Posts Tagged ‘Gaming’

The Emperor Guides My Blade

// March 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Gaming

The sequel to one of my all time favourite games – Dawn Of War – has been out of a couple of weeks now, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the new campaign and the move from traditional RTS-style combat to the more intimate combat style of Company Of Heroes. The game runs on the latest Essence Engine 2.0 and looks fantastic.

Rather than the turtle style that the original, and its multiple add-on packs, encourages, Dawn Of War II focuses on managing up to 4 squads of specialist Blood Raven Space Marines. Each squad has a hero unit who can be incapacitated, but revived. As the game progresses each hero unit gains levels and abilities, as well as new armour, equipment, and accessories. It’s a refreshing change from having to upgrade tech levels for each new mission in the game.

I have yet to try multiplayer but have heard mixed opinions so far. Hopefully by the time I get around to finishing off the campaign (and maybe even again with the co-op option), there’ll be enough patches out to provide a decent balance.

Prince of Persia – Great Looking, Combat Lacking

// January 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Gaming

Have you ever seen a piece of concept art for a game or film, only to be disappointed by the final product? Many a time I’ve seen some amazing pieces of art by people like Doug Chiang, Ryan Church, or Feng Zhu, but seen a radically different imagining of their work. The latest incarnation of the Prince of Persia franchise, however, uses the Scimitar Engine (previously used by Assassin’s Creed) to full effect and produces arguably one of the best looking games of the year.

Despite having less-than-stellar combat controls, the parkour-esque free-running around these incredible looking environments has sapped away several hours of my time. Some criticism has been placed on the Elika-save mechanism, where you effectively cannot die. However, it’s effectively a checkpoint mechanism that saves on load times and frustration. I find it works.

The only details I can find on one of the artists involves a mysterious Patrick, who can been seen demonstrating his talents in three speed drawings of the main characters. Here’s hoping to a sequel that sticks to the same style, but improves on the combat.