. The enemy changes are not superficial; the mechanics they use change radically from level to level. In one, you are shooting an eyeball with robots coming out of it; in another you're shooting little plane looking things trying to avoid something that I can only classify as the “red baron.” I’ve made it through 6 of the levels, and each of them is COMPLETELY different. It really is a nice touch, especially compared to Geometry Wars where the game remains largely the same.
• Music. The music in the game is decent enough for what it is, but what really makes it shine is how it integrates with the game play. Blowing up large enemies triggers a crescendo-like effect that perfectly fits with the music. The audio in general is very well done and just very enjoyable. The music is SO tied to the game that the levels actually last for the length of a single song.

Hated

• Repetitiveness. When you start playing the game, you have access to a single mode: playing the game through from start to finish. You have a set number of lives and no continues. If you die, you start back over at level 1. While you can eventually unlock the ability to play individual levels or get more lives, you still just find yourself playing over and over again from the first level. I really wish I had the ability to “continue” when I died, or even to start the “adventure” mode from a specific level. I have this feeling that it will be quite awhile before I see the last level, merely because I just can’t take that much of the game in a single sitting.

There’s definitely a lot to like here. If the game made it easier to see/experience all the levels, it would be hard to fault it on much of anything. While I definitely wouldn’t recommend anybody pay very much for it (there really isn’t much game here), anything in the sub $10 range would be well worth the investment. The game is definitely a bit more art that actual game, but it really is a decent way to spend some 10-15 minute blocks.

Crayon Physics Deluxe Review

I finished Crayon Physics Deluxe a while ago, but due to a weekend in Las Vegas sans internet, I’m only writing up my final thoughts now.

Loved

• Draw Anything. My favorite thing about this game is how you can draw anything you want and have it instantly come to life. Some of the solutions I came up with involved me drawing absolutely ridiculous shapes and devices. To get all the stars, you have to solve the levels with a single shape. Most of the time, these shapes are absolutely crazy. It was just a lot of fun.
• Physics. Make a game with a strong physics influence and I’ll get it. CPD not only has physics, but it has good physics. Perhaps it’s my physics fetish, but good game physics instantly raise a game’s quality in my eyes.
• Multiple Solutions. There are just a ridiculously large number of ways to solve each level. On a lot of them, I would build a contraption to hold my ball, tether it to a cord, wrap the cord over another object, tether the other end to a large block and then let the block fall. My ball would then be whipped at rapid speed toward the star. It was VERY effective. In others, I basically found myself slowly moving my ball up by drawing blocks underneath it. There are just tons of options.

Hated

• Length. I understand the difficulty of making content for a game like this, but the game just wasn’t very long at all. I played through it in like 4 hours. I definitely got to the end of the game and wanted more. I will give bonus points for the availability of user content, but the core game could have used a bit more.
• Disparity between Levels. Some levels in this game were REALLY fun (see: any level with a rocket in it). Others just weren’t at all. I also felt that the game didn’t progress very well. After the island with the rockets, they barely appeared. It didn’t seem to build upon itself like it should.
• Forced Thinking. To obtain the bonus star on each level, the game forces you to solve the level without using pins (for ropes, etc.) and only using one object. Although I had fun figuring out some of the single object solutions (see: any level with a rocket in it), most of the others were pretty dull. Also, pins and ropes were hands down my favorite part of the game, so being forced to not use them was disappointing.

Let me sum it up for you: this game is a BLAST.

To prove my point, here is a video I recorded of myself while playing the game. I SWEAR that it is my actual reaction. And as you could probably guess, this level had a rocket in it.

If you can find it cheap, pick it up. You won’t regret it.

Nazi Zombies Review

I've put in quite a bit of time in the Nazi Zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War over the last week or so and have decided to write up a full, proper review. So without further ado, here it is.

