Paul Bishop

SB Staff Picks 2008: Paul Bishop

December 22, 2008

Game of the Year awards are almost never consensus picks. Different gamers like different types of games. Here at Snackbar Games, we have a diverse staff of writers and editors, and between now and the end of the year, they’ll each be telling you, however they choose, about their top ten of ’08. Staff writer Paul Bishop’s short list might make Sony fanboys smile a bit.

Fortunately this year, I finally got an Xbox 360, so a lot of the games I loved this year were from previous years as I got caught up. Of the releases this year, I could only give this honor to 7 games. In no particular order, my top 7 are:

God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP) – A perfect game for the PSP, which carries all of the action of the previous titles in a portable format.

Final Fantasy: Crisis Core (PSP) – Another beautiful game from beginning to end that is particularly more poignant for FFVII fans. Hours and hours of extra missions make this an ideal game for the RPG enthusiast on the go. Now they need to re-release FFVII on the PSP.

Metal Gear Solid IV (PS3) – Epic storytelling, with stunning graphics. This game sets the bar high for production and polish. READ MORE

Tom Clancy’s EndWar

December 12, 2008

PS3 / Reviews / by Paul Bishop /

Traditionally the PC has been the main vehicle for real-time strategy games due to the sheer amount of command options due to controll limitations, but with the addition of voice commands, Tom Clancy’s Endwar attempts to show that the console can be home to similarly complex and engrossing strategy experiences; surprisingly, it succeeds, and while it may not surpass the PC’s greatest, it holds its own.

As with all Clancy games, Endwar takes places in the near future. The United States, a unified Europe, and Russia vie for world supremacy until the launch of a U.S. space station attempts to tip the balance, but the destruction of the station by a group of terrorists instigates the beginning of World War III. Merely a façade for the game, the story is bypassed almost completely to focus on the gameplay, so don’t expect any thrilling turn of events or interesting personas to be present here. But dropping the ball on the story does not carry over to the gameplay which is as solid as they come for real-time strategy games.

You take control of up to twelve individual units as you attempt to clear the map of your enemies. Using a basic rock-paper-scissor decision process you can order units to attack, and backup others or call in reinforcements. While this may not seem like much, when dealing with so many units on a large map it gets extremely complex very fast. Troop balancing is the name of the game as you are constantly challenged to focus on several different areas all at once, while the enemy AI does not let up on you. Here is where the voice command either makes or breaks your experience.

Using a headset, the voice recognition of Endwar does an extremely good job registering commands and simplifying gameplay to manageable levels. It is possible to play without the headset but the controls can’t keep up with the constantly changing situations and you will find yourself behind the power curve. This is especially the case should you take your game online to multiplayer mode, where anyone with a headset and half a brain will completely cream a controller-only foe.

The single player campaign is really a tutorial for going online; multiplayer is where all the action and challenge is. You can face off single player versus single player or more interesting are the 24 hour battles that you can drop in and out of. Either way if you aren’t playing with the voice commands, you are going to lose. Period.

Endwar is a great real-time strategy game that doesn’t pull any punches with its gameplay, even though it appears on a console. Graphics and especially sound help give a sense of urgency to a very complex title that should excite console fanatics who have been waiting for a decent RTS to call their own.

Review Score: 4/5
Plays Like: Complex real-time strategy based in the near-future
PROS: Highly complex, superbly executed and visually stunning
CONS: Complex for the common player and it is a significantly different play style without voice command capability

Fallout 3

November 6, 2008

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Paul Bishop /

Fallout 3 begins in Vault 101, a place that is all you have ever known. Born and raised there, you were brought up to believe nothing exists in the outside post-nuclear world and that you will die in the Vault as everyone has done for generations before you. All of this is thrown into chaos the day your father escapes; your entire world is turned upside down as you must leave the Vault and enter the barren Capital Wasteland where mutations roam and life is kill or be killed. Armed only with the weapons you manage to find, you set out to find your father and head on a path that will shape the nation as you make friends and enemies along the way.

The world is huge. Playing in the future post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. is intense and gratifying; whether you are looking at destroyed National Monuments in the background, searching the Metro stations or museums for loot, there are plenty of secret locations to explore and enemies to encounter. Scattered through this world are the wasteland survivors living in communities or out in the world where they are under the constant attack of ghouls, super-mutants, raiders and mercenaries. Each have their needs and their schedules that add to the desperate feel the game atmosphere strives for, and how you interact with them affects your overall karma value. Here you have yet another way to customize your gameplay, as you can constantly take the high road by being nice to people or to strive for the way of the gun, killing people recklessly to achieve your ends. Each karma level of bad, neutral or good affects how people ultimately view and interact with you.

