Return to Ravenholm

Over the past few weeks I've been replaying Valve's seminal FPS, Half-life 2.

When I first played through it six years ago it seemed unbelievably impressive. It had a complex and beautifully detailed world, an incredible story and superb physics that let you pick up, push and smash objects to defeat enemies and solve puzzles. I'd simply never seen anything like it before.

Back then, I was (barely) running it in 800x600 with everything turned down to the lowest setting and it still impressed the hell out of me. On my most recent run through I've had literally everything turned up to it's absolute highest setting while happily cranking out a totally rock-solid triple figure frame rate and I'm still really impressed. True, it has had some minor graphical updates in the intervening years, but what really keeps things looking good is the excellent art style and attention to detail rather than how much fancy geometry or lighting the engine is throwing about.

The gameplay, too, feels just as fresh and current as it did back when it launched in 2004 and it's this sense that it could have been released yesterday rather than over half a decade ago that has shocked me the most. I hadn't really thought about it before, but while the FPS multiplayer experience continues to evolve, the story-driven single player FPS game has largely stagnated. Indeed, compared to many recent single player FPS games, Half-life 2 is far more experimental and unique in the implementation of it's mechanics and the richness and intelligence of the story telling.

While anything as fantastic as the Half-life series is going to be difficult to beat, it's kind of disturbing that most developers haven't even really tried. They now seem to view the offline portion of their FPS games simply as an accoutrement to the online multiplayer modes rather than as an equally important component worthy of as much attention.

Probably the most interesting and unusual single player FPS experience I've had since Half-life 2 is (yes, you guessed it!) Valve's own Portal, and while it doesn't really fit into the narrow definition of a shooter, I can't think of a better example of the huge untapped potential that exists in both gameplay and story.

Looking ahead into 2011, there are a few developers such as Splash Damage, the makers of Brink, who are working to merge the single player campaign and multiplayer component into one overaching experience where the game dynamically adapts the gameplay and narrative to fit your play style whether you're currently online or off. As compelling an idea as it sounds, there are still fundamental problems with trying to fit an immersive single player experience into a multiplayer setting. The dozens of people you could be interacting with at any time are essentially unpredictable, and if I've learnt anything from playing the likes of Left4Dead it is that it takes only one of them acting like an idiot to spoil the experience for everyone else.

Now you've geon and dun it!

Anyone with a fondness for roguelikes and 10 spare minutes should check out the excellent freeware PC game, Desktop Dungeons.

Made by indie developer QCF Designs, Desktop Dungeons is a re-imagining of the traditionally complex and lengthy roguelike game as a quick, single screen RPG/puzzle hybrid that at first glance appears to be a simple, accessible little time waster but is in fact a surprisingly deep and replayable game.

Just like any Roguelike, it features multiple classes, monsters, items and randomly generated dungeons but each playthrough generally won't last more than 10 minutes. Most initial attempts at conquering a dungeon will result in your horrible death at the hands of the all-powerful 'boss' monster, but as you keep trying again and again the ingenious subtleties of the combat and levelling system begin to make sense. Once mastered, you'll find yourself unleashing hell on your foes instead of just being their supper.

QCF Designs have really hit on a winning formula here, but as great as it is on PC this type of experience really belongs on a handheld console. DS Dungeons, anyone?

We do what we must because we can

You've probably already heard, but Portal 2 has received a second delay, pushing out the previous release date of February the 2nd, 2011 by roughly 2 months to the 18th of April.

Games are delayed for many reasons, and some of them sadly have little to do with making them better. Nintendo are masters of this, often delaying a game for many months to avoid a conflict with other products that could impact on their bottom line.

Luckily, Valve generally delay their games for much better reasons, and Portal 2 getting even more time in development to be as polished as possible can, in my opinion, only be a good thing.

In a characteristically whimsical statement, Valve had this to say of the delay:

'VALVE ANNOUNCES SHORTEST DELAY IN VALVE HISTORY
Valve today announced that Portal 2 -- the sequel to the ground-breaking title that won over 30 game of the year awards, despite missing its original ship date -- will now be available the week of April 18th, 2011. This two month slip not only marks the shortest delay in Valve's proud tradition of delays, it represents the approaching convergence of Valve Time and Real Time. Though this convergence spells doom for humanity, it will not affect the new Portal 2 release date.'

April 18th is just 2 days before my birthday! I think I know what I'll be treating myself to when I'm cutting the cake (...is a lie!).

The Farce Unleashed

My housemate and I recently had the extreme displeasure of playing LucasArt's latest dead-horse-flog 'em up Star Wars game, The Force Unleashed II, for the Xbox360.

My God. Honestly, it's just... awful.

I wasn't exactly a massive fan of the original Force Unleashed, but I could at least appreciate that they had tried to make something fun. It just felt rather bland, repetitive and was aimed a little too squarely at the adrenaline junkie knuckle-draggers out there. I can't say I approved of their attempt to shoehorn a completely new character and storyline into the well worn original canon, either.

But FUII is simply a stunningly lazy product. Aside from most of the assets just being recycled from the previous game, the combat has somehow become even more pedestrian and repetitive. Button mashing will get you through 75% of the pathetically short stages as you become almost unstoppably powerful right from the outset. True, you'll suffer the odd death due to the agonizingly long falling-over-and-getting-back-up animations and dodgy targeting, but almost nothing you fight will give you any meaningful challenge.

I mentioned the FUII's lackluster length, and it is short - incredibly, almost embarrassingly short, in fact. On normal difficulty it can be blazed through in less than 6 hours and I personally can't think of a single reason to go back and play any more.

As a DLC for the original Force Unleashed this would be an acceptable, if uninspired purchase for, say, 1200 microsoft points, but the idea of paying full FRICKIN' price for this is almost nauseating.

If I were Darth Vader I would force-choke George Lucas until his eyes popped out just to put an end to this dreadful tat once and for all.