Loved

• Co-op. I have a complete love affair with anything and everything co-op. Not only should all games have it, but in today's age of behind-router internet connections, they need something that allows to people to directly connect to each other without jumping through hoops. I know I already mentioned this, but the co-op in this game is fun. I also think they did the friends list/invite to game feature quite well. It just "works" and doesn't require any port forwarding or Hamachi hijinks.
  
• Mystery Box. I'm definitely a gambler at heart and really like any opportunity I have to gamble for weapons. 1200 points for the Thompson or 950 for the mystery box? It was quite honestly never even a question. Five bolt action rifles later always seems to find me buying the Thompson anyway. It's probably because I got the ray gun the first time I ever opened the box.
• Fun. This mode is just a blast anyway you look at it. I definitely have a soft spot for zombies, and this mode doesn't disappoint. The maps have basically gotten progressively better as they've come out (can't wait for the 4th one to hit the PC) while the first is still quite a bit of fun. It's just a blast to spend time trying to figure out the perfect combination of doors to open and the best choke points.

Hated

• Worthless Melee. Your knife is useful for anywhere between 1 and 2 rounds. After that, it is more of a liability than an asset. In my mind, if a zombie is in my face and I stab him in the head, it should do SOMETHING. Half a dozen rounds in and the thing it does is make you ridiculously vulnerable. If you are going to give me a knife, make it worth my time.
• Worthless Traps. Perhaps I haven't seen the vision behind these, but I've yet to find any situations where they are really useful. I can see that they added them in the later maps for more diversity, but in my experience, if you are to the point where you are activating traps, it's probably because you bit off more than you can chew and are going to die anyway.
• Inability to Manually Start Rounds. At the end of each wave, you have perhaps 30 seconds before the next wave comes. In later rounds, especially when the maps are really opened up, those 30 seconds just aren't enough to allow you to prepare for the next round. As a result, many people try to grenade one of the last zombies in the round, blow its legs off and then take care of business while it pathetically scoots around. I don't think you should have to rely on a workaround when they very easily could have just provided a feature to manually start the next round. Perhaps that would have made things too easy, but I really think there could have been a better solution.
• Weapons. This whole game suffers from a lack of excellent weapons. Just like in single and multiplayer, automatic weapons dominate and rifles are basically worthless in everything but the earliest levels. Unless you can pull some serious machine guns out of the mystery box (hopefully something with the word "deployable" in the title) things are just a lot harder. Don't even get me started on how pathetic the flame thrower is. Just hope you pull the ray gun out of the mystery box. There is NOTHING bad about that thing.
  

Didn't Mind

• Maps. The maps are just okay. There aren't any of them that I'm amazingly impressed with. I've heard good things about the newest one, so hopefully it's a solid step up from Shi No Numa.
• Colas. The second and third maps provide colas that you can purchase that will provide you with a perk. Unfortunately, the way the difficulty ramps up, it basically requires you buy them. Also, you lose them if you die, and the revive perk is relatively worthless. Although I must admit that I never drank a Speed Cola and wasn't immediately happy afterward. I'm just going to throw the whole lot of them into a category I call "a mixed bag."
• Dialog. Every 3rd or 4th thing that the survivors say is clever and/or funny (I like the comment the Russian makes about capitalism when picking up the 2x point boost), while all the rest of them sound like something that was thought up by 4 guys sitting around at 2am with 3 beers in each of them. The American after hitting a bomb: "Ka-fucking boom!" Really?
  

Without a doubt, the Nazi Zombie mode is a very solid addition to World at War. Is it worth buying the game for? No. Is it a good piece of a fun and a solid add-on? Without a doubt.

Press A to not die

I've been a little lazy in writing blog posts lately, and as such, I have a backlog of three different things I need to write about. Hopefully I can put them all together and then actually get ahead a few days.

Over the weekend, I started playing Prince of Persia. This new one is sort of a series "reboot." The prince is less gritty, the art style is more cartoony, and the gameplay is more... easy.

