What have I been playing?
So I find myself having some time this weekend, so I decided to play a fair amount of games. I rarely get a chance to sit back and play games for an extended period of time with the fiancee, the dog, and my game going into crunch mode. So it was a real treat to play some games. So I ran over to Hollywood Video and picked up Skate for the Xbox 360, and download the betas for Crysis and Frontlines: Fuels of War.
Skate is a twist on the other skateboarding games, namely Tony Hawk Pro Skater, where it is much more real in a sense you aren’t doing 1440 Christ Air into a manual to a 900 McTwist. I have always had a problem with Tony Hawk games because if you can’t pull off some of these 10,000,000 point tricks the game just stops being fun. Skate on the other hand is about nailing just normal tricks. One way to compare the games would be Tony Hawk is like Burnout, while Skate is like Gran Turisimo. The graphics in Skate is really well done. The guys at EA Canada/Black Box did a great job with the city and the frame rate. Very smooth game. The controls is where the game really shines. The controls are more in line with a fighting game by flicking the left analog stick. It takes a little getting used too, but after you get it you don’t want to go back to the button pressing mess of Tony Hawk. Overall I am having a really good time with the game. There are a couple problems. The camera can sometimes feel too low, which can hurt depth perception in game. I can’t count how many times I have ran into polls or started a trick to early. One of the other issues I have is overall direction, sometimes you can get lost on what to do next. The world is very open and doesn’t have a natual or linear progression. Skate is well worth picking up for any system at this point if you are interested in a skateboarding game.
Frontlines: Fuels of War is currently the first game from the ashes of Trauma Studios, now named Kaos Studios. For those who don’t know Trauma Studios was the developer behind the popular Battlefield mod Desert Combat. Trauma Studios was purchased by DICE and worked on various Battlefield 2 projects, but DICE was bought by EA, and Trauma Studios was cut, and turned around and became Kaos Studios. The game is firmly placed in the Battlefield mold and nothing wrong with that. Kaos has built the game with the Unreal Engine 3, so the graphics look pretty darn nice. I’m not at liberty to say much about the beta since it is currently under NDA. But hopefully that will lift soon. Keep your eyes open for Frontlines.
Crysis multiplayer beta started a week or so ago. Crysis is a graphic whores dream, as it is a great looking game. Sadly it performs like crap right now, but it is a beta, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Crysis MP Beta is also under NDA so I can’t give too much away, but I am far more interested in single player then the multiplayer on Crysis.