Fallout 3 takes the best aspects of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and smartly tweaks the formula to create a worthy successor in the Fallout series, using FPS mechanics as a base and adding a quasi-turn-based RPG system to the mix that further expands the player’s choices in approach. Using the Vault Assisted Targeting System (VATS), you can pause the action with a button push and focus on an individual targets body parts to maximize the damage. Each shot can be planned using Action Points (AP) to target the head, the gun arm or any other part as you attempt to take down your enemy or disable them. Each enemy requires a different approach, as you may want to quickly take down a raider by consecutive head-shots that cause more damage, but have a higher chance of missing or by aiming at a super-mutants gun arm so that you are less likely to receive their big-gun bullets in your face. All of this requires some tact though, if you use up your AP you are put back in to FPS mode where you may waste more ammunition and need to wait until AP is built back up to use VATS again. One nit I could muster about this system is the unfairness it sometimes trips upon; I have killed more than one mutant scorpion by blowing up its tail, and killed more than one raider by destroying their gun arm. These are just minor divergences from a game that excels in creating a living breathing world with a driving story.

Each quest offers multiple methods of resolution; you could use your charisma skill to talk your way on to the next step, or you could sneak in at night and hack a computer, or you could just kill the person and steal his key to gain the same information. In fact, there are whole sections of the main quest line that could be skipped if you just went to the next location and picked up the trail of your father. How you approach is completely up to you.

Fallout 3 is based around choices, and never before has a system of choice been implemented as effectively as it has been here. Any playstyle is welcome here, and ensures no two people will experience the game the same way. Anywhere that Fallout 3 fails to get a Game of the Year award is sure to face numerous comments and letters to the editor from Gamerdom’s howling denizens.

ESRB: M for Mature, for gruesome slow-motion head explosion animations

Plays Like: The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion with guns, but the VATS, leveling system, and other impressive achievements mean you could like this even if you didn’t like Oblivion

PROS: Deep story, excellent leveling mechanics and fun combat

CONS: May be too deep for some due to a vast, intimidating world

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway

October 30, 2008

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Paul Bishop /

I know that World War II FPS’s are a dime a dozen, but there are a few series that manage to make a mark on this genre and Brothers in Arms is up there at the top. Hell’s Highway, the third in the series, continues the exploits of Sergeant Matt Baker and his men as they pick up the pieces from the previous installments and attempt to create a highway into Germany to end the war.

Based upon the real-life Operation Market Garden, the story relies a little too much on past Brothers in Arms to land the emotional weight it goes for. Baker is troubled by the memories of lost comrades and his task in leading both old timers and new faces. While it is adept in its depiction of Baker’s mental state over the course of the game, many newcomers to the series won’t quite grasp why we should care without playing the previous titles. The story and characters are solid enough to almost mirror an episode “Band of Brothers”, but even the blanket “previously on Brothers in Arms” and flashbacks don’t help it achieve its goal.

Combat-wise the game takes the best aspects of FPS genre and successfully integrates squad tactics into a meaningful strategy experience. This is not a run and gun title, even on the lowest difficulty setting you must effectively use your squad or you will die. Horribly. The majority of the game gives Baker at least one squad to command. The action mostly revolves around finding the enemy, suppressing the enemy, flanking the enemy and finally destroying them. I wanted to think of this as a rinse-repeat game, and while it could be categorized as that, the different battlefields and layouts prevented it from really going there. Every map needed to be analyzed to figure out where to place men, where to suppress, where to flank and attack, and even if you think you have it right, the difficulty is high enough the best laid plans could fail.

The AI successfully represents soldiers’ fear of death. If enemy soldiers see you flanking they will go to better positions. Your own squadmates mostly take the cover path to objectives and will actively engage the enemy if threatened; they also make sure to let you know if the cover they are in isn’t sufficient. Not to say there aren’t some head-scratching moments when these soldiers jump over walls when they can easily could have walked around, but fortunately these moments are few and far between.

Controlling the squad is as easy as holding the left trigger, selecting a unit, steering to a position and letting go. Attacking was equally simple by holding the left trigger and steering to the enemies you want to focus on and letting the trigger go. The earlier you master these minor controls, the easier time you will have progressing through the game. In addition to your standard suppressing and attacking units, you will occasionally be given bazooka or heavy machine gun units that serve slightly different tasks such as taking out sandbag entrenchments or tower emplacements.