The game starts off with the prince running into Elika, this game's princess/damsel. While running after her, you get a basic tutorial in moving and combat. The first thing I noticed is how dumbed down the the climbing/moving is. In previous Prince of Persia games, you would run towards a wall and hold down a trigger button on the gamepad to wall run. Here you simply jump into the wall. To run up a wall: jump into it. To climb a wall: jump into it. I'm semi-convinced you could play through most of the game by just pushing the gamepad forward and pressing the jump button at the appropriate time (the game even swings you around poles automatically). While it does provide some variety (sometimes you have to press B, and every once in a while, Y), the game is just really simplified. A friend of mine said that they "Assassin's Creed-ed it." That felt like a fitting description to me. It actually seems to be a growing trend in games, i.e., making the player feel more awesome while requiring them to do less. While I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of it, I can at least understand it.

Combat in this game is pretty standard fare for Prince of Persia games. There do seem to be fewer combos, although perhaps that's just my imagination. Also, Elika is always right behind you, and by pressing the Y button, she'll perform a magic attack on whatever you are targeting. Perhaps I'm missing something awesome, but stringing acrobatic magic combos together seems to be the easiest and fastest way of killing pretty much everything. You basically just mash the Y button, then push the A button once, then mash the Y button some more. In Warrior Within, the combat felt really satisfying. If I vaulted over an enemies head and stabbed them in the back, I felt like I had earned it. Here, I mostly feel like I'm just mashing buttons and watching enemies die.

As far as difficulty goes, this game isn't. Difficult, that is. If you fall, Elika will fly down and save you. If you get knocked down in battle, Elika blasts the enemy away so you can get up. While the game mechanic is at least partially fitting, it is in no way fulfilling. If I fell in Sands of Time, I rewound time. I was still safe on the ledge before my jump, but I actually had to expend some energy/effort to save myself. This game has no such satisfaction. While I don't think the game designers need to be our enemies like they were in the old NES games, I'm not retarded and I don't need to be coddled ALL the time.

My final big beef with the game so far is the collecting that is required. The game sends you to a specific area, where you kill a boss and then "cleanse" the region. Afterward, Seeds of Light appear that you must collect. You need to collect enough of them so that you can unlock powers which enable you to get to new areas. The mechanic feels really artificial to me, something the designers sort of tacked on to force you to play through the areas more or even something they could tie Achievements/Trophies too. Needless to say, I will be collecting the absolute minimum number of seeds required to finish the game.

The one good thing about the game so far is the art style. The game has a delightful cel-shaded 3D style, something I haven't seen since the game XIII. I'm definitely a fan of it.

This is the first game I've played this far into in a while where I wasn't really looking forward to finishing it. The game isn't THAT bad, so I probably will finish, but there just isn't anything about the game that I'm excited about. I'm pretty sure it'll just be more of the same. I only wish this game's designers had been as creatively awesome as its artists.

Indie Games Smorgasbord

As has been a recurring trend lately, I picked up some new games in the Steam weekend deal. This one is particularly good, containing 10 top quality indie games for a measly $30. Since most of them run $10-$20 EACH, the value is phenomenal. After a bit of deliberation, I decided to start with Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is based on (surprise!) Crayon Physics, which was a five-day rapid prototyping project released back in 2007. More a tech demo than a game, I could see that it definitely had potential; however, the drawing wasn't very good, as all shapes were translated into primitives (rectangles, etc). When I heard that the creator was creating a "Deluxe" version with proper physics and collision detection, I was definitely excited. I've been meaning to pick it up since the beginning of the year, but just never got around to it. As part of this super deal, I couldn't resist.

The game is pretty simple: push/guide a ball around various stages while trying to get it to collide with one or more stars. You accomplish this by using your mouse (this game would ROCK on a tablet PC) to draw various shapes. You can make simple platforms, ropes, pulleys, and all kinds of other shapes. Setup a path for your ball to follow and then either drop something on it to get it moving, push it by clicking on it, or use some sort of basket to catapult it to victory.

As you collect stars, you unlock additional islands and stages to play in. I haven’t even played half the stages, but so far I am very impressed. The level design is interesting and forces you to use a variety of tactics.

After you manage to collect the stars, you can go back and try to get both the “elegant” and the “old school” solutions. These involve using either a specific number of objects (elegant) or doing it without using strings and pulleys (old school). It adds even more variety to an already stellar game.

While playing this, I couldn’t help but compare it to World of Goo – especially as both are puzzle games where physics play a big role. While I LOVED the setting, art style, music, and even the gameplay of World of Goo, Crayon Physics has a charm and inventiveness to it that just isn’t matched. I’m definitely looking forward to playing the tail half. I’ll be sure to post any interesting stages or solutions I come upon.

Call of Duty: World at War Co-op Review

While it is perhaps a little early to be writing a review of World at War, especially as I haven't played the multiplayer much yet, I'm going to do so anyway. So far, my experience has mostly been in the competitive co-op mode, which is essentially the single player campaigned played with 1-3 other people. I've played through the all the co-op missions with a friend and also played a bit of the Nazi zombie mode.

Without further ado, I present to you my thoughts:

Loved

• Co-op Mode. I like co-op mode in games. A lot. I don't know how many times I've sat down with a friend, or even my brother, and tried to find a game that supported some sort of co-op play so that we could play together. While it is fun to play against your friends, I really enjoy the camaraderie that comes from playing and fighting together. While co-op is often something hastily tacked on late in a dev cycle, in World at War, it actually feels like thought was put into it. Additionally, co-op has its own set of challenges that you can play through to improve your multiplayer profile. I especially like the competitiveness of it as I fight to get more head shots, more kills, and more points than my teammate. All in all, it's a good feature and done well.
• Zombies. It's hard not to love a good zombie mode, and the one in World at War is good. The game play is pretty basic: you get points for killing zombies that you can use to buy new weapons and even unlock new places of the map. The zombies start out really slow and sparse, but very soon become quite fast and dense. We only did a couple of rounds, but I definitely found myself wanting more when I was done. While it's certainly no Left 4 Dead, as far as added content goes, it's great.
• Cheat "Cards." In both the single and co-op campaigns, there are "cards" you can find that are used to unlock cheats in co-op play. Instead of regular cheats (unlimited health/ammo, etc), these don't generally give you an edge. Some are purely cosmetic, like one that makes enemies explode when you score a head shot on them (my favorite), while others actually make the game harder, like the one that limits you to a knife and rocks. I really enjoy unlockable cheats in games (I earned EVERY cheat in GoldenEye on the N64), and these are just a lot of fun as they add a little bit more replayability to the game.

Hated

• Lack of polish. World at War was created with the same engine that was used by Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 4... and it shows. However, it was NOT made by Infinity Ward (it was made by Treyarch)... and it shows. It really just seems to be missing something when it comes to polish. Despite 2 gigs of patches, the game still feels slightly unfinished. Since I have started playing, I've seen: a black screen upon starting the game that doesn't go away, constant timeouts when trying to start/join a co-op game, my friends list mysteriously clear itself, and some in-game fonts (like the player names above heads) that are completely unreadable at my settings. While none of these things have been full game stoppers, they have definitely been annoying and have tarnished what would have otherwise been a great experience.
• Weapons/setting. While this isn't really a critique against World at War, the weapons just aren't all that interesting compared to Call of Duty 4. I suppose that is more to blame on the fact that World War II was 60 years ago than anything. Which brings me to another point: I think we should be done with WWII games about now.
  
• Story. I should probably do a full single player play through before dogging on this too much, but the story was just really blah. It split between an American fighting in the Pacific and a Russian trying to repel the Germans and eventually take the Reichstag (didn't they already do that in the first CoD?). I also didn't really like the way it jumped back and forth between the Russian and American campaigns. I think it was better in the first game where you played all of one campaign before moving on to another. The story in general just seemed to lack cohesion to me.

I'll probably write up a proper multiplayer review after I spend some more time in it.