The graphics strive for a gritty, realistic feel. Lighting effects are great, and the environments are varied and detailed for the small area you actually cover, but occasionally you will see something that completely throws you out of the moment. During cutscenes when someone is trying emote, the facial details will fill in late, leaving a temporary blobbed-faced person; if you run forward too fast you can watch the draw distance catch up, which is a little disconcerting. Amid all of this visual inconsistency is one awesome experience that you must see for yourself; while pulling off a particular attack such as a grenade or head shot, the camera will switch to a slow motion blood-splattering movie-like explosion that can show enemies being ripped limb from limb. This small detail was such a pleasure to pull off, as I constantly tried to get the head shots in. The sound on the other hand is consistently flawless.

Multiplayer eems like an after-thought. Twenty-player battles are waged between two teams vying for the other teams’ territory, with the twist being squad dynamics. The different squads mirror the game units with one group leader who is ideally leading everyone, although I don’t know if there are any gamers outside of the military who will actually take orders to achieve the goal. But it has potential. Graphics seem to take a knock here, probably attempting to allow so many players on each map, but it is forgivable.

Hell’s Highway is the best World War II strategy FPS out there, and while it definitely has its quirks, solid squad tactics and a mostly engaging story make this a title that people should consider.

ESRB: M for Mature, plenty of visually stunning slow-motion explosions that literally rip enemy’s limb from limb

Plays Like: Strategy First Person Shooter, set in World War II

PROS: Realistic feel, mostly effective enemy and friendly AI for challenging squad tactics

CONS: Nits abound, graphically, AI, and challenge level

Silent Hill Homecoming

October 30, 2008

PS3 / Reviews / by Paul Bishop /

For the sixth installment of the Silent Hill franchise, new mechanics on new platforms help reinvigorate the series while maintaining a solid feel of the previous games. Everything you have come to love about Silent Hill is still here, so for those who adore the series, they will be pleased with the updates, but for those who don’t, there may not be enough of a difference to warrant giving it a spin.

Alex Shepherd is a recently discharged army veteran who is suffering from nightmares about his younger brother. When he returns to Shepherd’s Glen he discovers a town in a perpetual fog and nasties lurking around each corner, and upon returning home his Mother tells him of the disappearance of his Father and Brother. Determined to find them, he must unravel the mystery that links his family to the horror that is Silent Hill.

The single biggest difference in this title is the combat. Long gone are the weak protagonists that don’t know the working end of a gun, in Alex you have a capable fighter who effectively takes the worry out of combat. This will work for or against certain gamers as some will say it takes an edge off of dealing with the enemies, but for me I welcome the increased accent on fighting as the game seemed to balance this with an increased amount of baddies. Fighting now has the option of light and heavy attacks that can be strung together for combos, or dodging and rolling out of harm’s way to avoid the previously unavoidable enemy attacks. And with a simple flick of the analog stick, you can quickly switch targets ensuring multiple enemies are not a problem to deal with. Firearms are similarly in capable hands with Alex, as aiming is more precise and deadly, although the game once again balances this with scarce ammunition through the early stages.

The camera has been revamped as well, giving control to the player in a manner similar to the PSP release Silent Hills Origins. Here it is worlds better than previous Silent Hill entries with their fixed camera angles, but it still could have used some tweaking to get it closer to perfection. Instead, you end up fighting with the camera a little as it invariably zooms too close to you as you fight, neglecting to show that faceless enemy about to bite you from behind. The menu system was updated to allow for easier access to guns, ammunition, puzzle pieces and health items, by holding the L1 or R1 you can quickly swap out items in the heat of battle with little to no worries. And finally, the addition of a health bar on the left side of the screen is heaven sent. Why did it take them so long to add that?

For those familiar with the series, the rest of the gameplay follows the standard formula: walk around, get scared, find a puzzle, find solution to puzzle, continue. This wash and repeat formula may get old for some, but it is the atmosphere and ambiance that make it all worthwhile. Sound is just plain excellent in setting the tone, leaving you on the edge of your seat as you are constantly anticipating the next shock which may or may not happen around the corner.

Graphically the game does okay. I was a little disappointed in the overall quality, as secondary characters and environments seemed washed out in the constant darkness, fog and otherworld scratchy film effects. Alex himself and the enemies are particularly well done, giving good emotional responses in the form of Alex, and surprisingly disturbing images in the form of skinless dogs, faceless nurses and other amalgamations I can’t even begin to describe.

Fans of the Silent Hill series will generally agree that Homecoming is a move in the right direction. Double Helix solved my biggest complaints about the series with the better camera and especially the improved combat, but if you already found the rinse repeat gameplay formula annoying, there isn’t much here that will convince you to come back to it.

ESRB: M for Mature, dead bodies, gross bad guys, seriously disgusting fights

Plays Like: Updated Silent Hill with more robust combat

PROS: Everything Silent Hill is famous for plus improved combat, loading and camera

CONS: Everything Silent Hill is famous for, if you don’t like SH, you won’t like this

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