As a final note, I must say that it really is a very respectable game and a must have for any Call of Duty fan. Probably a must have for any shooter fan. Even after you finish all the single player and co-op content, there are still dozens/hundreds of hours of multiplayer modes to play and enjoy. I know I'll be enjoying regular play sessions for quite a while.

Call of Duty: World at War First Impressions

Last Tuesday, I was sitting at work watching the tweets pop up like always, when I saw that Direct2Drive was about to have a trivia contest. The first five people to answer correctly would get a free game of their choice from the D2D catalog. I decided to go to the Twitter website directly to get a better chance. As soon as I got there, I saw the question... it had been posted only 10 seconds previous. A quick Google search allowed me to reply with an answer not 30 seconds after the question had been posted. I was so convinced I was going to win, I actually started looking through their catalog. Well, 10-15 minutes later, I got a message congratulating me and asking me what game I wanted. I decided on Call of Duty: World at War for a couple of reasons:

• I didn't care if I had a boxed copy or not
• It was still $50 in store and was unlikely to drop in price soon
• I knew it had some really good co-op play

At this point, let me provide a mini-review of the Direct 2 Drive experience.

The short version: it sucked.

I've purchased a handful of games on Steam, mostly when they were cheap and on sale, and each time the experience was exceptionally painless. I start it downloading, can pause it, and just wait for it to finish. When it gets done, it's ready to play and fully patched.

But with D2D, you have to go to their website, login, then find the my account link (it was a bit hidden in my opinion). After that, you can download your game. While they seem to have a download manager that may ease the process (I generally HATE 3rd party download managers), it didn't just "work" in Firefox for some reason and I found myself downloading the game manually. 15+ hours later, I had all 7 GBs downloaded. The file I downloaded was a .zip file, which I then tried to extract. Just using the Windows 7 zip tools, I was absolutely unable to extract the zip file; the last file in the pack just wouldn't extract properly. If I was an "average" computer user, I would have given up right then and there. I, however, quickly pulled up 7-zip and was able to extract the last file. The install process was simple enough, but I was absolutely shocked when I discovered I was installing what was basically version 1.0 of the game. In a digital format like that, I saw no reason I couldn't have just downloaded a complete and final version. I quickly discovered that it would take 3 patches and 2 MORE GBs of downloading to get up to date. One more day elapsed, and I finally had the game downloaded and up to date. While I didn't mind jumping through hoops for a free game, it didn't exactly make me want to go buy a bunch more from their store.

With the game finally working, my friend and I started up a co-op game. The game actually does this pretty well as it has an integrated friends list and you can use that to invite each other to games. We didn't have to monkey with port forwarding or Hamachi or anything crazy like that. In today's age of NATs and shared internet connections, it's good to see somebody get something like that right.

In co-op play, both you and your friends play the role of the same character (even sharing the same viewpoint during cutscenes). In combat, the game plays basically exactly as it would in single player, but with two (or more of you). In short, it works really well. In addition, the game has a unique set of challenges for the co-op mode. This means that you can actually level up your multiplayer profile in co-op play, something I think is a REALLY nice touch. At the end of each chapter, we were able to compare kill counts, headshots, deaths, etc. This was fun as it allowed us to play and work together, while still maintaining a bit of competitiveness to the game. At the end of our three-hour play session, I knew one thing: ALL GAMES NEED CO-OP.

As for the actual game play, it was familiar and more or less exactly what I was expecting. For better or worse (in my opinion: for better), the game is basically Call of Duty 4 (same engine, etc) set during World War II. While the WWII market is already pretty saturated, they manage to make it fresh, mostly by focusing on some less played scenarios like the Americans fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. The game hasn't had many surprises so far, playing more or less exactly as I'd expect. All told, it's been a lot of fun, and I can't wait to finish the rest of the missions in co-op mode.

In conclusion: Direct 2 Drive = not great. World at War = a blast in co-op. Free games = AWESOME.